nicodaemos
Guest
Break out the bubbly ... I've just been certified. :grad:
I went down to Panama City to do the checkout dives .... Atlanta does not have much to offer except Lake Latrine. On Saturday, we dove off of the beach at St Andrews Park and focused on skills and getting used to the water. The visibility was very poor -- around 5-7 feet -- and there wasn't a lot to see even when you could. Additionally my mask kept fogging up. Depth wise we only descended to around 24 feet. Not that I could tell ... my rental regulator did not have a functional depth gauge on it. All the other equipment worked fine otherwise. Saturday night I started to wonder why people really liked this sport.
But things improved dramatically on Sunday. We dove the Black Bart, a sunken freighter, getting down to 60 feet. This day I had a working depth gauge, but my primary regulator would make this strange sound as I exhaled. I found breathing in this regulator to be hard and made a mental note to make ease of breathing the primary criteria for selecting a reg for purchase. Visibility was up to 25 feet and as an added bonus, my mask did not fog up all. The bottom time was very limited (5 minutes) as we descended very slowly to help some of the classmates deal with equalization. So all I got to see of the wreck was the 200-300 square feet of deck where our line was attached. Even so, it was very cool! There were tons of fish and marine life that I cannot even begin to identify. A plus for the future is that I always had plenty of air left over at the end of the dives. Hopefully this means that in the future, I'll have plenty of time to explore.
The second dive on Sunday was to a sunken bridge -- span 14. This one was to about 50 feet and also had a lot of marine life and fish. We saw a barracuda, huge schools of small fish (no idea what type) and a crab that looked like a daddy long legs spider. I think they said it was an air crab(?). There was a slight current and it was a lot of fun swimming around the metal superstructure.
Anyway, after the dives on Sunday I now am hooked on diving. I have even more respect for the experienced divers on this board. This is still a scary sport to me .... going down to 60 feet I could no longer see the boat .... or the surface. But I've managed to keep the fear at bay while I continually get more comfortable in this alien environment. The marine life is spectacular!
Hope to see you out there diving.
-Nico
I went down to Panama City to do the checkout dives .... Atlanta does not have much to offer except Lake Latrine. On Saturday, we dove off of the beach at St Andrews Park and focused on skills and getting used to the water. The visibility was very poor -- around 5-7 feet -- and there wasn't a lot to see even when you could. Additionally my mask kept fogging up. Depth wise we only descended to around 24 feet. Not that I could tell ... my rental regulator did not have a functional depth gauge on it. All the other equipment worked fine otherwise. Saturday night I started to wonder why people really liked this sport.
But things improved dramatically on Sunday. We dove the Black Bart, a sunken freighter, getting down to 60 feet. This day I had a working depth gauge, but my primary regulator would make this strange sound as I exhaled. I found breathing in this regulator to be hard and made a mental note to make ease of breathing the primary criteria for selecting a reg for purchase. Visibility was up to 25 feet and as an added bonus, my mask did not fog up all. The bottom time was very limited (5 minutes) as we descended very slowly to help some of the classmates deal with equalization. So all I got to see of the wreck was the 200-300 square feet of deck where our line was attached. Even so, it was very cool! There were tons of fish and marine life that I cannot even begin to identify. A plus for the future is that I always had plenty of air left over at the end of the dives. Hopefully this means that in the future, I'll have plenty of time to explore.
The second dive on Sunday was to a sunken bridge -- span 14. This one was to about 50 feet and also had a lot of marine life and fish. We saw a barracuda, huge schools of small fish (no idea what type) and a crab that looked like a daddy long legs spider. I think they said it was an air crab(?). There was a slight current and it was a lot of fun swimming around the metal superstructure.
Anyway, after the dives on Sunday I now am hooked on diving. I have even more respect for the experienced divers on this board. This is still a scary sport to me .... going down to 60 feet I could no longer see the boat .... or the surface. But I've managed to keep the fear at bay while I continually get more comfortable in this alien environment. The marine life is spectacular!
Hope to see you out there diving.
-Nico