Your very first and most recent dive

[Zaixon]

First dive:
About a year ago my gf and I were in the bahamas on vacation. She was certified and I had never dove before, snorkled a bunch of times but never scuba. So there was a flier at our hotel offering the discover scuba class but we were running low on cash for both of us to do it. we made the calls and they agreed to let both of us do it for one price cause she was certified and I told them i've done it before (oops).
So we get picked up from hotel get to the boat whish was really small and there were already ppl there finishing up their in pool part of the discover scuba course. They gave me gear and said swim at bottom of pool and do your skills. Me and gf talked beforehand on what I was to do. I jump in really excited and I was like damn this is awesome I can breathe underwater hah. Do the skills and then they load us to boat and go to ocean.
Now all geared up on the boat we are doing the backwards roll entry which was very briefly explained to me. So its time to go, I hold my mask n reg on and rolled back, hit the water, and was completely disoriented for a good bit. When I gained controll of everything I was amazed at how clear the water was and that there were so many fish all around and that this was probably the coolest thing ever and started swimming around following the divemaster.
As soon as we got back from vacation I signed up for OW course and since then have completed everything up to Rescue.

Most Recent Dive:
2 tank dive in Ft. Lauderdale. We did the north wreck treck (Scutti, Tracy, Merci, forgot the other one) and was a great dive. Me and my gf were paired with a solo guy from up north he was really cool. sea temp was bout 78, water starting to warm up cant wait for summer.
The other dive was the reef Oakland ridges which we spotted some friendly cuddlefish. Halfway through this dive my camera flooded tho so that kinda ruined the rest of that dive for me. Just picked up a new camera have yet to get the housing for it but looking foward to having it soon for summer time.

 

[TMHeimer]

First dive (pool excluded): OW checkout dives at Paddy's Head, NS (Nov./05). Last one on Gen. Sherman Wreck last month with Coastal Scuba of SC. Excellent dive Op.

 

[Airleron]

First Dive: 1986 in Blue Spring Florida with my friend Lynn who took class with me. We dove down 90ft to the boil and back up. Not terribly exciting or smart either.

Last Dive: Last weekend, the Breaker's Reef and Flower Garden, Palm Beach, FL.

Lots in between.....

 

[Charlie99]

My 1st time on scuba in the ocean was a discover scuba experience where they guy from the hotel that did my pool checkout called a friend and had me join his friend that was taking out 2 certified divers for a private charter. .

it was a dead boat dive with nobody left onboard.
I of course hoovered my air really fast, so they looped past the anchor line and left me doing a safety stop at 15'. After about 10 minutes solo watching fish while hanging onto the anchor line at 15', I climbed back aboard the unattended boat.

I had enjoyed the dive, other than doing an uncontrolled ascent to the surface because I didn't realize that I needed to hold the deflator above my head to empty the air, so when the instructor asked if I was willing to go through some swimthroughs I said "sure!". So for my 2nd uncertified Discover scuba dive I repeatedly bounced off the ceiling of lava tube swimthroughs and arches as I sucked in a deep breath before going into the overhead spaces.

My certification was fairly normal, but my first post cert dive went from 60'+ visibility down to less than 1 foot as a cloudburst in the mountains above us washed down dirt out of the canal (Mala ramp, Maui). I ran into a piling as my buddy disappeared, did another 20 kicks based on general gut feeling of the right direction (viz was such that compass was unreadable), and then surfaced. My buddy heaved a big sigh of relief. When I asked him how he was able to find his way back without bumping into stuff, he explained that he had been using his speargun like a blind man's cane.

Those initial dives provided enough excitement to last until about 10 dives later when an out-of-air diver appeared out of nowhere on the shallow Benwood wreck (Key Largo) as I did my first ever night dive.

My last dive is more typical of the rest of my dives. A very mellow, relaxing solo dive at Ulua in Maui, 110 minutes, 42' max depth.

 

[Paladin]

First dive:

Saturday, September 11, 1965

After working my eleven-year-old butt off all summer to pay for a used steel 72 and USD DA Aqua-Master, I finally realized a dream I'd had since watching the first episode of SEA HUNT back in 1958. Harold came by our house to pick me up and I loaded my tank, regulator and VOIT fins, mask and snorkel into the back of his pickup. As I climbed into the cab of the truck, he handed me a brand new weight belt with a pair of two pound weights already attached. I was so excited I could scarcely contain myself. My parents waved to us from the front porch as we drove away. They were a little nervous about me learning to dive but they trusted Harold and knew I was in good hands.

