This morning started as yesterday; met at the cafe on the beach for a briefing. This time I made sure we ordered some breakfast. I don’t do well without food. Must have food.
We covered off some of the more technical bits about calculating for air consumption and your SAC. Very useful to know but when your training and just starting out, you’ll be using far more than when you are experienced and calm. When you do work it out, this will give you an idea how long you can stay at a certain depth and allow you to plan dives.
Next was the written test, nailed this. Now just the dives to do. Deeper and therefore more dangerous if you fudge it up. You can’t just pop to the surface. The training was quite explicit about the reactions your body has to rapid decompression. It sounds terrifying and certainly concentrates the mind on doing the drills safely and not panicking. At one point I got a bit of water down the back of my throat and coughed. I just had to stay calm and cough through the reg and regain control.
I also had bought my own mask and snorkel that fit me better than the centre ones. It still leaks a bit around my beard, just because it can’t seal on my bristles. I’m going to have to get some vaseline to smear on my top lip… Bit wierd but it hopefully it will stop me needing to empty my goggles so often. This uses up a load of air meaning on this dive I blasted through my tank. On the other dives I came up with at least 70 bar spare but I was pushing the limit of 50 by the time we reached the surface.
We spent the first 20 mins doing a few drills, emergency ascent and emergency buoyant ascent. Ticking these off we now got into the dive proper. This is what diving is about; swooping around the rocks and coral like a semi-synthetic fish. Phil described it well, like flying, which I didn’t really understand. Now I totally get it, it is exactly like flying, but in slowmo. Everything is done slowly. You could do it fast but you’d use more air, so you just drift about and correct and move slowly. It’s simultaneously very peaceful and stressful.
That night Mojo dive shop owners put on a BBQ for all the staff and current customers. It was a really nice thing for them to do, and meant we got to hang out socially and have a bit of a laugh. The cumulative effect of the homework and diving had taken its toll on me. I also had a ridiculously early start so we didn’t stay late. We had to be on the boat at 6am next morning so time for bed, no drinking, no partying. I’ve done loads of that last week so I’m happy to forgo.