A weekend perfect for diving… so I did!
Firstly, I know there are some issues with the current blog layout at the moment, namely the fact that it’s almost impossible to add comments to most blog entries. Rest assured that I do know about this problem and am working with the powers that be to get it rectified. At the moment, stick with it and if you would like to contact me then get in touch with the contact link at the top of this page.
Well the weather over the past 7 days has been absolutely glorious. Sunshine almost all day, only a breath of wind and usually a shower in the evening to take the edge off the heat. It’s the kind of weather that gives you beautiful sea conditions, and it gave me a busy weekend of dive teaching. On Friday night I went straight from work over to pick a guy up who had flown in from Ishigaki for the weekend. He was already a diver but was wanting to do his Advanced Open Water course. We headed up to Sunabe to get gear and tanks, and had 2 really sweet dives. The first was a night dive (although to be fair it was a dusk/night dive), and the second was an AWARE Fish ID dive. There were quite a few fish about and the soft coral down there at night is really very special.
One thing I have to comment on is this guy’s air consumption. He was a pretty big fella, but he certainly sucked down on that tank! I’d told him that we would turn around at 100 bar and then surface between 70 and 50 bar. So we headed down to about 16-18m and swam along the reef for around 12 minutes. As we went round a corner I enquired as to this guy’s air. He showed me his gauge and it read about 75 bar! “Time to ascend a little and head back”, thinks I! We went up to around 9m and returned to the entry ASAP with me checking his gauge for him quite a bit. If the guy was an OW student I could have understood him not checking his SPG, but he was already a certified diver and should have kept an eye on it. But we surfaced with him on about 30 bar and me a tad under 150. I talked to him about it briefly and mentioned that he needs to track his air a little more. He also needed to start communicating his air pressure to people, rather than just showing them his gauge and getting them to read it. On the 2nd dive, I was determined to give us some bottom time at least, and so we kept quite shallow. It was still a relatively short dive, but at least it was longer than the previous one and we saw some pretty cool fish. I drove home feeling a little weary, but looking forward to the week ahead and getting some more people certified. Just as I got home I got a call from one of my OW students; she didn’t know if she would be able to make it on Saturday as she was going out and would probably be drinking. Ho hum…
On Saturday I picked this Ishigaki guy up again and we did a Deep dive (although could only find about 22m of depth at Sunabe), a Multi-level dive (yay - let’s use The Wheel!) and finally a Navigation Dive. Those dives were pretty nice and uneventful, although I was concentrating on my student quite a lot and wasn’t looking out for cool stuff so much myself. Got an email mid-morning from the student who was going out - apparently she wasn’t hungover but was probably too sleep to dive. So after I’d finished the AOW course I grabbed a coffee before heading back home with another cert under my belt to wash my gear and prepare for the OW course on Sunday. Picked up both students so the car was full to bursting point! But we got up to Sunabe on Sunday morning and I got some tanks and a few bits of gear that I needed. We then kitted up and I talked to them a little about OW Dive 3. I intended on doing the CESA first so that we’d have the minimum about of nitrogen in our bodies when doing it. Got one student to hold onto the float while I descended with the other. This student got to around 2 and a half metres and couldn’t clear her ears. She tried for a couple of minutes before ascending. I told her not to worry, and that I’d go with the other diver for their CESA before coming back up and trying again. After what seemed like an eternity of clearing and edging furhter underwater, she got down to 6m and did the CESA. She then managed to get down and do the other skills, but then proceeded to tell me when she was down there it was hurting her. I reminded her that she shouldn’t feel pain during a dive through her ears, and if it starts to occur that she should ascend a little. As it happens, she didn’t feel like she could make the 2nd dive so I just did it with the other student. That dive was nice, and we even got a glimpse of an octopus before it scurried away (or whatever octopii do) into a little crevice.
Didn’t get to sign either of the OW students off, but hopefully I’ll be able to do that in the very near future as I want to get this first course out of the way. Then I can properly assess it and work out how to improve. I will freely admit that dive instructing is a difficult job, especially as an independent instructor where you have to arrange everything yourself. It’s probably a lot more stressful than I anticipated it would be. But the rewards come when you pass on knowledge and are able to certify students, and hopefully the number of certs I get will increase quickly over the next few months. I’m not going to hit my target of 25 certs by Xmas due to a number of factors, but I’ll get there as soon as I can.
So far it’s 2 students certified and 23 to go, but with another 4 very close to being certified. I’ve got another busy week of teaching in store and then next weekend I will hopefully get to certify the other students. I’ll be in contact later on in the week but in the meantime, take care and dive safely.
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