To The Depths With Ye!
After a wonderful weekend, on Sunday, the day finally arrived; it was time to breath underwater. We got to class early and fetched all of our equipment, carried it, albeit awkwardly, to the car, and went to the classroom for our learning module three. The night before was filled with dive tables (more on this later), and a lack of good sleep, but amazingly, I managed to remain alert throughout class even though we were in an air-conditioned room that was very conducive to sleep.
When we got to the pool in Laurel, we donned our gear, which was much easier than anticipated due in large part to the excellent demonstration given by our instructor, Bill. After doing our pre-dive BWRAF check, it was a seated entry into the water. With all of the weights, gear, tank, and everything else on, it amazes me how buoyant a BCD and wet suit make you. I just floated in the water for a few minutes, relaxing, and taking it all in. Then it was time for business, with the regulator in our mouths, we were told to put our heads underwater and breath. I ducked down beneath the veil of water molecules and air bubbles blowing steadily and reassuringly from my regulator, and there I was, breathing underwater! It was an experience that I will never forget.
We then descended to the shallow end of the pool, which was still deep enough to require a decent swim to the top. At this point, Bill began going through the different skills required for PADI certification. One by one, he demonstrated the skill and stood in front of us as we each performed the assigned tasks. With a bit of nervousness and some trepidation, on numerous occasions I took the regulator out of my mouth and performed skills such as breathing from Dawn’s octopus, retrieving a lost regulator, inflating a BCD, and exchanging between the regulator and the snorkel. It’s pretty damn scary and unnatural to remove you only source of air as you sit, weighted down, on the bottom of a pool, But with a cool head, and some thought, the skills are actually quite easy. In my opinion, SCUBA is just one of those things that becomes easier with practice. The more times you flood your mask and remove it, or find a lost regulator, the better you will become at it.
In my opinion, and I think everyone in our class would agree with me, the scariest thing we did was removing our mask underwater, and then replacing and clearing it. When you remove the mask, it is very difficult to breath because the water and bubbles from your exhale breath tends to shoot up your nose. Scary, but not something that can be overcome with some practice.
While I performed all of the necessary skills, there were a few that I would like to practice a bit more just for my own edification. These include inflating the BCD underwater (which I did just fine when I discovered that you had to hold in the deflate button on the BCD, duh), removing and replacing my mask, working with the BCD inflator/deflator, and sharing air with Dawn. While I plan to practice every skill we learned, I will focus on these as they either gave me a bit of trouble, or were important actions that I would just like some practice in.
All in all the dive went extremely well, and I am very confident in my abilities. Next week we go through some more skills, which should be much easier now considering that we spent 90 minutes underwater on Sunday.
When we got to the pool in Laurel, we donned our gear, which was much easier than anticipated due in large part to the excellent demonstration given by our instructor, Bill. After doing our pre-dive BWRAF check, it was a seated entry into the water. With all of the weights, gear, tank, and everything else on, it amazes me how buoyant a BCD and wet suit make you. I just floated in the water for a few minutes, relaxing, and taking it all in. Then it was time for business, with the regulator in our mouths, we were told to put our heads underwater and breath. I ducked down beneath the veil of water molecules and air bubbles blowing steadily and reassuringly from my regulator, and there I was, breathing underwater! It was an experience that I will never forget.
We then descended to the shallow end of the pool, which was still deep enough to require a decent swim to the top. At this point, Bill began going through the different skills required for PADI certification. One by one, he demonstrated the skill and stood in front of us as we each performed the assigned tasks. With a bit of nervousness and some trepidation, on numerous occasions I took the regulator out of my mouth and performed skills such as breathing from Dawn’s octopus, retrieving a lost regulator, inflating a BCD, and exchanging between the regulator and the snorkel. It’s pretty damn scary and unnatural to remove you only source of air as you sit, weighted down, on the bottom of a pool, But with a cool head, and some thought, the skills are actually quite easy. In my opinion, SCUBA is just one of those things that becomes easier with practice. The more times you flood your mask and remove it, or find a lost regulator, the better you will become at it.
In my opinion, and I think everyone in our class would agree with me, the scariest thing we did was removing our mask underwater, and then replacing and clearing it. When you remove the mask, it is very difficult to breath because the water and bubbles from your exhale breath tends to shoot up your nose. Scary, but not something that can be overcome with some practice.
While I performed all of the necessary skills, there were a few that I would like to practice a bit more just for my own edification. These include inflating the BCD underwater (which I did just fine when I discovered that you had to hold in the deflate button on the BCD, duh), removing and replacing my mask, working with the BCD inflator/deflator, and sharing air with Dawn. While I plan to practice every skill we learned, I will focus on these as they either gave me a bit of trouble, or were important actions that I would just like some practice in.
All in all the dive went extremely well, and I am very confident in my abilities. Next week we go through some more skills, which should be much easier now considering that we spent 90 minutes underwater on Sunday.