Are you bored? Looking for a new challenge or something different to do at the weekend?
If you sign up for the Green Short challenge, you could have your work cut out for you. Launched earlier this year by Ocean Frontiers, the challenge is to dive each of the 55 dive sites in the East End dive zone of Grand Cayman.
Named after the signature green shorts worn by staff, the event is such that earning one’s shorts is akin to earning one’s stripes.
The challenge
Even tourists on dive vacations who could -in theory- dive all day every day for two weeks, would not be able to complete this challenge in a single trip. For residents, who have to do tedious things like go to work most days, it’s that much harder and can take quite some time.
Even diving at every available opportunity, there are still days when the weather makes some sites inaccessible; on other days one has to bow to popular demand and visit the dive sites the majority have not been to. But that’s what makes it a challenge!
Phil Brown recently became the fist non-professional resident to complete the challenge. He had been diving the East End dive sites for some 15 years, but when the challenge was announced earlier in the year, he decided to make a concerted effort to tick the 16 or so sites he had not yet dived, off the list.
It was not as simple as completing 16 dives and collecting his trophy, he said, as the weather, the currents, the experience of other divers on the boat and numerous other factors affected where he was able to dive on any given day.
As he says, however, “I still enjoy diving, so it wasn’t as arduous a challenge as some things might be.”
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