Open Water class review
What a long 7 days this has just been. I’ve been Divemaster-ing (can you make Divemaster a verb?!) for an Open Water class over the past week and it’s been tiring stuff. Not so much the work involved, as the academic sessions were pretty relaxed, but the long days wears you down. I’ve been finishing work at 4:30, then driving all the way up to Kadena for the class (about an hour’s drive), and not getting back until 11pm. Plus it’s been raining all week which hasn’t helped things. I know we’re in the rainy month at the moment, but the sheer amount of rain has been crazy: around 16 inches in June already. It feels more like a monsoon season than just a rainy month. But it is due to end in the next days and I keep trying to do little sundances to make things improve… as of yet they have had no effect.
But back to the course. We had 6 students and conducted the academic sections of the class in a video-led approach. That went well and the students didn’t have many problems; they even mastered the RDP relatively quickly. In the pool sessions a couple of students had trouble with the 200m swim and 10 minute float. In fact, one of them still has to do the swim, but hopefully they will be able to and will complete the course in the very near future. The students did the skills pretty well, although a couple of them were easily distracted. On the 2nd day of confined water skills, I took a couple of students to the side and worked on full mask flooding, and mask removal & recovery skills. I demonstrated it and offered encouragement , picking out what they were doing well and where they could improve. After a very short time they’d mastered those skills, and were ready to have them evaluated by the instructor. It felt good to have helped them master those skills, and reinforced my opinion that dive instructing is the future for me.
And then onto the actual open water dives. We had planned to dive on Saturday, but we got to Kadena North and realised that it wasn’t going to happen. The waves were coming in sets and if we timed it wrong we’d have students all over the place. So we postponed until Sunday, and thankfully the wind died down and the waters were calm. The visibility wasn’t good due to the recent heavy rain (12-15m) but it was enough to go diving. I set the float and we started the dive. I had problems equalising during the dive, but it was a sinus squeeze rather than an ear squeeze. When I got to about 6m I was feeling pain in the right hand side of my face, near the cheek and eye. It took me quite a while to go down and I had to keep ascending a little to sort things out. But we got through the dives, and the students did really well on the skills during the 2nd dive.
I’ve been taking lots of photos and movies throughout the course too, and will try to post a few of them here in the next day or so. I’ve also made CDs with these photos on for each of the student divers - hopefully it will be a nice memento for them and will give them an even better memory of our class.
In other news, the World Cup has started in Germany and England got off to their usual lacklustre performance against a determined Paraguay side. We didn’t play well though and must improve if we are to do anything in the tournament. It’s Japan vs Australia tonight and it seems like the whole of the country will be dressed in blue and cheering the “Samurai Blue” team on to victory. I’ll be supporting Japan of course, but my prediction is a 1-1 draw.
Last thing - I’ve been made a Moderator on the Okidiver forums! My plan to attain world domination through the dive industry is taking shape! Please take your time to visit and make a post of 2.
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