Learning to Scuba dive

Back in April my lovely friend Luise won a voucher for the PADI Open Water elearning in a raffle.  She happens to be a super duper pro diver already, so being the lovely soul she is, gifted me the voucher as she knew Aric was keen on me learning to Scuba. (I guess I was semi-keen too – I just don’t like expensive hobbies as I am a cheap skate – so never even considered learning before.  Plus, it scares me, and I am a baby, and I am really stupid when it comes to knowing how to control my body in situations, so I was worried about pressing wrong buttons and dying of exploding lungs).

Anyways after months of putting it off, I booked it and suddenly the course came round and it was time to learn.

I turned up at the Dive Centre a bag of nerves and slightly disappointed at the size of our group – I was expecting maybe 4 people per dive instructor, instead we were a group of 6 per instructor, 12 in total. They had also messed up the pool booking and hadn’t told us, so we were expecting to go to Newmarket pools (a very handy 15 min walk from my house) and instead had to work out a last minute car pool ride to a pool 30 min drive away.  Not the best start.

After completing some paperwork and being fitted for wetsuits, we loaded the bags and cylinders into the trailer and headed to the pools.  I was so so nervous but luckily there were a few others who felt the same way which made me feel better. 

The first day was HORRIBLE.  I hated nearly all of it.  The pool we were at isn’t the best suited for scuba training – they didn’t know we were coming so we had to wait around for them to sort out lanes for us, then there was a kids water polo match happening in the rest of the pool so there was lots of whistles and shouting and screaming – not the most relaxing of environments and made it very hard to hear what the instructor was trying to tell us.  Because of limited space on poolside I felt like the getting the gear ready aspect was rushed.  We put on our BCDs and weighbelts and got into the pool.  We were given a few breaths underwater with our head in to get used to it, then went down on our knees and practiced things like taking our reg out and putting it back in and purging it, clearing our masks, breathing from someone else’s reg.  I felt like everything was very quick and we weren’t given time to learn – rather time to look at what our instructor was doing and then copy.  I was getting stressed out as I felt like we weren’t actually learning to swim and breathe underwater – rather learning what to do if your air stops working – which admittedly is important, but I would rather learn how to do swimming and breathing and feel comfortable before moving onto the more serious stuff. My mouth kept getting dry from the air, and my jaw hurt from clamping down on the mouthpiece.  My least favourite task of the day was taking my mask off and putting it back on and clearing it.  Even though I knew I had to breathe through my nose to clear my mask, my body wouldn’t obey me and would breathe through my mouth and my mask would remain filled with water, then I would panic and shoot up to the surface coughing and spluttering.  Writing this back makes me laugh as now I can do it fine and it really doesn’t seem like a big deal, but at the time it literally was the worst thing ever and I hated it.

That night I went to a party and told everyone how much I hated scuba diving and how I didn’t want to go back the next day.  Sunday morning I even had a little cry to myself as I didn’t want to go back but didn’t want to quit and let Aric and Luise down.   So I composed myself and went back and Sunday was SO MUCH BETTER.  This time we started with snorkelling skills (why we didn’t begin with this on Saturday I don’t know!) which I was fine with and got me warmed up for breathing underwater.  Then we geared up and did a bunch of other skills that I was a bit nervous of but needn’t have been – one of them being breathing from a freeflowing regulator.  I thought this would be horrible and I would be choking (as you have to have the regulator half out of your mouth and ‘sip’ the air) but it was fine and you don’t inhale any water at all. Finally, we did my most dreaded skill – removing your mask, swimming for a short distance without it, putting your mask back on and clearing it.  I was worried I would crash into something (I wear contacts so can’t open my eyes under water) but it was fine – the instructor literally dragged me round whilst I closed my eyes tight and thought hard about only breathing through my mouth, then we came to a stop and I put my mask back on and cleared it first time. I was so happy!! This day we even finished before the other group, so we had 10 mins or so to swim around and practice our buoyancy, and he made us remove our masks again, so by this time I was feeling much more comfortable with it.  When I got home Sunday night I felt like a proud kid who’d got a good score at school – I was so happy.

The following weekend we did our open water dives which again I was super nervous of – mainly of the fact it would be a lot colder, we would have outdoor things to contend with such a sealife and currents, and visibility wouldn’t be anything like it would be in the pool. We were also going deeper so it meant I couldn’t shoot up to the top if I panicked as I could cause damage to myself – I would need to remain composed and calm!

Our first day was spent at Matheson’s Bay and was a shore dive, meaning you have to swim out in all your gear to the descent point.  I found the swim quite a struggle – when you wear all the scuba equipment (plus I was wearing 2 wetsuits and a hood for insulation reasons) you’re pretty restricted – it’s like swimming with an uncomfortable, bulky backpack whilst wearing compression tights. It wasn’t fun.  You also have to swim on your back so you can’t see where you’re going. When we went to descend, none of us were weighted properly, so the instructor had to swim back to shore to get some more weights so that we’d sink.  Sigh.  The other nervous girl in our group had a leaky gas cylinder, so that added to our woes. After several failed descents, we were finally weighted properly and headed downwards into the dark murky depths of the bay.  

It was fine! We barely saw any fish, but it was quite surreal being under the sea and sitting on the sandy floor and swimming along with the kelp.  We did a couple of the skills we learned in the pool before working on our buoyancy – I was lucky and managed to pick it up quite quickly but the nervous lady kept suddenly shooting to the surface before being dragged back down by the instructor. When I realised I could control my buoyancy by long, slow, deep breaths it was a game changer!

Due to previous faffing about, we didn’t finish up and get home till much later than planned, which was frustrating as Aric was going to a work Armistice event I wanted to join him at but couldn’t. 

Our final day was spent diving at Goat Island.  I hitched a lift with the dive instructors and as we passed another dive shop, one of them said ‘ah, it would be lovely to work up here wouldn’t it – so pretty’.  The other one replied ‘Nah, I looked at them once but their standards are far too high.  They want everyone to smile all the time, you have to be on time all the time, too much work’.  This quote alone sums up the diveschool I chose to dive with.  I don’t recommend them (Dive HQ Westhaven).  When we were kitting up for the Goat Island dive I went through 3 different gas cylinders as each one of them leaked (and one was only half full) – I had to choose the one that leaked the least.  Diving was much easier this time (even with a leaky cylinder) as I opted for one wet suit and no hood – what I lacked in warmth I made up for in manouverability! We did a few more skills then a bit of an under water swim, before heading back home – where the trailer broke and we got stuck on the motorway for an hour until someone came to pick us up.  No one knew what to do, they couldn’t get hold of the owner and they didn’t know who the vehicle and tow insurance was with.  We spent the hour loading and unloading the trailer and the Ute, then loading it again into the van.  I was not impressed and very glad to eventually arrive home at 7pm – we were meant to be back at the shop at 4.30pm.  Because of this, we also still haven’t been certified and need to go back to the shop at some point this week to fill in the final paperwork. 

Anyway rants aside about the poor service we received and how terrible the company was – I am glad I did it, and relieved it is over.  Bring on the fun dives!