Diving — Page 19

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

This past weekend started the adventure filled open water diver course for Kristen, Nick and I. It was a fun and exhausting weekend.

The festivities started on Friday night, with a classroom review of the book we had to read, at 5:30 pm, ending at about 10pm with a quick lesson on assembling our BCDs. Our instructor, Dan, was long winded with his stories at times, but they were amusing to hear, and he had such a laid back attitude that we were soon at ease. There were a total of nine of us in the class. Four were a group that would be traveling to Honduras in February, and two solo guys, Nate, who would eventually be included in our K-N-J buddy formation, and Charlie, a kid with a killer mullet.

The next morning we gathered at the Brainerd High School pool at 8:45 am, equipment in tow. There was a new addition to our class who Kristen quickly snatched up as a buddy. She was ten. We assembled our BCDs again, donned our wetsuits, and took our first plunge into the pool for our first confined dive. We covered basic skills in the shallow end. Removing, replacing and clearing our masks was one of the things I was most anxious about, but it turned out to be quite simple. Toward the end of class Dan gave us free reign of the pool. I struggled with my buoyancy a bit, but as I found out the next day I was very overweighted. After the scuba portion of the day concluded, we swam the required 200 meters, dried off and headed out for lunch. We stopped at Taco Johns, hit up a convenience store for some goodies, and headed back to the classroom. Once there we covered the rest of the book, took our final exam and headed out to Zorbaz for some zza. Fatigued from the day we hit they hay before 10 pm.

Sunday morning we met back at the pool at 8:30 am. Joining Dan was Mark, a divemaster who would be assisting in the remainder of the pool activities. We had a brief free for all in the deep end again. We also were properly weighted. I went from the original 16 lbs to 6 lbs. After that neutral buoyancy was a breeze. We learned some more vital skills, and repeated the skills from the day before in the deep end. We did our required 10 minutes of treading water and were out of there by 2 pm, then back in the classroom at 2:30 to grade the final exam. Kristen & I both got 49/50. Nick got 48/50. Ha ha ha ha. It’s because he couldn’t cheat off of me anymore.

After the classroom was all completed we headed out for our first two open water dives.

…to be continued

Check Out Dives 1 & 2

Confined Water Dives