Bubbletrubble
Contributor
@gcarter: Just go out there and have fun! We were all twitchy newbies at one point. I remember one of my friends, when he was recently certified, invented a maneuver called the "death spiral" (inverted with head-down/feet-up while kicking and flapping arms) which he did towards the end of the dive in order to stay down because he was underweighted. After a couple of dives of that nonsense, we had him do a proper weight check."Twitchy" is a good word LOL. I thought I had it under better control until my son and I went diving with the GoPro. What a rude awakening, no style points for me! Getting better, but still a ways to go.
If your progression in the sport is anything like mine...
- At 50 dives, you'll feel you've nailed the buoyancy thing. Your gas consumption will have improved considerably. Shortly thereafter, you'll get a drysuit and the entire buoyancy control learning process will start over.
- At 100 dives, you'll once again feel pretty confident in your abilities.
- Somewhere between Dive #100 and Dive #200, you'll encounter a serious scuba-related problem and it will shake you up. After that point, you'll realize how dangerous the sport can be, and you'll likely change your diving habits for the better because of it.