Hi Everyone,
This is my first post here, though I've been hanging around for a little over a month. This is a long post I'm sorry about that! I wasn't going to post, but this weekend I finished my open water course and I thought my experience might be helpful to those thinking (or having trouble with) getting certified.
I decided in March that I was going to take up diving; my reason is a little different. Every year my parents take all their children (and their families skiing). I absolutely love this vacation; an all-expense paid ski trip is pretty hard to beat when you love skiing as much as I do. Anyway this year my parents announced that next year we would not be going skiing because my cousin is getting married in Jamaica and they had decided to do that as a vacation instead. I was very upset, I love the ski trip and I am NOT a beach person!
Then I was at work and a college of mine was talking about his experiences while learning to diving, I'd never really thought about diving before, but I've lived around boats and swimming all my life, I'd never even considered what was below the surface! I said to myself, diving, that's something that would make this trip to Jamaica more interesting. Also my parents in-law have a house in Florida, there has be some good diving there!
I did a bit of research and discovered there was a dive shop close to my house, so I registered for an open water course that would be (mostly) in April. On the first day of the course when I took that first breath under water I was positive I was going to love this sport. I found the pool portion of the course very easy and the knowledge tests mostly seemed like common sense. When I was younger I was a certified swimming instructor and life guard, and though I don't swim much anymore, I'm still a "strong" swimmer.
The dive shop I was using had a few dates to do the open water dives at Dutch Springs, and our class mostly decided to do the course on the weekend of June 4th. Before the dives I bought my own BC regulator and computer. I had decided at this point that I was going to do a lot of diving must of it in New Jersey and some in Nova Scotia (where I grew up and spend a portion of every summer).
The night before the dives I was so excited I was unable to sleep. I figure I might have drifted off a few times, but nothing really restful. Come Saturday morning, I'm not as tired as I would have expected, and there's no way I'm backing out so I show up at site.
Dive number 1: I had a HUGE problem descending, I had 24lb, and I was also having issues equalizing. Once I was under water I had a lot of fun and had reasonable buoyancy control (I was able to swim at about 25 feet).
Dive number 2: I now have 26lb of weight and I had less trouble descending, I don't remember much of this dive, except that it was COLD!
End of Day one. That night I slept a lot as you might expect
Dive number 3: This is our first dive without something a rope to hold, I could not descend, I expend a huge amount of energy to descend. Eventually I manage to sink but I've got breathing issues. I manage to get myself under control enough to do a mask flood and some swimming around, but after some swimming we are to return to the platform and do two exercises, one is fin pivot doing an oral inflate, the other is the controlled emergency ascent. For whatever reason I start to panic and burn through my oxygen as I watch the computers pressure go down I start to panic more. I cannot get calm, so I signal to one of the assistants that I need to surface. I do, and even though he tries to convince me to go back down I refuse. At this point I think I'm going to give up on diving.
I don't even attempt dive 4. I go home.
I spend the next day or so thinking about I should do, I know nothing was actually wrong, and I just needed to be calm, maybe work on depending a little... So I reach out to my instructor and ask her if I can get a private lesson. She offers a lot of options including some more pool dives, which I am not interested in, I need to get used to having the 7mm farmer john and all the other gear, which I pretty much can't do in a pool. In the end we decide that probably a private lesson just doing the 3rd and 4th dives with a bit of work on the descent is probably enough.
We arrange for the lessons to happen Sunday afternoon on the 3rd of July. Again the night before I am unable to sleep well, this time because I'm anxious, not so much excited.
Dive 3: I'm now using 35lb of weigh, including some ankle weights which are helping a lot. Decent is easy, mask flood causes me to panic a little but I was easily able to get control and finish the clear. The fin pivot is easy, the first breath I didn't want to take the regulator out but after the first one I have no issues. Since it is just the two of us we have a lot of time to swim around a look at stuff, this is HUGE fun. Now time for the controlled emergency ascent, for some reason this has been bothering me, but it was easy to do, I started to run out of air near the surface so at about 4 feet I had kick a little harder, but not enough to make it a dangerous ascent.
Dive 4: Ok at this point it is easy, I'm down to 33lbs and the decent is easy the mask removal and replacement was a little unnerving but no real issues, I know I need to practice this a bit more so I'm comfortable with the cold water on my face Then swimming with the compass and the safety stop are easy.
After the fourth dive I really didn't want to get out of the water, I was tempted to pay my instructor to do a pleasure dive with me, but felt that I really should get home to my family (and sleep) I have 2 hour drive ahead of me
I
can't wait to get back in the water, and I am so glad I kept working on it. Now I just need to spend some time getting my weight down, I know I'm over weighted because I need a lot of air in my BC once I'm at depth (damn the wetsuit compresses so much!). I also need to work on the flood mask, but all in all I'm feeling much more confident! Ive started doing the book work for the advanced open water dives, and Im hoping to get a pleasure dive (or 5) in the next few weeks. Now I just need a second job to support this expensive habit!
