Eventfull Saturday :(

Ogün and Abdullah died on our dive, on Saturday.

For me and S, it had started as a normal weekend; we had driven to the northern part of Cyprus, looking forward to a weekend in camping, some diving, and maybe a bit of sunbathing.

We arrived on the beach around eleven after hooking up with A, in a small village West of Kyrenia, waiting to get in the water.

An hour or so later, we had gotten our gear set up and were getting our gear on the boat, all eight of us. We were diving 'The Paradise', a dive-site for Advanced Open Water divers; The plan was to stay around 25 meters until we got to a pressure of minimum 100bars, then turn back, and go back to the starting point, on the current.

As I would find out later, fifteen minutes into the dive or so, one of the guys panicked and bolted to the surface, with the instructor and his diving buddy going after him.

I'm not sure what happened next; A. said that, by the time he got to the surface, the instructor was doing CPR on the guy and that at some point, he saw the other guy, dropping like a stone, towards the bottom. I understand the group leader went to the deep after him, with no bottom time left on his side (he ended up in the hyperbaric chamber for this, but I understand that he fully recovered).

On our side, at some point I noticed that there were only four of us left; I was completely narked, as were the other guys, so nothing seemed strange to me about it (I was watching S' depth control at the time :( ).

I made sure we started ascending properly, checked the safety-stop counter so we made our ascent by the book, then broke surface, to find that no-one was waiting for us at the exit point.

The guys' English was a bit broken, and I was still in the dive's afterglow, so it was some good minutes in the water until I understood that something bad had actually happened.

At first, I understood that someone had panicked and the instructor took him to the surface; then, I heard A. saying telling about two dead divers, and I thought he was telling us a story (it was too surreal to even understand that he was talking about the current dive).

Some minutes later, our dive leader surfaced; it turns out he went back down to finish his decompression -- I think. We started going towards the shore in a subdued mood.

As we neared the shore, I expected to see some guys asking questions, and maybe an ambulance or two.
Instead, we got on the shore to find the two bodies on the sand, covered in dark-blue towels, and people moving all around them.

We went on the shore, carried the equipment to the dive centre, thrn stood there an hour or so, not knowing what to do or say.

After that, we went with A on the harbor, walking and chatting this and that. My guess is, that we were trying to put some distance between what happened and us.

Ogün and Abdullah died on our dive, on Saturday.

I feel like writing something else, but nothing comes to mind :(