JanR
Contributor
All,
Thanks to everyone (including Rich who's thread in the Hawaii forum I jumped onto) for the advice.
My wife and I are now AOW certified!!! Which really means we can now kill ourselves down to 130 feet instead of 60 feet.
Overall we were pleased with Island Divers with whom we did our course and dives. We had some equipment issues which disappointed us, but outside of those, the dives and instruction were handled very professionally but in a relaxed manner. I'd dive with them again any time...I wouldn't rent equipment from them however. No problem, I now have funding authorization from the Boss to make this a moot point.
We dove six dives over three days. On Thursday, we dove two shallow sites off of Hawaii Kai, I don't have my log book available, but I believe they were called something like Hawaii Koko Crater and Hawaii Luna Crater. Tracey and I learned quickly that we had been spoiled with conditions in Tahiti. Both of our computers read 73 degree water (our instructor's read 74), but with the advise from this board, our 5mm suits kept us warm. The surge surprised us and Tracey found out that it is possible to get seasick below the suface. However, by the second dive we adjusted well and had a good dive.
On Friday, we did our deep dive on the YO-237. Now I get why people like diving wrecks. Very cool (as in good) dive. Water temps were about 74 degrees and had a decent current. The second dive that morning was at Turtle Canyon.
On Saturday, we dove the Sea Tiger and then the Kewalo Pipe. The visibility at the Pipe surprised us, probably only about 30-40 feet. But, we found an octopus, some eels and some other very cool things which made our dive fun.
What did I learn?
1. I still have a bunch to learn which only diving more will be able to correct.
2. Don't try to fight a surge...simply let it gently rock you. If the surge is moving the fish 5 feet left and right, there's no problem letting it rock you 5 feet left and right (unless you're against coral, which you simply go up a few feet to protect it.)
3. Better to be too warm on the surface than too cold at depth. Saw several divers shivering on the surface trying to warm up for the next dive as Tracey and I were stripping the tops of our wetsuits off to cool off.
4. Need to work on maintaining proper buoyancy on our ascents. I'm pretty proud of my buoyancy control at depth, easily maintaining a constant depth and position over a wreck or coral. However, I found ascending from about 40 feet to 15 feet was very difficult to do slowly. I think that the decompression of our suits made us more buoyant as we came up which surprised us. (Forgetting that the rear purge valve on my BCD was broken, didn't help. But still need more experience in realizing the issue and rotating my body more vertically to be able to use the inflator purge valve sooner.) Equipment wasn't the real culprit of one hairy ascent, lack of experience was.
5. When ascending when in a current, I need to do one of two things: a) ascend on a line. b) if not on a line, make sure that if I'm kicking against the current to maintain position, to make sure that I'm not kicking myself upwards which would only exasperate the problems in #4. Option A seems to be a much safer way for us for a while until we get more experience.
6. A compass can come in handy, not just for the navigation course. Won't relate the story...enough said that I was dumb and won't make the same mistake again.
7. Despite the crew setting up your equipment, always always recheck it yourself. Fortunately, this wasn't discovered from a mistake, but from actually doing something right.
8. I now understand the benifits of Nitrox as we found that we actually had to ascend on our second dive Saturday because of NDL as opposed to air. There is a NITROX course in my future for sure.
A lot of lessons learned, but I'm glad that none are too difficult to correct with more dives. As I tell my wife, the piece of equipment I want most is a new log book.
Thanks to all for the advice.
Jan
Thanks to everyone (including Rich who's thread in the Hawaii forum I jumped onto) for the advice.
My wife and I are now AOW certified!!! Which really means we can now kill ourselves down to 130 feet instead of 60 feet.
Overall we were pleased with Island Divers with whom we did our course and dives. We had some equipment issues which disappointed us, but outside of those, the dives and instruction were handled very professionally but in a relaxed manner. I'd dive with them again any time...I wouldn't rent equipment from them however. No problem, I now have funding authorization from the Boss to make this a moot point.
We dove six dives over three days. On Thursday, we dove two shallow sites off of Hawaii Kai, I don't have my log book available, but I believe they were called something like Hawaii Koko Crater and Hawaii Luna Crater. Tracey and I learned quickly that we had been spoiled with conditions in Tahiti. Both of our computers read 73 degree water (our instructor's read 74), but with the advise from this board, our 5mm suits kept us warm. The surge surprised us and Tracey found out that it is possible to get seasick below the suface. However, by the second dive we adjusted well and had a good dive.
On Friday, we did our deep dive on the YO-237. Now I get why people like diving wrecks. Very cool (as in good) dive. Water temps were about 74 degrees and had a decent current. The second dive that morning was at Turtle Canyon.
On Saturday, we dove the Sea Tiger and then the Kewalo Pipe. The visibility at the Pipe surprised us, probably only about 30-40 feet. But, we found an octopus, some eels and some other very cool things which made our dive fun.
What did I learn?
1. I still have a bunch to learn which only diving more will be able to correct.
2. Don't try to fight a surge...simply let it gently rock you. If the surge is moving the fish 5 feet left and right, there's no problem letting it rock you 5 feet left and right (unless you're against coral, which you simply go up a few feet to protect it.)
3. Better to be too warm on the surface than too cold at depth. Saw several divers shivering on the surface trying to warm up for the next dive as Tracey and I were stripping the tops of our wetsuits off to cool off.
4. Need to work on maintaining proper buoyancy on our ascents. I'm pretty proud of my buoyancy control at depth, easily maintaining a constant depth and position over a wreck or coral. However, I found ascending from about 40 feet to 15 feet was very difficult to do slowly. I think that the decompression of our suits made us more buoyant as we came up which surprised us. (Forgetting that the rear purge valve on my BCD was broken, didn't help. But still need more experience in realizing the issue and rotating my body more vertically to be able to use the inflator purge valve sooner.) Equipment wasn't the real culprit of one hairy ascent, lack of experience was.
5. When ascending when in a current, I need to do one of two things: a) ascend on a line. b) if not on a line, make sure that if I'm kicking against the current to maintain position, to make sure that I'm not kicking myself upwards which would only exasperate the problems in #4. Option A seems to be a much safer way for us for a while until we get more experience.
6. A compass can come in handy, not just for the navigation course. Won't relate the story...enough said that I was dumb and won't make the same mistake again.
7. Despite the crew setting up your equipment, always always recheck it yourself. Fortunately, this wasn't discovered from a mistake, but from actually doing something right.
8. I now understand the benifits of Nitrox as we found that we actually had to ascend on our second dive Saturday because of NDL as opposed to air. There is a NITROX course in my future for sure.
A lot of lessons learned, but I'm glad that none are too difficult to correct with more dives. As I tell my wife, the piece of equipment I want most is a new log book.
Thanks to all for the advice.
Jan
