annlaur
Contributor
Bonjour everyone
I joined a dive club affiliated with the FFESSM (the Frend diving federation) here in Paris a few weeks ago and just wanted to share that experience with you. Hopefully this thread will turn into a sort of dive journal, like TSandM did on her blog... (And hopefully it will help me get to her level
)
First of, a few words of introduction. I'm a 34 yr-old French female who never was into sports and exercise until doing a Padi OW course in Mexico in January 2004. It just blew my mind so much, the sensations and the beauty of the reefs, that I cancelled everything else planned on my trip to just stay in the Caribbean and dive.
Of course I had buoyancy issues as most new divers, but felt very comfy in the water, no problem doing backroll entries or taking off reg and mask underwater for the sake of looking better whilst the DM was taking videos.
Then I went back to France and didn't dive for 11 months until I went to Egypt to dive the Red Sea. I had a couple of distressing experiences there (related in
This thread ), that left me very anxious in the water. Last June, I went diving for a week in the Mediterranean near Marseille with an instructor, so I could shake off the anxiety and work on my skills. I had a lot of trouble doing basic skills (mask removal especially, took me 3 dives to be able to do it without panicking) and also realized how poor my buoyancy and finning were.
Soooo.... After getting a lot of good advice on this board (and practicing clearing my mask under the shower), I signed up for a Sept. thru June diving class at a local pool in northern Paris.
As I said, the club is affiliated with the French federation, itself affiliated with the international CMAS. The levels they give you are no nonsense (level 1, level 2, level 3...). My PADI OW got me the equivalent of Level 1 (which means I'm allowed to go to 60 feet WITH a Level 4 or above diver, basically a DM or instructor). To go dive with a friend who is not Level 4 certified, you need to get your Level 2. Which is what I'll be doing for the next few months.
The club is also a Law 1901 Association, in other words it's non profit
. They charged me 190 euros (less than 250 dollars) for the year, including liability, personnal insurance and lending of equipment (although we will need to buy our own wetsuits and computers at some point during the year). We meet every Monday at the pool for practice, every other Thursday in a classroom for theory (exam is in May) and once a month at a "fosse" (don't know the translation:280: It's a small and deep indoors pool designed for divers).
We will also take trips to dive in the ocean and in quarries, of course that's extra.
CLASS 1.
After registering with the president of the club, a sweet older man who answered all of my questions with great patience, I met my instructor, Philippe, and immediately thought : Uh oh ! This one is gonna make me suffer.
aranoid: The guy is built like your cartoonesque PE teacher, V-shaped torso, huge pecs and so on. I wasn't disappointed. After a few words of introduction (during which he warned us that part of his job was to put us into shape), he had us do a "small warm up : 200 yards free style". Well, I don't even know how to freestyle, so I just did my usual frog swim, puffing and sweating. Just the warm up itself felt like it was enough exercise for me, but we were far from being done. Kicking with our fins while holding onto a board (I was doing it all wrong and my brand new Rondine were soon killing my legs), freestyling with our arms only (I put my mask and snorkel on for this one) while holding the board between our legs, then some freediving in the deep end of the pool (couldn't hold my breath for more than a few seconds... guess it's time to quit smoking ! :no )
We ended the session doing a few drills, and I screwed up at the mask removal AGAIN. Couldn't even breathe thru my scuba without my mask on. Kept on breathing thru my nose for some odd reason. That really p...d me off !
I was SPENT after 2 hours of this, but felt good also and slept like a baby that night :sleepy: Then I woke up like a VERY OLD lady the following day, hurting everywhere from exercising muscles I didn't even know I had !!!
CLASS 2.
That one was pretty easy... I missed it ! Bad stomach flu. Yuck ! :yuck:
CLASS 3.
There's a new student in our group, a girl named Candice. So now that's four of us Level-2 students (2 guys and 2 girls), plus our instructor. She tells me she doesn't exercise either, and also has trouble with the mask drills, so now I don't feel so alone... Until she hits the water and starts kicking like she was a fish in a previous life ! :11: She even manages to keep up swimming alongside the instructor during the whole course, while everybody else is lagging behind... Me especially. They're all done doing their 10 laps when I still have 3 to go !!! Oh well. At this point I just decide I'll leave my ego at home and stop worrying about looking ridiculous. I'm here to learn. By the end of the class, the instructor tells me I've improved a lot in my finning and I even manage to do a nice mask removal.
I treat myself to a nice meal in a restaurant that night (boy, I'm starving after all this and can't really afford to lose weight).
CLASS 4.
