Dives 1 and 2
(yes, I am totally ripping off Curtis’s dive recording formatting)
Kristen, Nick and I decided to do our first 2 open water checkout dives on Sunday after we finished the classroom and confined water dive portions of the PADI Open Water Diver Course curriculum. Everyone except Mullet Chuck and the 10 year old decided to go along. Mark accompanied us again as well. We exchanged our thin wetsuits for some thicker farmer john wetsuits, hoods and gloves.
We arrived at the dive site, West Alstead, shortly after 4 pm. Kristen traded in her 10 year old partner for Nate, who was now partnerless as well. Suiting up took a bit longer than normal, but we were soon underway. Well, most of us were underway, I for one was aboveway. Due to a minor miscommunication with Nick I hit the water with a mere 12 lbs instead of the 26 lbs I should have had. I ended up being able to sink and stay sunk with 24 lbs. In the interrum, Nick and I partner swapped with Kristen and Nate. Sounds dirty, but it really wasn’t. Kristen and I took a leasurely pace from there out.
For our first dive we swam around a bit to get a feel for our new environment and get a grasp on controlling our buoyancy. For the second dive we did some underwater skills. We started out on a platform about 15-20′ below the surface and were quickly greeted by a tiny sunfish who swam into the middle of our circle to hang out and watch us. During the mask removal I ran into a little glitch. I had some difficulties getting the mask over the hood, then getting the mask under the lip of the hood with my bulky gloves. After what felt like an eternity I got my mask on long enough to clear it for a few seconds. Mark signalled for me to remove a glove. Now why didn’t I think of that sooner? After doing that I quickly got my mask back on. Eventually we ended up at the surface for some more skills, then took a leisurely underwater trip back to the shore line. The majority of us followed suit after Dan and stayed in the 30ish foot range. Of course Nick, being the pioneer that he is, dipped down to 40 feet, got cold and quickly ascended some lightheadedness from his 10′ trip.
After the dives we wrapped everything up and piled in the MSD van right before the sun set and the rain hit. We headed back to the classroom to fill out our first two entries in the dive log book. We left for Cloud after that, dropping Kristen off and having a quick chat with Curtis. We arrived home around 11 pm.
It was a long weekend and I am thoroughly exhausted!! I’ll have to rest up so I can be back on par for our final two dives this Tuesday.
…to be continued
Sweet but what about your mad Recreational Dive Planner skills? What pressure group were you in after your first dive? How long was your surface interval between dives? What was your residual nitrogen time? What about your pressure group after the second dive? These are the things the readership of jillapalooza want to know. And by the way, if you’re gonna rip off my dive log format, please use the catergory icon dive flag too. : ) So are we all going diving this weekend?
I would love to include my mad RDP skillz (I did rock the house while using it), but we had to leave our dive logs at MSD, so I’ll have to make an update after Tuesday.
I thought about adding the dive flag, but I thought maybe that would be taking it too far and you might try to sue me or something. I’d add it now, but I don’t have FTP access because Nick isn’t clever enough to allow me to access it from my laptop. I’ll do it when I get home if I can make it more than 10 steps from the door without falling asleep.
I’m happy to see that you must have made it the 10 steps to get that flag in place on the dive blog. Thanks to my buddies for being supportive after my debacle with my mask clearing skillz in the pool on Sunday. I made a big mistake not taking a shower before heading to bed. That bone dry air I was breathing all day killed my sinuses. Woke up with a headache and have spent all day trying to rehydrate. Anyone else have issues?
I’m kind of issued. I was exhausted all day long. After putting up the dive flag category icon I stumbled to the couch and struggled to fall asleep for the first time in my life. After a brief 2 hour nap I was still pretty lethargic, but couldn’t get back to sleep. Glad we decided on Tuesday instead of tonight…