My 1st dive with a buddy only was GREAT! It was what I’d wanted to do since I was 6 years old! I've always be comfortable in the water, even when things don't go so well.
The sky was overcast and foggy. We picked a local site in Newport to do a rock hop, Kings Beach, still a favorite for new divers.
The water was calm vis was about 10’ we swam to the large reefs. We surfaced at one of the reefs(large rock formations) to get a bearing on where we were, my nav skills still had not been developed at that time, I was only 16 years old, but this dive was going to teach me an important lesson. We looked around and except for the rock all we could see was gray fog. We could hear cars traveling on Ocean Drive but couldn’t tell what direction the shore was. I had bought a cheap compass that week and had been fooling with it in a lame attempt to learn how to nav. Well today was going to be a real world nav lesson, choose the correct course and we are home, choose wrong and it’ll be a along swim to the next, shore, Long Island, NY. I knew North was the right direction so I kept the N out front and began to follow the course. It seemed like a long time but it was only a few hundred yards to shore. We got there just as the fog started to break up. The whole time using the compass I was second guessing in my head, was I going the right way? I fought the urge to deviate from the course. We got back to shore fine and so began 43 years of diving. I learned that day to trust my gear.