Today we get to blow bubbles and don the club's scuba equipment, as we're going to the "fosse" on the following Wednesday. I find a BCD that suits me really well (first time !), an XS Cressi-Sub Aquapro 5. Before the fun begins, we need to swim several laps on the surface with our tank and empty BCD on (no weights nor wetsuit), I cheat a little by adding some air as I keep on sinking :54: Then spend quite some time standing and talking about what we're going to do underwater and pretty soon I'm freezing, as is everybody else. Will have to invest in a thin shorty !
The UW part is uneventful (a few drills, exercises to improve our buoyancy and so on), it feels good being down there even if the blue tiles don't rival in any way with the reefs of the Caribbean.
We get to keep "our" BCD so we can bring it to the "fosse", it won't fit in my mesh bad, so I hop on the bus carrying it on my shoulder with the driver giving me the look :spock: Maybe that's because my bag and BC are dripping and I leave a trail of water behind me...
FOSSE 1.
Candice, my classmate, is driving me to the "fosse" in the outskirts of Paris. After turning around and getting lost, we finally get to the "fosse de Charenton". It's inside a big sports complex that looks like it was built in the 70s. The changing rooms and shower areas are a bit run down and we both wish we had brought some sandals as the floor is dirty :yuck: The "fosse" itself is located in a small room with a sink and two buckets to rince the equipment. The "fosse" is a small oval-shaped pool, about 25 ft long and 12 ft wide. Maybe less. Half of it is 15ft deep, the other 45 ft deep. It's kind of a well. And there's about 15 divers about to enter the water. We have to be extra careful not to bump into each other. We start off doing drills in the shallow part before swimming towards the "well" and going down. It's pretty crowded at the bottom. We do more drills there and work on buoyancy, I'm doing OK until I lose a fin and lose my balance trying to recover it and put it back on. I bump into someone who bumps into somebody else, everything turns out OK but I feel nervous, especially since the vis is not so good, about 5 feet, and I can't see the others' eyes thru their masks. Maybe mine is fogged ? Anyways, I don't feel confident enough at this point to remove and defog it, so I just stay with a blurred vision and concentrate on my breathing and surroundings until it's time to go up.
On the way up, a very loud, scary, emergency alarm goes off. It startles me. At the same time, the instructor grabs me and pushes me away from a couple of other divers sharing air. I'm a bit freaked out. Turns out these two divers were only doing OOA drills for their Level 3 class, and the alarm was only the pool manager letting us know they were about to close the facility... Guess my anxiety issues are not solved yet !
... to be continued...
I joined a dive club affiliated with the FFESSM (the Frend diving federation) here in Paris a few weeks ago and just wanted to share that experience with you. Hopefully this thread will turn into a sort of dive journal, like TSandM did on her blog... (And hopefully it will help me get to her level
)First of, a few words of introduction. I'm a 34 yr-old French female who never was into sports and exercise until doing a Padi OW course in Mexico in January 2004. It just blew my mind so much, the sensations and the beauty of the reefs, that I cancelled everything else planned on my trip to just stay in the Caribbean and dive.
Of course I had buoyancy issues as most new divers, but felt very comfy in the water, no problem doing backroll entries or taking off reg and mask underwater for the sake of looking better whilst the DM was taking videos.
Then I went back to France and didn't dive for 11 months until I went to Egypt to dive the Red Sea. I had a couple of distressing experiences there (related in
This thread ), that left me very anxious in the water. Last June, I went diving for a week in the Mediterranean near Marseille with an instructor, so I could shake off the anxiety and work on my skills. I had a lot of trouble doing basic skills (mask removal especially, took me 3 dives to be able to do it without panicking) and also realized how poor my buoyancy and finning were.
Soooo.... After getting a lot of good advice on this board (and practicing clearing my mask under the shower), I signed up for a Sept. thru June diving class at a local pool in northern Paris.
As I said, the club is affiliated with the French federation, itself affiliated with the international CMAS. The levels they give you are no nonsense (level 1, level 2, level 3...). My PADI OW got me the equivalent of Level 1 (which means I'm allowed to go to 60 feet WITH a Level 4 or above diver, basically a DM or instructor). To go dive with a friend who is not Level 4 certified, you need to get your Level 2. Which is what I'll be doing for the next few months.
The club is also a Law 1901 Association, in other words it's non profit
. They charged me 190 euros (less than 250 dollars) for the year, including liability, personnal insurance and lending of equipment (although we will need to buy our own wetsuits and computers at some point during the year). We meet every Monday at the pool for practice, every other Thursday in a classroom for theory (exam is in May) and once a month at a "fosse" (don't know the translation:280: It's a small and deep indoors pool designed for divers).We will also take trips to dive in the ocean and in quarries, of course that's extra.
CLASS 1.
