Scuba Diving

In the summer of 1999, I qualified to Advanced Open Water level just before going to Lanzarote on holiday. You can see my report in the separate section from the main menu. This was exactly what scuba diving was about for me, warm water, excellent visibility and new found friends.

Summer of 2000 found me in Gran Canaria on holiday, a few weeks before my Rescue Diver and Medic First Aid courses. I had my head in the manuals for most of the holiday in preparation. The course was very hard work but also extremely enjoyable and gave me a real sense of achievement. I was taking around a year in between each major training course with a number of speciality courses taken in between. By the time I qualified as Rescue Diver, I already had gained five specialities so I applied to PADI for the Master Scuba Diver rating, which is the highest non-vocational qualification in the PADI system.

Before taking a few months off for heart surgery, May 2001 saw me on an excellent trip to the Red Sea, diving from the liveaboard 'Miss Veena'. I was not sure either 'when' or 'if' I would be diving again and this was a real high point of my diving career to date.

By November 2001, having thankfully returned to diving late summer, I decided it was time to start the professional side of dive training and enroled in the PADI Divemaster course due to start mid January 2002. This took a great deal of preparation both physically and mentally. The physical side included timed swims to confirm stamina which I definitely needing training to build up. The theory side takes in many aspects of diving including Chemistry and Physics of Diving, Physiology, Dive Equipment, The Aquatic Realm, Supervising General Diving Activities, Rescue Skills, Assisting Student Divers in Training, Dive Theory, Decompression Theory, Divemaster Conducted Programs, Risk Management and the Business of Diving. There were also many practical skills and problem solving excercises to be mastered during the course. I have to say it was very hard work but absolutely worth the effort and although I have qualified I know that this is just the start of the learning curve for me. This course has allowed me to look at my diving in a totally different way and the knowledge that learning is a continuous process for the future.

In March 2002, my wife decided that she would learn to dive so we could go on a diving holiday together to Gozo in August. This trip was organised by my mates at www.divefun.co.uk and promised to be a great week away. I booked her on an Open Water course that was planned for April at Gildenburgh. She did really well in the pool sessions and because the open water temperature was still fairly cool did the drysuit orientation to do the dives in the lake. She did have some problems with the fit of her mask in the open water but managed to overcome these to get her open water ticket in April. During the holiday, I had booked her on the Adventures in Diving course which led to an advanced diver qualification by the end of the holiday. She definitely prefers diving in warm water with lots of visibility but carried on diving in the lakes when we returned until the beginning of November when she took and passed her drysuit speciality course.

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