kanonfodr
Contributor
Hey everyone! Just had an awesome couple of dives yesterday and I wanted to share the experience for the old-timers, the new DIR divers (like myself), the curious, and even the naysayers.
Our stars for this little post will be:
Greg K. (myself): newly minted Fundies diver
Natasha A.: visiting Fundies-levek diver from Russia.
Background: Natasha and I met during my Fundies class as her boyfriend, Evgeny (pronounced properly "Shin-ya" or americanized to Eugene) was taking a Tech1 class with my Fundies instructor, Gideon Liew, and was doing a checkout dive after our fifth Fundies dive with his teammate for the class, Mike M.
Natasha and I had been talking back and forth and she hadn't gotten much fun diving in while she was here on Oahu, so I offered to take her down to Shark's Cove for a couple of dives. We set a date for Friday and on the day in question we met at the coffee shop where "The Guys" (Evgeny, Mike, Gideon, and Joakim Hjelm (GUE Intern)) were doing the last day of Theory before their last dive. We all small-talked a bit before Natasha and I loaded up her gear into my Jeep and we drove off.
We stopped at Killer Tacos in Haleiwa for some eats before we got to the dive site. I gave her a quick site orientation, we settled on a dive plan, and began gearing up. This is where difficulties could seriously hamper those with less standardized training. Natasha's SPG was only in Bar, same with her bottom timer. Luckily my SPG is bilingual and I can convert from standard to metric fairly easily so we decided on using metric numbers but in the end it boiled down to just a few simple signs for communicating our gas status.
Getting into the water at Shark's Cove can be a task requiring diligence, but I had lots of dives recently at this site and together it went fairly easily. In the water we did our pre-dive sequence, including a bubble check where I identified a small leak coming from the inflator elbow to her wing. I couldn't fix it completely but we figured it wouldn't affect things much when she got horizontal in the water so after all was done we descended, got into formation and headed off.
What followed next was some of the most relaxing, easiest 80 minutes of dive time I've ever had. The water was the perfect temperature for wetsuit diving, the viz was great, and the surge was calm. It was the kind of conditions everyone visits Hawaii dreaming of and we had them today.
Taking a left (southwest for those of you playing the Google Earth game
) out of the cove, we followed the wall around towards Three Tables. Going nice and slow we made it all the way around the wall (a first for me, normally my gas limits me for that), hit turn pressure, then came back via a higher, more direct route where we stopped to poke our lights into some small overheads and make some good critter finds.
When we got back to the entrance we still had a bit less than half of our gas remaining and decided to explore out from shore a bit. We were both enjoying the amazing underwater topography that this particular site offers, the abundance of marine life, and we were into a groove working together. Coming back from our secondary exploration we got distracted by a diver looking up to no good (solo, with a crowbar and a net bag
) so I directed Natasha to follow me around as we stalked him to try and get an idea of what he was up to.
Eventually Mr. Crowbar got wise and spotted us so instead of risking a confrontation ala Sea Hunt I decided that discretion was the better part of valor and turned us towards the exit. This was where our little spy mission cost us: I was LOST! Rather than waste gas and risk a long surface swim in open water we made an ascent to the surface for me to get my bearings (and apologize). Natasha understood everything completely and once I was set we dropped down shallow and headed in. Coming out of the water we swapped tanks and debriefed the dive. I also took a shot at fixing the inflator leak she was having and succeeded .
For the second dive we took a right out of the cove in search of the collapsed lava tubes. Flying between all the big boulders underwater, through the swim throughs, and under the ledges allowed us to expose the wonders of this site. We made more good critter finds, a golf ball, and a pretty shell that didn't have anybody home so I bestowed it upon Natasha for her to keep as a reminder of her dives. I got stuck with the golf ball
. Going through some of the longer swim-throughs, it was so nice to have a buddy that understood the concept of team positioning and light discipline. Watching her light beam made tracking her status pretty easy, and I wasn't being constantly on guard due to "twitchy" light movements like lots of other divers I know do.
We turned that dive on cold and headed back in, and I let Natasha take the lead while I just tracked our direction and offered the occasional input if we were getting a little off track. Coming in this time we had the gas to play around a bit so we explored the shallows and watched the snorkelers cruising around before we made our exit. Debriefing that dive was simple and we packed up our gear for a quick trip to my house to off-load my gear before we returned to the class to re-unite with "The Boys" who would be finishing up the class.
Our timing was impeccable, the boat had came in about 5 minutes before we arrived to the dive shop and we got to hear all the stories and share our own. Evgeny was grateful to me for taking Natasha out and showing her a fun time and after the video review we all settled on a local restaraunt for the post-class dinner. The conversation was all over the place, the company was outstanding, and the food was damned good. Evgeny and Natasha got lots of advice from the locals about diving and general fun-having, since they were staying a few extra days to enjoy paradise. We all congratulated Mike on getting his pass, and made Evgeny feel better since he still had some work to do before he could get his pass.
After dinner we all headed our separate ways, myself to my long cold drive home in my Jeep with no doors as I had forgot my jacket at the house and as soon as I got home I passed out from the exhaustion/relaxation of a day well spent in good company.
In the end, I don't know how two divers of competely different backgrounds could work so well together without having a system so standardized. All we had to settle was little details, the big things are already figured out for us and with the training's focus on teamwork there was little worry about what kind of diver we were both getting into the water with. For what could otherwise be a scary experience, it was some of the most relaxing diving I've ever had in my life.