After registering with the president of the club, a sweet older man who answered all of my questions with great patience, I met my instructor, Philippe, and immediately thought : Uh oh ! This one is gonna make me suffer.
aranoid: The guy is built like your cartoonesque PE teacher, V-shaped torso, huge pecs and so on. I wasn't disappointed. After a few words of introduction (during which he warned us that part of his job was to put us into shape), he had us do a "small warm up : 200 yards free style". Well, I don't even know how to freestyle, so I just did my usual frog swim, puffing and sweating. Just the warm up itself felt like it was enough exercise for me, but we were far from being done. Kicking with our fins while holding onto a board (I was doing it all wrong and my brand new Rondine were soon killing my legs), freestyling with our arms only (I put my mask and snorkel on for this one) while holding the board between our legs, then some freediving in the deep end of the pool (couldn't hold my breath for more than a few seconds... guess it's time to quit smoking ! :no )We ended the session doing a few drills, and I screwed up at the mask removal AGAIN. Couldn't even breathe thru my scuba without my mask on. Kept on breathing thru my nose for some odd reason. That really p...d me off !
I was SPENT after 2 hours of this, but felt good also and slept like a baby that night :sleepy: Then I woke up like a VERY OLD lady the following day, hurting everywhere from exercising muscles I didn't even know I had !!!
CLASS 2.
That one was pretty easy... I missed it ! Bad stomach flu. Yuck ! :yuck:
CLASS 3.
There's a new student in our group, a girl named Candice. So now that's four of us Level-2 students (2 guys and 2 girls), plus our instructor. She tells me she doesn't exercise either, and also has trouble with the mask drills, so now I don't feel so alone... Until she hits the water and starts kicking like she was a fish in a previous life ! :11: She even manages to keep up swimming alongside the instructor during the whole course, while everybody else is lagging behind... Me especially. They're all done doing their 10 laps when I still have 3 to go !!! Oh well. At this point I just decide I'll leave my ego at home and stop worrying about looking ridiculous. I'm here to learn. By the end of the class, the instructor tells me I've improved a lot in my finning and I even manage to do a nice mask removal.
I treat myself to a nice meal in a restaurant that night (boy, I'm starving after all this and can't really afford to lose weight).
CLASS 4.
Today we get to blow bubbles and don the club's scuba equipment, as we're going to the "fosse" on the following Wednesday. I find a BCD that suits me really well (first time !), an XS Cressi-Sub Aquapro 5. Before the fun begins, we need to swim several laps on the surface with our tank and empty BCD on (no weights nor wetsuit), I cheat a little by adding some air as I keep on sinking :54: Then spend quite some time standing and talking about what we're going to do underwater and pretty soon I'm freezing, as is everybody else. Will have to invest in a thin shorty !
The UW part is uneventful (a few drills, exercises to improve our buoyancy and so on), it feels good being down there even if the blue tiles don't rival in any way with the reefs of the Caribbean.
We get to keep "our" BCD so we can bring it to the "fosse", it won't fit in my mesh bad, so I hop on the bus carrying it on my shoulder with the driver giving me the look :spock: Maybe that's because my bag and BC are dripping and I leave a trail of water behind me...
FOSSE 1.
Candice, my classmate, is driving me to the "fosse" in the outskirts of Paris. After turning around and getting lost, we finally get to the "fosse de Charenton". It's inside a big sports complex that looks like it was built in the 70s. The changing rooms and shower areas are a bit run down and we both wish we had brought some sandals as the floor is dirty :yuck: The "fosse" itself is located in a small room with a sink and two buckets to rince the equipment. The "fosse" is a small oval-shaped pool, about 25 ft long and 12 ft wide. Maybe less. Half of it is 15ft deep, the other 45 ft deep. It's kind of a well. And there's about 15 divers about to enter the water. We have to be extra careful not to bump into each other. We start off doing drills in the shallow part before swimming towards the "well" and going down. It's pretty crowded at the bottom. We do more drills there and work on buoyancy, I'm doing OK until I lose a fin and lose my balance trying to recover it and put it back on. I bump into someone who bumps into somebody else, everything turns out OK but I feel nervous, especially since the vis is not so good, about 5 feet, and I can't see the others' eyes thru their masks. Maybe mine is fogged ? Anyways, I don't feel confident enough at this point to remove and defog it, so I just stay with a blurred vision and concentrate on my breathing and surroundings until it's time to go up.
On the way up, a very loud, scary, emergency alarm goes off. It startles me. At the same time, the instructor grabs me and pushes me away from a couple of other divers sharing air. I'm a bit freaked out. Turns out these two divers were only doing OOA drills for their Level 3 class, and the alarm was only the pool manager letting us know they were about to close the facility... Guess my anxiety issues are not solved yet !
... to be continued...
. We decided to go diving on the Riviera for a weekend at the end of the month, before it gets too cold. And to go to the other "fosse" north of Paris, she's been there once and it's a lot nicer than the one the clubs uses. Seems I found myself a local dive buddy ! 
Hope that works out.
