Real - Life Search & Recovery! 2025

Today we had a proper adventure!

This week we have been wrapping up some maintenance items, and on Wednesday we were all in our own worlds. Javi was working on the boat, getting our radio fixed and working on our new water station (fresh water for cleaning the boat). Carsten was off running errands so it was just Nata and I in the shop, and I was determined to get some work done.

At 8:45am, our neighbour Gil who owns the rentals shop Café Surf a few doors down from us ran up to Nata and started talking to him excitedly. Next thing I hear is “Shevaun! Want to practice your Search & Recovery?!”. I had barely even turned on my laptop, but one never says no to an opportunity to dive, so I threw my things in the shop, Nata and I geared up, and we were headed down to the beach.

On the way I learned that someone who rented a paddleboard dropped their iPhone somewhere in the bay. It was in one of those little water resistant bags you wear around your neck for snorkeling, and the strap broke while she was paddling. Easy, I thought. The Santa Cruz harbour doesn’t have great visibility, but the bottom is flat and sandy so spotting things should be easy enough.

When we arrived at the beach I was surprised to find a few more people and from Café Surf waiting for us…with paddleboards. I followed Gil’s lead and put my scuba gear on the front of the paddleboard nearest me, and someone handed me the paddle. Ok, I thought, I guess the phone is a little further out.

A little point of view. This is a video of what I see while performing a circular search pattern! In this instance, Carsten is at the other end holding the end of the rope. Using pulls on the rope, he signals when I have completed a full circle, at which point I let out more rope (so I’m further away) and swim another circle. Don’t worry, this is practice, I don’t take the camera when I’m really looking for something. Read all about this course in my Search & Recovery Specialty Review!

And so we paddle. Myself and Nata with our gear, Gil, and M, the woman who lost her phone (and is miles ahead of us), past the swim line…then past the pier… I found myself wishing we had a drone following us, because I felt like we were quite a sight. 4 paddleboards loaded down with scuba gear epically paddling into the wind! As we are paddling pas La Entrega and into a headwind, I start wondering where we could be going. I am tired and out of breath, there is boat traffic coming in and out of the marina, the wind is working against us, and my paddle-boarding skills are subpar even when not loaded down with gear. Finally, as we reach the buoy that marks the edge of the bay, M stops.

“¡Aqui!” she points to the area around the buoy.

I look back to the beach, now in the distance, we must have paddled at least 1km. Gil ties my board to his and I slide into the water, gear up, and connect with Nata, the 2 paddleboarders staying close to shelter us from the boats while we catch our breath.

Nata and I descend, its only about 14m to the bottom and the bottom 3m have pretty good visibility. Unfortunately that is probably due to a strong bottom current pushing towards the beach. Nata sets a marker, and signals that we are going to do a circle pattern with me on the inside, keeping him and the marker in my eye sight. After about 5min I lost Nata, not entirely surprising (I’m new!). Sometimes Nata and Carsten forget they have 4 decades of diving experience over me, and I am fully aware that Nata asked me to come along for the experience and that he would probably work faster with out me. So I keep swimming in a circle for a minute to see if I spot him again, but very paranoid that I would lose his marker (a noise maker Carsten had welded for him). I followed buddy protocol, waited for a minute, then grabbed his marker and surfaced (verrrry carefully making sure I found the paddle boards over head and couldn’t hear any boats).

*A birds-eye view of the adventure*. *For perspective, this is the pier the cruise ships usually dock at, so imagine how long it has to be to fit a cruise ship on either side.*

We connected again on the surface, Nata had not found the phone. So we reset, decided to swim a little closer to shore because of the currents, and descended again. We expanded our pattern, swimming a wide circle scanning the ocean floor. Nata was determined to find it, but the strong current meant we were working hard and using our air quickly. As we circled around one last time, Nata looked at me and signaled he was low on air, so we had to surface. As he looked back and I looked one last time at the sand, we both squealed through our regs and pointed at the little dry bag that was sitting on the sand right underneath Nata. We found it!

Talk about last minute! Nata snatches the bag and we surface, victorious!

Exhausted, we survive the paddle back to shore thanks to the wind at our backs, and someone very kindly carries my gear back to the shop for me. M was extremely grateful, and brought us a fabulous lunch as a thank-you, and will be taking her Open Water course with us! Win-win. Despite being at 14m for about an hour, the phone was perfectly fine and no water had entered the bag. Crazy!