Hi folks,
I've been lurking here for a little while and you seem like a helpful group, so I figured I'd jump in with a ridiculously long and probably boring essay about My First Recreational Dive and get some feedback
My dive buddy/husband and I were picked up and transported to the dive shop, which had a record that we were scheduled to dive, but had no information about the fact that we wanted to do a PADI adventure dive certification at the same time. I'd made those arrangements in advance via email with someone who, as far as I can tell, works for the main office and not for the particular location we were diving from. I'm American and this was in a country where English is the third language. They had no materials in English at the shop, so they photocopied some while we were out on our dive.
Stuff happens, I'm a newb to.
Their web site said that they included dive computers in the rental, but they weren't originally going to give us any. The DM basically said, "Just stay with me". One of the other divers (there were 5 of us, total, plus the DM) heard me saying that I wasn't comfortable with that and politely but forcefully semi-demanded computers for all of us. They handed them out - half of them were set to imperial and the others were metric (including mine). I can do enough conversion in my head to get by, so I was semi-ok with it, but if I hadn't felt so rushed I would have asked for help setting it to imperial so that I wouldn't have been trying to math and breathe and manage my buoyancy and not fall behind and not kick people on my first ocean dive.
Ok, we're talking about gear that our lives depend on. I'll use rental gear in a pool, but I'll only rent tanks when traveling. My gear is 100%, and I'm used to it. I'll never use rental junk again.
The pre-dive overview was a quick review of what we were likely to see, an explanation of how deep we would likely go, and since it was a drift dive, the main instruction was "stay with me", which seemed fine.
From there, everything seemed super-rushed. Nobody did buddy checks and by the time we got in the water, the DM had already started descending - I guess I was expecting people to do weight checks and to have to signal things like "ok to descend", but everybody just kinda dropped in and started swimming.
We do our buddy checks and gear setup far in advance of when we think the DM is going to have us dive. Usually it takes them a few minutes to get the boat in place. When it's go time, we suit up and go. Dropping straight down and swim in shallow bottoms.
The DM waited for us all close to the bottom and we all headed out in a clump - lots of traffic/congestion from everyone trying to stay close to the DM. Every time I'd start to feel comfortable, I'd kick someone, or they'd kick me, and I'd get concerned and start trying to get up or out of the way thinking I'd somehow lost control of my buoyancy and was kicking coral, but no, it was always a human.
I'm perfectly comfortable kicking people in the face. If they want to continue swimming into my fins, that's fine with me. I might kick a little harder, they seem to like it.
(This was better on the second dive of the day only because I decided the only way to get through it was to stay at the back of the group, far from the DM, which not only meant that I felt less safe but that everyone had scattered the wildlife away by the time I cruised past.) And we just kept moving - there was barely any time where I felt like I was able to actually relax and look around me; I spent almost the whole time on both dives just trying not to fall behind. What I did see was phenomenal and tantalizing and made me wish I was out there moving very slowly or not at all. I just wanted to watch everything move around me. Instead, I mostly watched a lot of fins and bubbles.
I try to spread out, but keep the DM in view. I usually find wildlife better than the DM, as far from the group as is safe. But I constantly keep an eye on the DM, the boat ain't going to leave without the DM. You'll have plenty of better dives, don't sweat it.
I'd gotten a BCD mount for my GoPro because I wanted to really just "set and forget", and not have to think about it during the dive. I'm really glad I did, because I noticed something while reviewing the footage... Although I was watching my dive computer on our actual ascents, I was only periodically looking at it while we swam, and I noticed several occasions when it was beeping while we were not really deliberately ascending - it was probably just semi-abrupt depth changes while staying about a meter from the ocean floor. I did not hear it beeping AT ALL in the moment, not even once, but it's very clear on the audio, probably 3 or 4 times. Aside from my general "Is this all normal?" question, I would really like to know if my interpretation here is correct. If my dive computer was beeping occasionally while we were swimming along the bottom, was that probably because we were changing depths too quickly?
I don't know, it's not my dive computer? That's why I have my own.
I am an ex-Girl Scout and the whole "take nothing but photos, leave nothing but bubbles" thing sounds pretty good to me
but the DM kept picking up critters and encouraging others to do the same. At one point, he put a sea slug on his head like a mohawk and started draping it on other people. "Here, poke the clams and watch them panic and close!" It was kind of pissing me off.
Clams and sea slugs are usually dinner and die in a terrible fashion. Poking them to see them close is no big deal. He likely won't try wearing a tiger shark as a hat.
Plus, one of the other customers was literally bumping along the coral on her butt for long stretches. A) That had to hurt and B) shouldn't the DM have said something to her about that? First time - ok, that was probably an accident. Second time, hey, get it together lady. 4th, 5th time? I dunno, as far as I could tell, nobody ever said boo to her about it.
Some divers will just about crucify someone for that. Not normal.
Ok, dives done - everyone was super nice and enthusiastic and patient with my newbie questions and there was water and snacks and we all had fun.
We went back to the shop, where everybody rinsed gear and started packing up while those of us doing the adventure dive cert started reading the booklets and taking the tests. Everyone's copies of the booklet were missing different pages, but after some shuffling, we got as complete a copy as we could assemble... and then there were still questions on the test that weren't listed in the booklet AT ALL. Half of them were so poorly translated into English that we were relying on Latinate word roots to figure out what they meant. That was kind of fun, actually
So, whatever. We all passed and they processed out certs really quickly - I think I got the confirmation email from PADI the same day. We tipped the DM appropriately, got dropped back off at our hotel, and then...
Get American training locally at home. I don't go to a 3rd world country to learn my trade. Plenty of people here, can help you with that.
While I really did think this was cool and had fun, I actually had a much better time kayaking to a coral reef and snorkeling at my leisure. I saw more critters and worried a whole lot less.
Comments, advice?
