New Diver!

[Mcote]

Did my OW certification dives this weekend, August 11-12 at Beaver Lake in Arkansas and passed all skills and dives! Yippeee! The water was 85-87 degrees above 26 feet and visibility was about 10-12 feet. We finally caught a break on the air temps as it was only in the 80's both days instead of the 100+ as it has been this summer. Once I was able to get neutral buoyancy on the second dive, it was fantastic. t was so cool to take a little deeper breath in and rise up and over a tree stump or large rock and then exhale and go back near the bottom without messing with the air in the BC. So much fun! I had a great time with my Divemaster Todd and the couple that were in my group. It was an awesome weekend.

Marc

 

[beaverdivers]

Congrats!

 

[TSandM]

Always great to hear the joy and excitement in the voice of a new diver! Welcome to diving, and to :sblogo:!

 

[terri2chris]

Congratulations!!!

 

[LowDrag]

Nice Dude...congrat's. Now get out there and dive!!! :banana::banana: I certified recently to and can't wait to get more dives in.

 

[farsidefan1]

To answer your next question (how do I improve my air consumption to keep up with more experienced divers) the answer is to dive enough to be an experienced diver. The rest will follow.

 

[ArubaDiverJ]

Congrats!

 

[DukeAMO]

Welcome to the club!

 

[Scuba_Noob]

Congratulations. What I would give for 80 degree Fahrenheit waters locally. But different dive areas have different perks. When I started, I was filled with extreme passion for diving...and I still am! Hope you continue diving and improving your skills.

 

[Mcote]

Thank you everyone. I am looking forward to doing more diving.

farsidefan, I am already in big trouble as far as air consumption, I am apparently a big air hog! I was the limiting factor during our 2nd and 4th dives where we were using the second half of the tanks. I would start with 1600-1700 psi and we would end the dive when I was down near 500 and the other two newbies had 700 and 1200 psi respectively. Of course one of them was female and she did the first three dives on one tank. So, I've been researching and reading on this board and others about improving my air consumption. I know more diving and being calmer underwater will help. I also need to keep on going to the gym and getting in better physical shape too. I'm sure it will come along if I keep at it. TSandM certainly has posted some great info in other threads concerning the topic.

Marc