We drove out to a spot on the Coal river that was alternately known as "The Rocks" or "Skinnydip" (I'll leave it to you to guess why) and carried our gear down to the river's edge to where three big, flat rocks sloped gently into the water. We sat on one of the rocks while Harold went over the basics of what we were about to do. He gave me the old "Breathe slowly and deeply at all times" and "Never hold your breath on compressed air" and "Always ascend slower than your slowest bubbles" that he had been drilling into my head for the past several days.

When Harold decided I was ready for my first plunge into the river on SCUBA, he coated the inside of his wetsuit with talcum powder and pulled it on. I wore only a pair of blue jeans and a tee shirt. He showed me, for the umpteenth time, how to attach my regulator to the tank, turn the valve all the way on, then close it back one quarter turn. He then helped me strap the harness on and cinch it down tight so that my tank wouldn't flop around underwater. He helped me put on my weight belt and, while I was putting on my fins, mask and snorkel (rinsed the mask in the water, spit in it and rubbed it around, rinsed it again and put it on), he put on his own gear. We sat on the edge of the rock and slid into the water.

I wasn't sure what to expect. I had been snorkeling for three years by that time, so I wasn't unacquainted with being underwater but I was sure that everything would somehow be very different because I was using SCUBA. To my surprise, it really wasn't very different at all. Breathing through my regulator required a bit more effort than breathing through a snorkel and I could keep breathing as we swam to the sandy bottom instead of having to hold my breath but that was about it. I remember feeling a bit disappointed that SCUBA diving really wasn't difficult at all but, at the same time, I was exhilarated beyond words.

Visibility wasn't all that great (three or four feet) but I didn't care. The depth was about eight to ten feet in the center of the river and there was a sluggish current of about a half knot. Harold motioned upstream and we swam against the current, staying close to the bottom in case a fishing boat passed by overhead. Somewhere along the way, we met some largemouth and smallmouth bass and some huge catfish. Swimming over a submerged rock, I scared the bejabbers out of a large salamander that obviously had not expected our visit to his world.

After about a half hour, Harold turned us around and we drifted lazily back to our starting point. Somehow, he knew precisely where we were and when we surfaced we were just a short distance upstream from the rocks. Our total time underwater was just short of an hour but that hour had passed by at warp speed. We climbed out of the water and got ready to leave. We stopped for hamburgers on the way home.

For the next week I excitedly told my parents (and anyone else I could get to listen) over and over again about my dive.

I only got to dive once more that year, again in the shallow waters of the Coal River. After that, I spent my Saturdays at Harold's kitchen table drinking root beer and going over the Navy dive tables and training manuals. I realize now why we had made those two shallow dives in the river. The science and head work of SCUBA, learning the gas laws, dive tables, physics, physiology and such, could be a daunting task to an eleven-year-old kid. Those two dives had been to show me that it was all worth it and to give me an incentive to learn everything I needed to know to stay alive underwater.

Yeah. It was worth it.

Last dive:

September 18, 2010

Spent the weekend diving with my oldest son. He had just gotten his C-card the week before. I'm working on getting my youngest son certified this summer.

 

[KY_BOB]

First post training dive was a 50' dive in a local quarry, about froze my a$$ off and as a diver, I sucked.

Last dive was a training cave dive into the Devils system. Beautiful but it put me in my place. I wasn't scared but it's a different level of diving. I gained a lot of respect for cave divers.

 

[Scuba gnome]

1st dive - Koh Tao, Thailand. This was only a couple months ago. On my very first real dive for my OW cert I saw my tiny skinny female instructor get attacked by a big triggerfish. She managed to fight it off with her fins but it was pretty persistent. I admit I was doing some underwater laughing the whole time watching what was happening. She gave a briefing just 20 minutes before on the boat warning about trigger fish attacks. So you could say we got to see a live demonstration. :shocked2:

Last dive - Completed a liveaboard in the similans/surins and have racked up quite a lot of dives in the last couple months. I'm hooked, sometimes at night I dream about floating around underwater. I loved seeing the diversity of life in the islands and diving out in the big open andaman sea definitely has a different feeling from Koh Tao. I saw my first seahorse and shark (2m long leopard!) as well. Only drawback, coral bleaching was noticeable but there was still life.