mobster75
Contributor
This past Saturday morning I had my first non-pro supervised dive and I figured I'd mention it and my reflections on it. Long story short for those with ADHD: I had a great time!
My LDS offers free guided shore dives every Sat. during the warmer season and I showed up this past Sat morning at 9am for the usual. I ran into 4 other divers waiting for the same deal, but came 9:30am, the DM never showed up. Heh. So we decided to just go dive since we figured we waited long enough in case he had an issue. Luckily one person happened to have a dive flag/float in their car.
I was really surprised to see how easily the dive came together as far as one person offering to tow the flag and another offering to lead as he had some more experience diving the site and we agreed on buddy protocol and off we went. While suiting up for the first dive, one of the guys realized the hose o-ring on his new SPG was bad (or non-existent) and was pretty bummed out since the nearest dive shop was 10-15 mins away and I mentioned to him that I keep a spare set of regs/spg in my car in case my newer setup has an issue and I offered it to him (or just the SPG is he wanted to dismount it). Being a newer diver, it felt great to be able to help another diver who wouldve otherwise lost their first dive if I didn't have my extra gear.
Anyways, first dive we hugged the shore line more or less following the contour at around 20 ft just enjoying the kelp, crabs, lobster pots, lobsters, and fish. Viz was about 15-20ft and temp was about 54f avg at depth. To me, thats great dive conditions. Heh. It was really nice to see everyone looking out for everyone else and every now and then the lead would notice a few people were straggling and he'd signal us to wait until we could see their bubbles and then their heads. I spent the majority of my time trying to optimize my buoyancy and I was surprised that after feeling a bit bouncy 10 days before on my first night dive, I had no problem finding my sweet spot for buoyancy and kept my hands folded underneath me most of the time. My basic measure for buoyancy was using a visual reference while inhaling fully and seeing if I would rise slowly then exhaling and seeing if I descended accordingly. I can't wait to take the PPB specialty course and work on it more! I find myself thinking about the weight impact on changing gear and enviorment ("if I dive this local fresh pond, I think I'm gonna need to drop x lbs of weight and if I don't take some extra gear, I can drop a few more lbs"). Right now I feel comfy with 33 lbs in full 7mm kit (that includes a 3mm hooded vest under the 7mm for warmth) in salt water. Obviously I'm a big guy.. 6' and 250 lbs, but with my trip to the USVI in 4 weeks, I'm thinking about how much I'll drop when I only have my 3mm shorty on.....
I actually started seeing the random lobsters here and there unlike my previous dives where I was focused on some skills or tasks and never noticed them. I love how comfortable I felt in the cold water, getting even more so each dive... To the people who hate the cold saltwater, I like to dunk my whole head unhooded and unmasked in the 55f water before starting a dive just to "Say Hello to the water" as my OW instructor described it.
We learned that a small current going out can make the trip back inbound a lot farther and we surfaced when we thought we were only 50 ft from the entry point, to find we were 150 ft off.
We had about a 90 min surface interval (not that it mattered for off gassing) then we decided as a group that this time we'd like to go straight out and get as deep as possible (in mid-tide, so that wasnt going to be much). We found that about 1/4 mile out, the bottom was a lot more sandy than kelpy the depth was hard to find with a max of 27 ft that we were able to find. Obviously the water was colder heading straight out, but I got a huge kick out of the fact that the guy who called the turnaround for the dive was one of the drysuit guys because he was cold.. Heh. Being the most inexperienced and sizable, I figured I'd always be the one to flip the dive for air consumption, so this was a fun moment for me to relish. We saw more lobsters, more big crabs, and a few sea ravens that at the time I got worried about because I thought "Umm.. OK... this fish isnt running away the closer I drift... I probably dont want to get too close to a fish that doesnt flee at 5ft proxmity..." On the way back, I kept checking for my buddies (I was in a 3-person group due to our odd number) and half way I noticed I couldnt see anyone at all... Still felt comfortable but I felt the OW training kicking in "Ok, looking around for them for a minute or so then surface", so after 2 mins I had no luck and surfaced. I saw the dive float about 25 feet away and surface swam towards it figuring I would descend the line to find my group except then my other 2 buddies surfaced 2 mins apart because they also were following protocol. The 3 of us were looking around and couldnt find the other 2 guys in our group surfacing... We started to worry.. Then after 5 mins we noticed they surfaced a good 100 ft away (they continued their dive towards shore w/o the rest of us) and while a bit annoyed, we were glad they were fine so we descended and swam the rest of the way in together. What annoyed me most is even when they surfaced they didn't seem to care about our group nor did they offer the hand-on-head "OK" surface signal to ask us or let us know about their situation..
It was a hugely fun day and any day I can dive beats any above water day I have, but just wanted to share about my first impromptu dive day as the usual saftey net of having a "pro" (DM+) around was gone.
Lessons learned: I found that UW Nav was an important factor in my comfort and that taking surface bearings made it simple to find my way underwater. When I did lose sight of my buddies in short viz, I continued for a minute in the direction of shore (following a reverse bearing on our outbound heading) and w/o the compass, everything looked identical...... At times the heading on the compass didn't "feel" right but of course it was, so realized the compass is most likely to be correct over my instinct underwater...
