Well after a few months of on and off diving I finally managed to sort out a weekend to go and do my open water dives!
We were so lucky with the weather considering the previous weekend was rainy and grim, but we were greeted with sunshine which was awesome :-) We were tagging along with a Learn Scuba Rescue Diver course which happened to be going up to Gildy for the weekend so we had plenty of cover for the weekend, and also a few buddies for me to dive with.
We arrived slightly late so when we got there we had to find everyone and find out who would be my buddy for the day which was all sorted pretty quick, then we just had to wait for the course lot to go do a dive, then we could get in.
I'd thought about how going down to 12m was going to be and how I'd react to being that far underwater but not really worried about it, just a little more curious than anything. We did our pre-dive checks, got in the water, and before I knew it I was descending to the 6m platform. I was amazed at how it didn't really feel any different to being in a 2m deep pool. We did skills, and then had a little swim about to just get used to being underwater. The dive was such a fun experience, I couldn't wait to get in the water again!
The second dive was much of the same as the first, however I was a lot more relaxed. Towards the end of the dive we did an ascent practice which went fine and were just about to go back down for a bit of a swim about and I hit about 2.4m according to my dive computer and my ears just would not equalize at all, I tried everything from the manual, including going to the surface and starting to descend again but nothing worked, then to both mine and Simon's surprise my buddy Charles also had the exact same problem so we had to end that dive early. Still a lot of fun was had! That ended my first day of open water diving, and I was now a Scuba Diver.
I slept like a baby the Saturday night, was so tired after a day of diving and at that point didn't know if I'd actually be able to equalize my ears on Sunday which would put an end to my weekend of diving. Luckily when I woke up Sunday and was just wandering downstairs I sneezed and both my ears popped which confused me for a minute. I then spent the rest of the morning finding weird ways to make my ears pop hehe.
My first dive of the day was another great fun dive. I was lucky enough to have the same buddy as the day before so already knew him. This dive consisted of more skills and then another swim about, we decided that we'd get most of the skills left out of the way in this dive and just have a nice dive for my last one. One of the skills I had to do during this dive was the CESA which is one of the oddest experiences. Breathing out the entire way whilst ascending and still having air left in your lungs when you reach the surface is a very very strange sensation, I was actually tempted to do it again just because it felt so odd! We then had our swim about and then Simon launched an SMB for us to use to do a safety stop. I thought I'd have a lot more trouble with the safety stop and keeping myself at a certain depth but it was actually a lot easier than it sounds.
It was now time for my final dive, this consisted of very few skills, and a nice long swim about led by me for the beginning. The main skill I had to demonstrate on this dive was underwater navigation with a compass, well that didn't exactly go to plan really! Navigation on the surface no problem, underwater bit trickier really, I ended up not trusting to compass and swimming a bit too fast at one point. I still managed to get us where we needed to go though and then we have a great swim about for a good 10min. We ascended and that was it, finished my 4th Open Water dive which made me a certified Open Water Diver :-D
The course is great fun and I can't wait to go diving again now already. I have my Dry Suit speciality course to do next which is just 2 dives and a book which shouldn't be too much to worry about really.
