Pre-Newbie Has Questions

[scubajoe]

Relax, have fun and if something in your class just doesn't feel right make your instructor go over it until it does. You paid for the class it is your time, make the most of it.
I remeber my first dive after being certified. In Cozumel, on the boat listening to the briefing and the divemaster said our dive would be to 90ft for 40 minutes. I looked at my dive table and thought wow we are screwed. No one else on the boat seemed concerned so I went for it. In reality we spent maybe 2 minutes at 90ft and worked our way up the reef spending most of our time in 40ft or less of water. I learned right then the value of a computer! All of my training dives to that point were "square" profile dives, I had no clue how divers really dived!
Back to my original point, get your moneys worth out of your class. Ask questions until you understand. Then one more just to be safe!
Good luck and glad to have you in the water.

Joe

 

[Karl_in_Calif]

There is a really nice diving spring in Midway Utah near Heber City that is 65 ft deep. They tell you to keep your depth to 45 ft so that you dont silt up the water. If you live close to Salt Lake City or Heber City, you may want to try it out, after you are certified. It is located at The Homestead Resort.

Otherwise, keeping your depth to 60 ft or shallower is the official advice for new open water divers who have not taken an advanced open water course yet.

In the advanced open water course, you are normally given a choice of several areas to focus on and perfect. Deeper diving, to 80 or 100 ft, is typically one of them. Boat diving is also typically one of them.

You will want to tell your basic open water instructor about your Mexico plans, so that he/she can give you some additional training on giant stride entries, 15 ft safety stops hanging onto the anchor line, and such things like that.

I suspect that many, many Utah scuba divers travel to Mexico, Hawaii, Florida etc. So the instructors in Utah are probably accustomed to the "upcoming trip" situation.

 

[Drew Sailbum]

before you ever get on a boat. Tell the person booking your dives that you are doing your first dives after certification. Do not wait until you are on the boat.

Good dive shops will work hard for everyone to have a good experience. It helps immensely if the shop can gauge the experience level of the divers beforehand and recommend the appropriate offerings.

 

[Warren_L]

ScottFromUtah once bubbled...

Any thoughts, ideas, encouragement would be appreciated. BTW, I'm a 58 year old in top physical condition (marathoner, triathlete). (Shoot, I don't even know if I'm posting this on the right forum.)

Being in good shape helps. I too believe in keeping fit (I've also run marathons and dualthons) but what's going to help you out the most in an emergency situation is a fit brain. Don't panic, keep calm, and think.

 

[Brian1968]

6474286 once bubbled...


1. (Serious) When ascending, your air volume doubles every 10Metres, this therefore means that if you have a lung full of air and do not exhale it......Your lung becomes the equivilant of an over expanded balloon! (This is covered in your course!)

Not quite. It doubles from 10 metres to the surface.

At the surface the ambient pressure is 1 atmosphere (makes sense) and you add one atmosphere for every 10 meters you descend.

To summarize (and the course will cover this):


Surface = 1 atm
10 M = 2 atm (this is the level where pressures double and volumes are halved. )
20 M = 3 atm
30 M = 4 atm

Clear as mud?

 

[ScottFromUtah]

Brian1968, this is Scott1945. Thanks for the info; yes, pressure is a linear function of depth.

Karl_in_Cal, the Homestead Crater is the diving location near Heber that you were talking about. That's were our class will do our open-water dives for certification. I live in nearly Orem (and work in Provo).