--Andrew
This is my first post here, though I've been hanging around for a little over a month. This is a long post I'm sorry about that! I wasn't going to post, but this weekend I finished my open water course and I thought my experience might be helpful to those thinking (or having trouble with) getting certified.
I decided in March that I was going to take up diving; my reason is a little different. Every year my parents take all their children (and their families skiing). I absolutely love this vacation; an all-expense paid ski trip is pretty hard to beat when you love skiing as much as I do. Anyway this year my parents announced that next year we would not be going skiing because my cousin is getting married in Jamaica and they had decided to do that as a vacation instead. I was very upset, I love the ski trip and I am NOT a beach person!
Then I was at work and a college of mine was talking about his experiences while learning to diving, I'd never really thought about diving before, but I've lived around boats and swimming all my life, I'd never even considered what was below the surface! I said to myself, diving, that's something that would make this trip to Jamaica more interesting. Also my parents in-law have a house in Florida, there has be some good diving there!
I did a bit of research and discovered there was a dive shop close to my house, so I registered for an open water course that would be (mostly) in April. On the first day of the course when I took that first breath under water I was positive I was going to love this sport. I found the pool portion of the course very easy and the knowledge tests mostly seemed like common sense. When I was younger I was a certified swimming instructor and life guard, and though I don't swim much anymore, I'm still a "strong" swimmer.
The dive shop I was using had a few dates to do the open water dives at Dutch Springs, and our class mostly decided to do the course on the weekend of June 4th. Before the dives I bought my own BC regulator and computer. I had decided at this point that I was going to do a lot of diving must of it in New Jersey and some in Nova Scotia (where I grew up and spend a portion of every summer).
The night before the dives I was so excited I was unable to sleep. I figure I might have drifted off a few times, but nothing really restful. Come Saturday morning, I'm not as tired as I would have expected, and there's no way I'm backing out so I show up at site.
Dive number 1: I had a HUGE problem descending, I had 24lb, and I was also having issues equalizing. Once I was under water I had a lot of fun and had reasonable buoyancy control (I was able to swim at about 25 feet).
Dive number 2: I now have 26lb of weight and I had less trouble descending, I don't remember much of this dive, except that it was COLD!
End of Day one. That night I slept a lot as you might expect
Dive number 3: This is our first dive without something a rope to hold, I could not descend, I expend a huge amount of energy to descend. Eventually I manage to sink but I've got breathing issues. I manage to get myself under control enough to do a mask flood and some swimming around, but after some swimming we are to return to the platform and do two exercises, one is fin pivot doing an oral inflate, the other is the controlled emergency ascent. For whatever reason I start to panic and burn through my oxygen as I watch the computers pressure go down I start to panic more. I cannot get calm, so I signal to one of the assistants that I need to surface. I do, and even though he tries to convince me to go back down I refuse. At this point I think I'm going to give up on diving.
I don't even attempt dive 4. I go home.
I spend the next day or so thinking about I should do, I know nothing was actually wrong, and I just needed to be calm, maybe work on depending a little... So I reach out to my instructor and ask her if I can get a private lesson. She offers a lot of options including some more pool dives, which I am not interested in, I need to get used to having the 7mm farmer john and all the other gear, which I pretty much can't do in a pool. In the end we decide that probably a private lesson just doing the 3rd and 4th dives with a bit of work on the descent is probably enough.
We arrange for the lessons to happen Sunday afternoon on the 3rd of July. Again the night before I am unable to sleep well, this time because I'm anxious, not so much excited.
Dive 3: I'm now using 35lb of weigh, including some ankle weights which are helping a lot. Decent is easy, mask flood causes me to panic a little but I was easily able to get control and finish the clear. The fin pivot is easy, the first breath I didn't want to take the regulator out but after the first one I have no issues. Since it is just the two of us we have a lot of time to swim around a look at stuff, this is HUGE fun. Now time for the controlled emergency ascent, for some reason this has been bothering me, but it was easy to do, I started to run out of air near the surface so at about 4 feet I had kick a little harder, but not enough to make it a dangerous ascent.
Dive 4: Ok at this point it is easy, I'm down to 33lbs and the decent is easy the mask removal and replacement was a little unnerving but no real issues, I know I need to practice this a bit more so I'm comfortable with the cold water on my face
Then swimming with the compass and the safety stop are easy.After the fourth dive I really didn't want to get out of the water, I was tempted to pay my instructor to do a pleasure dive with me, but felt that I really should get home to my family (and sleep) I have 2 hour drive ahead of me
I
can't wait to get back in the water, and I am so glad I kept working on it. Now I just need to spend some time getting my weight down, I know I'm over weighted because I need a lot of air in my BC once I'm at depth (damn the wetsuit compresses so much!). I also need to work on the flood mask, but all in all I'm feeling much more confident! Ive started doing the book work for the advanced open water dives, and Im hoping to get a pleasure dive (or 5) in the next few weeks. Now I just need a second job to support this expensive habit!
--Andrew