My LDS offers free guided shore dives every Sat. during the warmer season and I showed up this past Sat morning at 9am for the usual. I ran into 4 other divers waiting for the same deal, but came 9:30am, the DM never showed up. Heh. So we decided to just go dive since we figured we waited long enough in case he had an issue. Luckily one person happened to have a dive flag/float in their car.
I was really surprised to see how easily the dive came together as far as one person offering to tow the flag and another offering to lead as he had some more experience diving the site and we agreed on buddy protocol and off we went. While suiting up for the first dive, one of the guys realized the hose o-ring on his new SPG was bad (or non-existent) and was pretty bummed out since the nearest dive shop was 10-15 mins away and I mentioned to him that I keep a spare set of regs/spg in my car in case my newer setup has an issue and I offered it to him (or just the SPG is he wanted to dismount it). Being a newer diver, it felt great to be able to help another diver who wouldve otherwise lost their first dive if I didn't have my extra gear.
Anyways, first dive we hugged the shore line more or less following the contour at around 20 ft just enjoying the kelp, crabs, lobster pots, lobsters, and fish. Viz was about 15-20ft and temp was about 54f avg at depth. To me, thats great dive conditions. Heh. It was really nice to see everyone looking out for everyone else and every now and then the lead would notice a few people were straggling and he'd signal us to wait until we could see their bubbles and then their heads. I spent the majority of my time trying to optimize my buoyancy and I was surprised that after feeling a bit bouncy 10 days before on my first night dive, I had no problem finding my sweet spot for buoyancy and kept my hands folded underneath me most of the time. My basic measure for buoyancy was using a visual reference while inhaling fully and seeing if I would rise slowly then exhaling and seeing if I descended accordingly. I can't wait to take the PPB specialty course and work on it more! I find myself thinking about the weight impact on changing gear and enviorment ("if I dive this local fresh pond, I think I'm gonna need to drop x lbs of weight and if I don't take some extra gear, I can drop a few more lbs"). Right now I feel comfy with 33 lbs in full 7mm kit (that includes a 3mm hooded vest under the 7mm for warmth) in salt water. Obviously I'm a big guy.. 6' and 250 lbs, but with my trip to the USVI in 4 weeks, I'm thinking about how much I'll drop when I only have my 3mm shorty on.....
I actually started seeing the random lobsters here and there unlike my previous dives where I was focused on some skills or tasks and never noticed them. I love how comfortable I felt in the cold water, getting even more so each dive... To the people who hate the cold saltwater, I like to dunk my whole head unhooded and unmasked in the 55f water before starting a dive just to "Say Hello to the water" as my OW instructor described it.
We learned that a small current going out can make the trip back inbound a lot farther and we surfaced when we thought we were only 50 ft from the entry point, to find we were 150 ft off.
We had about a 90 min surface interval (not that it mattered for off gassing) then we decided as a group that this time we'd like to go straight out and get as deep as possible (in mid-tide, so that wasnt going to be much). We found that about 1/4 mile out, the bottom was a lot more sandy than kelpy the depth was hard to find with a max of 27 ft that we were able to find. Obviously the water was colder heading straight out, but I got a huge kick out of the fact that the guy who called the turnaround for the dive was one of the drysuit guys because he was cold.. Heh. Being the most inexperienced and sizable, I figured I'd always be the one to flip the dive for air consumption, so this was a fun moment for me to relish. We saw more lobsters, more big crabs, and a few sea ravens that at the time I got worried about because I thought "Umm.. OK... this fish isnt running away the closer I drift... I probably dont want to get too close to a fish that doesnt flee at 5ft proxmity..." On the way back, I kept checking for my buddies (I was in a 3-person group due to our odd number) and half way I noticed I couldnt see anyone at all... Still felt comfortable but I felt the OW training kicking in "Ok, looking around for them for a minute or so then surface", so after 2 mins I had no luck and surfaced. I saw the dive float about 25 feet away and surface swam towards it figuring I would descend the line to find my group except then my other 2 buddies surfaced 2 mins apart because they also were following protocol. The 3 of us were looking around and couldnt find the other 2 guys in our group surfacing... We started to worry.. Then after 5 mins we noticed they surfaced a good 100 ft away (they continued their dive towards shore w/o the rest of us) and while a bit annoyed, we were glad they were fine so we descended and swam the rest of the way in together. What annoyed me most is even when they surfaced they didn't seem to care about our group nor did they offer the hand-on-head "OK" surface signal to ask us or let us know about their situation..
It was a hugely fun day and any day I can dive beats any above water day I have, but just wanted to share about my first impromptu dive day as the usual saftey net of having a "pro" (DM+) around was gone.
Lessons learned: I found that UW Nav was an important factor in my comfort and that taking surface bearings made it simple to find my way underwater. When I did lose sight of my buddies in short viz, I continued for a minute in the direction of shore (following a reverse bearing on our outbound heading) and w/o the compass, everything looked identical...... At times the heading on the compass didn't "feel" right but of course it was, so realized the compass is most likely to be correct over my instinct underwater...
