- Messages
- 93,607
- Reaction score
- 92,097
- Location
- On the Fun Side of Trump's Wall
- # of dives
- 2500 - 4999
Last night I had the most satisfying experience ...
Back up a week or so ... I went to visit an old friend I hadn't seen in a while. His daughter, a young woman in her early 20's, had invited some of his friends over to celebrate her dad's birthday. During the course of the evening, I found out that back in February she'd spent some time in Thailand and gotten her OW certification while she was there. She asked me about taking an AOW class, and I suggested that before she do that she should try diving in Puget Sound ... it's a lot different than Thailand, and she might not like it. I offered to loan her some gear, and take her diving. That happened last night.
She showed up and we talked about a few things. I told her we'd go shallow ... 15 to 20 feet ... and just work on buoyancy control for a little while. After all, diving in a 7 mm farmer john with hood, gloves and 30 lbs of weight is considerably different than diving in a 3 mm shortie and 8 lbs of weight. Besides that, she did all 8 of her Thailand dives off a boat ... shore diving offers it's own differences.
We surface swam out, started our descent, and she had some difficulty clearing her ears. So I signaled to go up just a little bit. To my complete surprise, she managed to go up a couple feet, hold a perfect hover, work at it (took a few seconds) then we started descending again. 4 or 5 feet later, more difficulties, up 2 feet, clear, drop a few more, stop, and repeat the process.
Now, for someone who's only got 8 dives ... all in warm water and shortie ... doing this with all that lead and neoprene is pretty impressive.
By the time we got down to 20 feet ... no touchie the bottom ... no bouncing up and down bouyancy struggles ... OK, a little hand-waving, but we'll work on that ... I figured she was good to go.
We spent the next 48 minutes touring around the cove. Good trim, excellent buoyancy control, and a HUGE smile at the end of the dive. Pretty relaxed, pretty damn impressive.
Yanno ... we cold-water divers hear a lot about how easy it is to dive in the tropics, and how vacation divers don't get trained well, or dive well. So for balance, I just wanna make a statement ...
Somewhere out there in Thailand there's an SSI instructor who did something wonderful for my friend's daughter ... he turned her into a diver. Not just someone who swims around underwater, but someone who was taught enough to know how to think, control, adapt, and enjoy herself in that environment.
Whoever you are ... thanks for doing a great job of it ... I wish you could've seen her smiling last night.
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
Back up a week or so ... I went to visit an old friend I hadn't seen in a while. His daughter, a young woman in her early 20's, had invited some of his friends over to celebrate her dad's birthday. During the course of the evening, I found out that back in February she'd spent some time in Thailand and gotten her OW certification while she was there. She asked me about taking an AOW class, and I suggested that before she do that she should try diving in Puget Sound ... it's a lot different than Thailand, and she might not like it. I offered to loan her some gear, and take her diving. That happened last night.
She showed up and we talked about a few things. I told her we'd go shallow ... 15 to 20 feet ... and just work on buoyancy control for a little while. After all, diving in a 7 mm farmer john with hood, gloves and 30 lbs of weight is considerably different than diving in a 3 mm shortie and 8 lbs of weight. Besides that, she did all 8 of her Thailand dives off a boat ... shore diving offers it's own differences.
We surface swam out, started our descent, and she had some difficulty clearing her ears. So I signaled to go up just a little bit. To my complete surprise, she managed to go up a couple feet, hold a perfect hover, work at it (took a few seconds) then we started descending again. 4 or 5 feet later, more difficulties, up 2 feet, clear, drop a few more, stop, and repeat the process.
Now, for someone who's only got 8 dives ... all in warm water and shortie ... doing this with all that lead and neoprene is pretty impressive.
By the time we got down to 20 feet ... no touchie the bottom ... no bouncing up and down bouyancy struggles ... OK, a little hand-waving, but we'll work on that ... I figured she was good to go.
We spent the next 48 minutes touring around the cove. Good trim, excellent buoyancy control, and a HUGE smile at the end of the dive. Pretty relaxed, pretty damn impressive.
Yanno ... we cold-water divers hear a lot about how easy it is to dive in the tropics, and how vacation divers don't get trained well, or dive well. So for balance, I just wanna make a statement ...
Somewhere out there in Thailand there's an SSI instructor who did something wonderful for my friend's daughter ... he turned her into a diver. Not just someone who swims around underwater, but someone who was taught enough to know how to think, control, adapt, and enjoy herself in that environment.
Whoever you are ... thanks for doing a great job of it ... I wish you could've seen her smiling last night.
... Bob (Grateful Diver)