Newbie issues. What is your dive problems stats?

[Rapid Star]

How the heck do you keep a pumpkin down? Extra lead for you or does the pumpkin carry its own

Did this last Saturday and to answer your question I opened the top of the pumpkin and added a 5 lb weight inside the pumpkin to keep it down. Didn't need any extra lead for me.

 

[Rapid Star]

You can't cut pumpkin until you're underwater, but need to make the first cut in shallow water to prevent it exploding from the pressure underwater.

If you don't make your first cuts on land you will need some pretty heavy external weights to get it to submerge! Being hollow inside pumpkins are very buoyant! Just so you know, there will be a lot of Bluegill around you!

 

[Neilwood]

@Marie13 @Dizzi Lizzi - a good tip I was given by my instructor for descending issues was to breath in, fin kick up and just when you reach the highest point, start exhaling while emptying your BCD. You will then have the momentum to get below the surface which should be enough to carry you down past the most buoyant bit. At about 3-5m, switch to horizontal and start swimming down.

Another that works particularly if you are stressed is to buddy someone you trust completely and descend as a pair eye to eye. We had that issue on a few dives last week and the added security of the other person overcame the anxiety.

 

[Pinecube]

How the heck do you keep a pumpkin down? Extra lead for you or does the pumpkin carry its own

My wife and I did this a couple years ago and we wern't allowed to cut it until it was at the bottom. We put it in a mesh bag and clipped some weight to the bag. With the mesh bag you can at least cut the top open to let the air out. As an FYI don't use a BIG pumpkin. We used a mid-size to large-ish pumpkin and needed 14lbs to sink it!

- a good tip I was given by my instructor for descending issues was to breath in, fin kick up and just when you reach the highest point, start exhaling while emptying your BCD. You will then have the momentum to get below the surface

I learned the opposite way if that makes any sense. Since it takes time for your BCD to deflate; if you exhale when you start deflating, you'll end up inhaling again by the time you start sinking. Instead what I was taught is to inhale as you deflate your BCD and by the time you're ready to exhale your BCD should be empty or near empty and when you do exhale you'll start sinking. That said, the next time I'm out I kind of want to try your 'running start' descent and see what that's like.

 

[BreeAbyss]

I do a pumpkin dive almost every year, so fun! Take a mesh bag like someone suggested, one you don't mind trashing and put some weight in the bag too. Cut the top off the pumpkin through the bag and then you can throw the weights into the pumpkin. And yeah don't do a huge pumpkin they are so hard to handle underwater because even once you fill it with water it still floats! Which is why you should put weights inside.
It won't explode (or implode), we don't normally carve until we get to the bottom, pumpkins are pretty robust!
It is a lot of fun, one of my favourite fall diving activities, I'm doing one this Sunday!!! I hope you enjoy it as much as I do

 

[Dizzi Lizzi]

@Pinecube and @Neilwood I will try both! Both somehow make sense.

Good grief!! I guess thinking about it weighting your self wont help the pumpkin stay down

 

[Marie13]

Would a plastic bag with holes punched in it work? Don't have a mesh bag.

 

[erjohnsen]

Edit: Greetings from A New Guy on the forum.

I did my OW in the Mediterranian sea, and the following 12 dives were all warm water vacations dives with great visibility. This summer I decided to get dry suit sertified back home in Norway before doing the AOW. Being used to clear water and great visibility, I lost my buddy and the instructor 5 minutes into the dive, while fiddling with the buoyancy in the dry suit. After a one minute+ look around, I surfaced and was greeted by a grinning instructor.

Neddless to say, I stuck really close to buddy and instructor on the follwing dives.

Lessons learned; don't get lost in your own head space. Pay attention

Also, I prefer my instabuddies to be female. In my limited experience, they are the better instabuddy-type. Not a sexist remark, they just seem to take the buddy-system more serious.

 

[TMHeimer]

I do a pumpkin dive almost every year, so fun! Take a mesh bag like someone suggested, one you don't mind trashing and put some weight in the bag too. Cut the top off the pumpkin through the bag and then you can throw the weights into the pumpkin. And yeah don't do a huge pumpkin they are so hard to handle underwater because even once you fill it with water it still floats! Which is why you should put weights inside.
It won't explode (or implode), we don't normally carve until we get to the bottom, pumpkins are pretty robust!
It is a lot of fun, one of my favourite fall diving activities, I'm doing one this Sunday!!! I hope you enjoy it as much as I do

I did a couple of "Pumpkin" dives years ago, but we wrote names on them, no carving. The idea was to see how many you could find and write them on a slate. The one with the most names gets top prize. The second time I did it I helped in hiding the pumpkins before the dive. I knew where some of them were and I still couldn't F%^+ing win.....

 

[Bruno Genovese]

So now, the questions. How often did you have issues in the beginning of your diving career? How many of them were serious? How did you solve these? Were you panicking often in the beginning?

Based on your description I am going to guess that you certified with a very bad outfit that is more interested in pumping out certificates and making money than in turning you into a good diver.

But it can be remedied.

First, study those books or e-learning material they gave you, search on youtube for the course videos and watch them again (a couple times if you must). Even watch some of the afditional videos available (the divemaster "20 skills") videos are among the best as they show the skills you learned certifying with very good detail. The idea is to have the theory down pat.

Next, choose your dive operators carefully. Tripadvisor is useful for this: look only at those with 4-5 stars and read all the reviews for your potential operators, pay special attention to negative reviews... to detect potential red flags.


Finally, practice what you learned when you gondiving.