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congrats on passing. just keep in mind: Ascent = up. DEscent = down ;)

obviously that's not the case. :P there's no "dive log police" who will check the veracity of your logs - logging's pretty much for your own benefit & the "must have x dives" thing is really a rule-of-thumb indication to potential students what degree of experience is expected from them...

you need to push, and have a cooperating buddy ;) head down & steam away - we left a pretty good wake apparently: the boats moored nearby moved a bit :D

we had to exchange it. frankly with a mask for each of us it probably would have been too easy.

bah - i'm forever realising (more) what a sadistic maniac my instructor was - we went IN to the exercise with ONE mask between two. let me tell you - you don't get THAT on the 1st try :P (3 days & about 8 attempts i think it took us - i guess he thought we were going through skills a little...

just out of interest, did you & your buddy both have masks on for the gear exchange, or one between 2 ?

i'll make sure my estate posts a retraction

recall that the procedure is to check your time just before descent and then just before ascent. the difference of those times is the "bottom time" used for RDP calculations.

definitely YMMV - ginger is great for me (plus you don't have to take long in advance) but i know a lot of people on whom it has no effect. for myself - i mainly only get seasick: - when the boat stops moving forward & starts rolling in the swell - i'm too hot in my gear - i'm badly set...

with all due respect i think this is an overly-alarmist exaggeration. considering that some people - even experienced divers - need a significant amount of weight it makes sense to me to have the ability to distribute weight all over your gear, including belt, bc, tank, wherever you need it...

this is my reason for diving with weight spread across different systems: integrated & belt - losing 1/2 your weight hopefully less problem than losing all your weight - either from busted belt or having to remove your bc.

this is why diving with a buddy is a Good Thing. even in TS&M's dire scenario, the quickest, easiest & hence safest option is to get on your buddy's alternate & start an alt air ascent - i agree wholeheartedly with your summary NWGD. anything else is a fiddle, really - mucking about with...

using the correct stroke makes a *huge* difference in how well you swim on the surface - i know, since i never learned to do freestyle properly & used up vast amounts of energy doing my DM unassisted swim test (ie - no fins, etc). i've enrolled in swim classes to get my stroke corrected. i'd...

so my question is whether it's worth an extra $100 (+15%?) for the focusable light head version?

YMMV. i spend most of my time cruising along with frog kicks in splits with no trouble at all. i find i can do turns whilst horizontal, too (though i have no idea if they're really "helicopter" turns). back kicks haven't worked well for me - but that's almost certainly my technique as much...

absolutely they make finning easier: - my wife has a total right hip replacement - her leg is weaker & using it a lot can make it sore - she was using flat fins exactly like mine, but switched to split fins since they were heavier & helped with her floaty ankles - she reported feeling...

yah - my point exactly :P don't understand the "really suck" bit? you mean US measure (cu ft for a rated pressure) sucks cos it's complex in comparison? i dread to think what a 15L tank would look like - some kind of monster!

wow - the lack of metric really makes things difficult, sorry. even the whole concept of "tank size by air capacity" is bizarre :P anyone in the metric world worked on this stuff?

it makes the dive a bit less cruisy, i think - especially in poor visibility. it probably depends on communication & familiarity in the group, though.

the worst buddy situations i've seen have all been in OW classes i've helped with, and have often been men abandoning their female partners, whom they've presumably dragged along to learn to dive with them. these guys are *so* much stronger and just shoot off, leaving their "buddy" behind and...