RickInOz

Anyone who tells you Scuba Diving is a doss is lying through their teeth.

I’ve completed day 2 of 3 on my path to getting accredited to dive independently. Today we started with 2 open water (i.e.: sea) dives. The dive shop was a few hundred metres from the end of the jetty we dived from, which meant a long walk with 30kg of gear. Of course, in the water the stuff floats so becomes far easier to handle. We had to do a few skills and practice descending and ascending safely. In between, we had a pleasure dive and saw a lot of different species. It was my first time seeing a cuttlefish and stingray in the wild.

After a walk back to the shop for fresh air tanks we jumped in again. As with the first dive there were a few techniques to master, but most of them duplicated things we had done in the pool, so we finished up quickly and were able to do a bit of sightseeing. The hardest skill I’m still having some difficulty with is staying neutrally buoyant. Naturally as you take a breath in you become more buoyant and vice versa on exhalation. It takes a while to fine tune this so you don’t sink like a stone or bob up to the surface.

Tomorrow were going on the boat, so I’ll get some pictures taken of me before and after jumping in the water. In the meantime I’m going to get as much sleep as possible as I’m feeling pretty worn out. I didn’t realise it would be so much hard work, but it was certainly good fun.