Tell us about your first time...

[aowdan]

first time breathing underwater almost did me in. i was snorkeling with a buddy and some other people from work were down about 20 feet or so. we dove down and someone shoved an octo in my face. stayed about a minute, took one last breathe and up i went. that's when i found out what Mr Boyle was talking about. of course i didn't know it at the time. 10 years later in 2002 a doctor told me that my lungs sounded like i was sixty. i didn't realize how lucky i was.

dano

 

[drbill]

And I thought this was the equivalent to the myfirsttime.com web site. Good thing I checked the OP before giving everyone all the gory details!

My first time? Well, the very first time I even tried SCUBA it was in my high school swimming pool. One day after practice, a senior brought his gear into the pool and several of us took a spin on the bottom at a whopping 12 feet. I think it was then that I discovered the girls synchronized swimming team frequented the underwater window while we were practicing... and in those days, we didn't wear nothing at all when we swam our laps.

 

[DiverLS]

Since I did my open water and advanced at Lake Tahoe, my first real dive was at Santa Crus Island, part of the Northern Channel Islands off Santa Barbara. My dive buddy knew it was my first real open water dive and told me to make sure I fanned the urchins out of the way. Yep, the sea floor was still covered with urchins then. Anyway, I bounced off the bottom after fanning the urchins out of the way, looked up and stared, gaping. Yep, dropped my regulator. A dive master was right behind me. He said he was ready to come to my rescue but stopped when I didn't flinch, calmly picked up my regulater, plopped it back in my mouth and continued on my dive.

 

[paradicio]

Great stories everyone!

 

[roake215]

Did my cert with Sinai Divers in Sharm el Shiek. Used a little bay (just off the beach) for the "confined water" portion. Not sure if it was the first or second cert dive out in the Red Sea proper, but I remember having a huge wrasse go after my pressure guage.

 

[Steve_Dives]

My first dive was off Key West on a site known as Western Sambo. Logged a bottom time of 44 minutes and surfaced with 1100 psi. I'm not sure, but I think about 35 minutes were spent either with water in my mask or with no mask at all. (What??? Again!!??) The mask removals and airshares went uneventfully.

I had been snorkeling several times over previous years, so I wasn't expecting to see anything that was too unusual. As the instructor is turning around to lead us off somewhere (probably for another mask drill) he stopped and looked back suddenly to his left. We watched as he slowly approached the rock that had been at Laura's and my back. Motioning us over we find a tiny little octopus, maybe a foot wide with its arms spread - something I would never have seen snorkeling across the surface.

 

[diverdan214]

One of my favorite early dive training is in the pool. I was standing on my knees waiting while other people demonstrated a skill and I looked up at the ladder. And I could just sit and look at the bottom of the pool ladder from the botton of the pool. That's it, it was just neat because the number of times I used a pool ladder I had never really seen it from that angle.

 

[mstevens]

In 1978 I was lifeguarding at a pool in Illinois. Another guard brought his tank and reg (no BC or SPG) to "clean the bottom of the deep end." He told me not to hold my breath and to come up when the reserve kicked in. I went in with a brush and stayed there until I hit the reserve. I don't recall doing any cleaning at all - I just sat on the bottom watching bubbles and becoming increasingly addicted.

A bit over a year later, my parents gave me a scuba course as a Christmas gift. The classes were held at an indoor pool in Virginia where I was a guard. I was buddied up with an annoying girl from my senior class because she was such an awful swimmer. Our 12 year-old finished his AOW day before yesterday here in Cozumel. I've had many "first times" while diving. As my kid said after diving Devil's Throat yesterday when the DM asked how it compared to other dives, "They're all good."

 

[TSandM]

My first dives are recorded in the log linked in my sig line, but what I remember most about that first day was being completely disoriented and confused, not knowing which way was up, and hanging onto the instructor for dear life. I also remember choking on the mask clear and coming within a hair's breadth of bolting to the surface. And I remember becoming hypothermic, being unable to get out of the water with my gear on, and stripping to my underwear on a public sidewalk . . . There was nothing about my first two open water dives that would predict that, two years later, I'd have 300 dives under my belt and be absolutely obsessed with spending as much time as possible underwater!

 

[drbill]

In 1978 I was lifeguarding at a pool in Illinois. Another guard brought his tank and reg (no BC or SPG) to "clean the bottom of the deep end." He told me not to hold my breath and to come up when the reserve kicked in. I went in with a brush and stayed there until I hit the reserve. I don't recall doing any cleaning at all - I just sat on the bottom watching bubbles and becoming increasingly addicted.

I can relate to this... I spent much of my time in 1966 and 1967 cleaning the deep wells of diving pools in Illinois on hookah and SCUBA.

On my first ocean dive out here off Catalina in 1969, all I could think of was great white sharks. After 38 years of diving these waters, I'm still waiting to see my first one underwater!