Peace,
Greg
Our stars for this little post will be:
Greg K. (myself): newly minted Fundies diver
Natasha A.: visiting Fundies-levek diver from Russia.
Background: Natasha and I met during my Fundies class as her boyfriend, Evgeny (pronounced properly "Shin-ya" or americanized to Eugene) was taking a Tech1 class with my Fundies instructor, Gideon Liew, and was doing a checkout dive after our fifth Fundies dive with his teammate for the class, Mike M.
Natasha and I had been talking back and forth and she hadn't gotten much fun diving in while she was here on Oahu, so I offered to take her down to Shark's Cove for a couple of dives. We set a date for Friday and on the day in question we met at the coffee shop where "The Guys" (Evgeny, Mike, Gideon, and Joakim Hjelm (GUE Intern)) were doing the last day of Theory before their last dive. We all small-talked a bit before Natasha and I loaded up her gear into my Jeep and we drove off.
We stopped at Killer Tacos in Haleiwa for some eats before we got to the dive site. I gave her a quick site orientation, we settled on a dive plan, and began gearing up. This is where difficulties could seriously hamper those with less standardized training. Natasha's SPG was only in Bar, same with her bottom timer. Luckily my SPG is bilingual and I can convert from standard to metric fairly easily so we decided on using metric numbers but in the end it boiled down to just a few simple signs for communicating our gas status.
Getting into the water at Shark's Cove can be a task requiring diligence, but I had lots of dives recently at this site and together it went fairly easily. In the water we did our pre-dive sequence, including a bubble check where I identified a small leak coming from the inflator elbow to her wing. I couldn't fix it completely but we figured it wouldn't affect things much when she got horizontal in the water so after all was done we descended, got into formation and headed off.
What followed next was some of the most relaxing, easiest 80 minutes of dive time I've ever had. The water was the perfect temperature for wetsuit diving, the viz was great, and the surge was calm. It was the kind of conditions everyone visits Hawaii dreaming of and we had them today.
Taking a left (southwest for those of you playing the Google Earth game
) out of the cove, we followed the wall around towards Three Tables. Going nice and slow we made it all the way around the wall (a first for me, normally my gas limits me for that), hit turn pressure, then came back via a higher, more direct route where we stopped to poke our lights into some small overheads and make some good critter finds. When we got back to the entrance we still had a bit less than half of our gas remaining and decided to explore out from shore a bit. We were both enjoying the amazing underwater topography that this particular site offers, the abundance of marine life, and we were into a groove working together. Coming back from our secondary exploration we got distracted by a diver looking up to no good (solo, with a crowbar and a net bag
) so I directed Natasha to follow me around as we stalked him to try and get an idea of what he was up to. Eventually Mr. Crowbar got wise and spotted us so instead of risking a confrontation ala Sea Hunt I decided that discretion was the better part of valor and turned us towards the exit. This was where our little spy mission cost us: I was LOST! Rather than waste gas and risk a long surface swim in open water we made an ascent to the surface for me to get my bearings (and apologize). Natasha understood everything completely and once I was set we dropped down shallow and headed in. Coming out of the water we swapped tanks and debriefed the dive. I also took a shot at fixing the inflator leak she was having and succeeded
.For the second dive we took a right out of the cove in search of the collapsed lava tubes. Flying between all the big boulders underwater, through the swim throughs, and under the ledges allowed us to expose the wonders of this site. We made more good critter finds, a golf ball, and a pretty shell that didn't have anybody home so I bestowed it upon Natasha for her to keep as a reminder of her dives. I got stuck with the golf ball
. Going through some of the longer swim-throughs, it was so nice to have a buddy that understood the concept of team positioning and light discipline. Watching her light beam made tracking her status pretty easy, and I wasn't being constantly on guard due to "twitchy" light movements like lots of other divers I know do. We turned that dive on cold and headed back in, and I let Natasha take the lead while I just tracked our direction and offered the occasional input if we were getting a little off track. Coming in this time we had the gas to play around a bit so we explored the shallows and watched the snorkelers cruising around before we made our exit. Debriefing that dive was simple and we packed up our gear for a quick trip to my house to off-load my gear before we returned to the class to re-unite with "The Boys" who would be finishing up the class.
Our timing was impeccable, the boat had came in about 5 minutes before we arrived to the dive shop and we got to hear all the stories and share our own. Evgeny was grateful to me for taking Natasha out and showing her a fun time and after the video review we all settled on a local restaraunt for the post-class dinner. The conversation was all over the place, the company was outstanding, and the food was damned good. Evgeny and Natasha got lots of advice from the locals about diving and general fun-having, since they were staying a few extra days to enjoy paradise. We all congratulated Mike on getting his pass, and made Evgeny feel better since he still had some work to do before he could get his pass.
After dinner we all headed our separate ways, myself to my long cold drive home in my Jeep with no doors as I had forgot my jacket at the house
and as soon as I got home I passed out from the exhaustion/relaxation of a day well spent in good company. In the end, I don't know how two divers of competely different backgrounds could work so well together without having a system so standardized. All we had to settle was little details, the big things are already figured out for us and with the training's focus on teamwork there was little worry about what kind of diver we were both getting into the water with. For what could otherwise be a scary experience, it was some of the most relaxing diving I've ever had in my life.
Peace,
Greg
