currier
Contributor
Technical diving captured my imagination not long after completing OW about 3 1/2 years ago. I wanted to enhance my foundational knowledge, improve my fundamental skills, dive deeper, dive longer, explore wrecks, and most importantly - live to tell about it! Scubaboard has been a valuable resource throughout my journey to date, but I must wholeheartedly thank Evolution on Malapascua (and my instructor David specifically) for showing me the way firsthand.
Some general info - Malapascua is a quiet little island (2.5km x 1km) situated closely to the northeastern tip of Cebu in the Visayan Sea. Its greatest allure for divers are the magnificent thresher sharks that frequent the cleaning stations of Monad Shoal every morning. Other great sites I visited within NDL were Gato Island (nice little tunnel, some whitetips, lots of soft coral), Deep Slope (nudis, frogfish, mantis shrimp), Manta Point (saw a Manta!), Dona Marilyn (AMAZING wreck at 30m, worth SO MUCH exploration), Evolution House Reef (harlequin shrimp), and Lapu Lapu (coleman shrimp) among others.
After arriving from Taipei, and getting settled in my room next door at Aabana, I spent a day or so diving single tanks at some sites in my jacket BCD. The boat crew at Evolution are extraordinarily helpful hauling and setting up gear, assisting customers boarding/alighting, and ensuring that everyone is comfortable and have what they need to do the dive. The guides are all locals trained well beyond what I've seen anywhere else. Seriously, these guys have diving skills, guiding skills, and spotting skills that amazed me. Great job, and thanks guys!
I then donned my BP/W to get a bit of practice before AN/DP started with David in a few days. I couldn't believe my luck when a fine upstanding diver having recently completed DMT decided to join me in the course! What do they say? "Misery loves company?" just kidding .... IMHO Joe was the final element yet needed for training. In a course such as this, one learns from their mistakes. How many times did we say ?? "We'll never do that again!!"
In-water training was more comprehensive than I had imagined. We did countless valve drills, sharing drills, and gas switches. We lost masks, utilized back-ups, lost back-ups, ran out of back gas, ran out of deco gas, and feathered deco tanks. We practiced frogkicks, modified frog, mod flutter, and back kicks. We shot SMBs, utilized SMBs for buoyancy, hit stops, held stops, swam w/o mask, swam w/o reg, drop/retrieve deco bottle, tired diver swim, etc., etc. We thoroughly planned our dives, watched the clock, completed obligations, and returned in a condition just as well as when we had left. Knowledgeable and thinking divers!
Did we struggle? Oh yes we did. The course wouldn't have been worth it had we not. I respect our instructor for knowing how to set the pace, and even more for demanding just that much more than we were capable of giving. How else were we to evolve into better divers? Situational awareness is so important at this stage in the game, and it was a necessary and humbling lesson to learn that huge improvements were needed before actually going deep.
We completed two dives to 45m using 50% to accelerate decompression. During these dives we practiced a great many more skills, and in the end we satisfied our instructor's expectations. David having signed off on our course, we were now capable of planning and conducting dives of our own. Thankfully we needn't do that just yet, and over the next few days we completed similar dives (The Trench, Monad, Mogami Maru) with him and others before venturing out on our own one glorious morning.
Mogami Maru is a wreck that I've wanted to dive for longer than a year now. The outstanding reputation that Evolution has earned for itself is what drew me to Malapascua initially, but the anticipated dive down to the deck of Mogami held my interest for sooooo long. I must send out a personal thanks to Matt and David for enabling us to do the dive. I'm convinced they took a loss due to numbers and boat scheduling - goes to show you the extent to which they will go in order to make their patrons happy!
Thanks to the training and support staff at Evolution for helping me to achieve this goal. Thanks also to the Craic dealers for their hospitality and cheer throughout my entire stay. I was very impressed with the food that came out of that kitchen on a daily basis, so much so that I ate practically every meal there. The entire concept at Evolution is a winning one, and discerning divers are noticing.
Best of luck for the near future and beyond guys! Thanks once again for such a great two weeks! I'll be back once it's time for more!
Some general info - Malapascua is a quiet little island (2.5km x 1km) situated closely to the northeastern tip of Cebu in the Visayan Sea. Its greatest allure for divers are the magnificent thresher sharks that frequent the cleaning stations of Monad Shoal every morning. Other great sites I visited within NDL were Gato Island (nice little tunnel, some whitetips, lots of soft coral), Deep Slope (nudis, frogfish, mantis shrimp), Manta Point (saw a Manta!), Dona Marilyn (AMAZING wreck at 30m, worth SO MUCH exploration), Evolution House Reef (harlequin shrimp), and Lapu Lapu (coleman shrimp) among others.
After arriving from Taipei, and getting settled in my room next door at Aabana, I spent a day or so diving single tanks at some sites in my jacket BCD. The boat crew at Evolution are extraordinarily helpful hauling and setting up gear, assisting customers boarding/alighting, and ensuring that everyone is comfortable and have what they need to do the dive. The guides are all locals trained well beyond what I've seen anywhere else. Seriously, these guys have diving skills, guiding skills, and spotting skills that amazed me. Great job, and thanks guys!
I then donned my BP/W to get a bit of practice before AN/DP started with David in a few days. I couldn't believe my luck when a fine upstanding diver having recently completed DMT decided to join me in the course! What do they say? "Misery loves company?" just kidding .... IMHO Joe was the final element yet needed for training. In a course such as this, one learns from their mistakes. How many times did we say ?? "We'll never do that again!!"
In-water training was more comprehensive than I had imagined. We did countless valve drills, sharing drills, and gas switches. We lost masks, utilized back-ups, lost back-ups, ran out of back gas, ran out of deco gas, and feathered deco tanks. We practiced frogkicks, modified frog, mod flutter, and back kicks. We shot SMBs, utilized SMBs for buoyancy, hit stops, held stops, swam w/o mask, swam w/o reg, drop/retrieve deco bottle, tired diver swim, etc., etc. We thoroughly planned our dives, watched the clock, completed obligations, and returned in a condition just as well as when we had left. Knowledgeable and thinking divers!
Did we struggle? Oh yes we did. The course wouldn't have been worth it had we not. I respect our instructor for knowing how to set the pace, and even more for demanding just that much more than we were capable of giving. How else were we to evolve into better divers? Situational awareness is so important at this stage in the game, and it was a necessary and humbling lesson to learn that huge improvements were needed before actually going deep.
We completed two dives to 45m using 50% to accelerate decompression. During these dives we practiced a great many more skills, and in the end we satisfied our instructor's expectations. David having signed off on our course, we were now capable of planning and conducting dives of our own. Thankfully we needn't do that just yet, and over the next few days we completed similar dives (The Trench, Monad, Mogami Maru) with him and others before venturing out on our own one glorious morning.
Mogami Maru is a wreck that I've wanted to dive for longer than a year now. The outstanding reputation that Evolution has earned for itself is what drew me to Malapascua initially, but the anticipated dive down to the deck of Mogami held my interest for sooooo long. I must send out a personal thanks to Matt and David for enabling us to do the dive. I'm convinced they took a loss due to numbers and boat scheduling - goes to show you the extent to which they will go in order to make their patrons happy!
Thanks to the training and support staff at Evolution for helping me to achieve this goal. Thanks also to the Craic dealers for their hospitality and cheer throughout my entire stay. I was very impressed with the food that came out of that kitchen on a daily basis, so much so that I ate practically every meal there. The entire concept at Evolution is a winning one, and discerning divers are noticing.
Best of luck for the near future and beyond guys! Thanks once again for such a great two weeks! I'll be back once it's time for more!
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