ERP
Guest
I got the chance to go diving with Uncle Pug on Wednesday, we did two dives up at Mukilteo (Puget Sound).
I'm a new diver a whopping 11 dives to my name now, and I was a little nervous about diving with an experienced diver that I'd only ever met here on Scubaboard. It turns out that Uncle Pug is a great guy, easy going, I learned a lot, and really enjoyed the dives.
We met up at the divesite, and I got to see my first DIR rig up close. I was surprised just how streamlined the whole thing was, I have to admit, I'm very tempted by the harness and backplate setup (But then I'm a sucker for minimalism). Going over safety procedures prior to the dive pretty much sold me on the long hose primary aswell.
The first dive was just a tour of the area since the only time I'd been there previously I didn't get to take a look around. Vis was probably 10-15ft @<35ft and perhaps as high as 25ft below that, and the water was a toasty 54F at depth.
I got to demonstrate just how bad my buddy skills are early on the first dive by getting seperated twice in the space of about 5 minutes, after reuniting on the surface after the second seperation we had a short conversation (Uncle Pug was remarkably understanding) about staying together, and I managed to complete the rest of the dive without incident.
The scenery was the usual Puget Sound fair, Huge Starfish and anenomies, crabs etc etc, I just love this stuff . We followed a trail of crab shells hoping to find an octopus, but we didn't end up getting lucky on this count.
During the surface interval, after pouring some nice hot water down my wetsuit, we discussed trim, buoyancy control and my waving arms, Uncle Pug gave me some pointers to work on for the second dive.
I spent the dive trying to remember to keep my arms into my body, and keeping my hand off the BC inflator. At the end of the dive I might not have been able to hover 6 inches off the bottom head down like Uncle Pug, but I think I made some serious strides forwards towards half decent buoyancy control. My air consumption also improved significantly on the second dive.
Anyway just wanted to say thanks Uncle Pug. Hopefully we can dive again sometime.
I'm a new diver a whopping 11 dives to my name now, and I was a little nervous about diving with an experienced diver that I'd only ever met here on Scubaboard. It turns out that Uncle Pug is a great guy, easy going, I learned a lot, and really enjoyed the dives.
We met up at the divesite, and I got to see my first DIR rig up close. I was surprised just how streamlined the whole thing was, I have to admit, I'm very tempted by the harness and backplate setup (But then I'm a sucker for minimalism). Going over safety procedures prior to the dive pretty much sold me on the long hose primary aswell.
The first dive was just a tour of the area since the only time I'd been there previously I didn't get to take a look around. Vis was probably 10-15ft @<35ft and perhaps as high as 25ft below that, and the water was a toasty 54F at depth.
I got to demonstrate just how bad my buddy skills are early on the first dive by getting seperated twice in the space of about 5 minutes, after reuniting on the surface after the second seperation we had a short conversation (Uncle Pug was remarkably understanding) about staying together, and I managed to complete the rest of the dive without incident.
The scenery was the usual Puget Sound fair, Huge Starfish and anenomies, crabs etc etc, I just love this stuff . We followed a trail of crab shells hoping to find an octopus, but we didn't end up getting lucky on this count.
During the surface interval, after pouring some nice hot water down my wetsuit, we discussed trim, buoyancy control and my waving arms, Uncle Pug gave me some pointers to work on for the second dive.
I spent the dive trying to remember to keep my arms into my body, and keeping my hand off the BC inflator. At the end of the dive I might not have been able to hover 6 inches off the bottom head down like Uncle Pug, but I think I made some serious strides forwards towards half decent buoyancy control. My air consumption also improved significantly on the second dive.
Anyway just wanted to say thanks Uncle Pug. Hopefully we can dive again sometime.