Everything went wrong today. Advice needed.

[CT-Rich]

don't do that, there is never any excuse for not being neutrally buoyant unless you are intentionally trying to crawl across the bottom. Useful for hunting for things in rivers, but then you're not really diving, more excavating underwater. NB is not hard and diving is much more relaxing while being weightless. The point of fundies is that their skills are likely not the best skills and are clearly causing frustration, getting into a fundies class will break any bad habits, build better ones, and create a better overall comfort with being underwater because now things like neutral buoyancy, and proper propulsion techniques are not second nature instead of something you have to think about

I am not selling a course. I am not telling her to turn sand, I am saying focus on relaxing and breathing. She has skills, so does her husband, After half a dozen dives what she lacks is experience. If stress is the problem, then focus on stress. When she is relaxed she can trim her buoyancy. When she is relaxed and trim, she can work on what ever. Take care of the stress FIRST. Task loading is what gets divers into trouble, let her relax and first learn to think about herself awareness. I wasn't saying walk on the coral or bicycle kick. I said focus on relaxing, when she starts to move she will be doing it with a clear head. The only bad habit I've seen from her posts is stress, everything else is in flux.

 

[RJP]

maybe it comes back to the dive plan, or lack thereof in our case... the dive plan consisted of, "Ready? Let's go!" That's about it.

As the old expression says "If you fail to plan... you plan to fail."

Planning won't eliminate every little glitch, but it will eliminate some and help ensure that others aren't that big a deal. This is especially true for dives involving..
1.) New divers, or
2.) New sites, or
3.) New gear

So you had a triple-whammy here.

Live... and learn.

 

[Lorenzoid]

. . .

Do most new divers have at least one dive in the beginning that is crappy and overwhelming, for whatever reason? . . .

Yes.

It's great that you are trying to practice your skills and all that. But don't push yourselves too hard so soon. Just take a few nice, relaxing dives where you don't practice anything. If there is anything you might practice, try just practicing a few simple hand signals. The shallow springs are great places to do this. A slate is nice, but just practice the absolute basics first: staying together, signaling "okay" and getting a response, asking your buddy to signal his air pressure, signaling when to end the dive, etc. I wouldn't complicate things so soon with a slate--maybe get a few really simple dives in first. If something is that complex that it can't be communicated without a slate, maybe save it for a later dive.

As for NEW divers having a bad day, heck, everyone finds themselves having a dive that didn't start out well and just seemingly made the rest of it that much worse. My wife and I have had days like you described. It took a long time to work on some of the things that used to make us uncomfortable. Tackle them slowly. Just get used to diving together.

 

[beachbummer28]

Great post Brandon!

I would add that if at all possible, start buying your own gear. We actually started during our OW course. It makes a world of difference. Was the ill fitting wetsuit yours or a rental?

It's unfortunately mine but I bought it hesitantly - "It doesn't fit now ... maybe it will fit later...", as if that ever worked out well. I have a shorty that fits perfectly and it's just a matter of a different brand, so I'm going to shop around. I do want to get my own BCD as soon as possible. Our usual dive shop has pretty good Aqua Lung BCs that aren't beat up and they fit me well, but the ones we rented today were just a bad fit, worn out, I kept having to try to cinch it tighter even though I was in the smallest size, etc. A good BC that is mine would take a lot of the frustration out of rented gear.

I agree with taking it slow, and I do think we're trying to do too much, too soon. The dives are simple but we're cramming so much into them that it can get overwhelming, especially if you're trying to do everything perfectly (perfect buoyancy, perfect communication, perfect underwater pictures, perfect techniques! Ahhhhh!!!). Next time I'm going back to the artificial reef where I know what to expect and can plan the dive a bit better, and see if I can get another good, no frills, laidback dive in to trump this not-so-great one.

 

[tbone1004]

while I would normally recommend against photography at this stage of the game, it can actually be advantageous to analyze everything after the dive. That said, I would highly recommend meandering up to cave country and renting a SS BP/W setup. Cave Country Dive Shop has some of the cheapest rental prices around if you can get up near Ginnie. Alternatively, call Deep Sea Supply and for under $500 you can have a top of the line BP/W that will fit much better than any BCD on the market. If you're under about 5'9" then you'll likely need a short backplate which they have and a few other brands do as well. It can make a world of difference in your diving having a properly fitting bc that doesn't restrict you.

 

[Steve_C]

Do most new divers have at least one dive in the beginning that is crappy and overwhelming, for whatever reason?

Ha

Was certified in a quarry. No problems. Now it is a month later and I am anxious to do my first OW dive. Instructor arranges for an instabuddy out at the quarry. In the meantime the viz has gone kaput. Meet stranger and we do just like in class. We swim out and then drop. I always go down horizontal. First time I see the bottom is half a second before I plant my face in the silt Viz is maybe a foot. Loose buddy almost instantly Go up (it is only 20 ft deep there). Find bubbles, drop down and locate buddy He is a same quarry buddy and he is lost again within two minutes So we repeat the up, locate bubbles, find buddy and loose him in two minutes two more times. Then I say this is not fun and thumb the diving that day.

Next dive is with another instant buddy on French Reef in the Florida Keys That starts out rough because they need 4 divers and there is only me and some stranger from Chicago. We say the heck with it and pay for two ghost divers Awesome dives 80 ft of viz, beautiful coral and lots of fish.

 

[DogDiver]

In a very simple explanation of your situation. Your task loaded. I would suggest the next few dives, especially at Florida springs, hire a local dive master or instructor to help you out. [emoji41]


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[CT-Rich]

delete post

 

[dumpsterDiver]

Maybe someone out there in scubaboard land has advice that will help after my disaster of a dive today. My husband and I are newly OW certified divers and a few weeks ago we did our first "real" dive by ourselves. It was a shore dive on a fairly shallow (15 - 20 feet) artificial reef and it was amazing! The only hiccup was that we weren't really communicating very well underwater and weren't staying side by side, so there was some frustration there and I surfaced mid-way through. I didn't have to surface but I felt anxious not being able to talk underwater, so I did anyway. I posted here about it and people gave really good suggestions and encouragement that diver/buddy communication is something that improves with time.

So today we did our second dive, at a local spring. We were both really excited and everything was fine starting out. I admit that I hate the gear hauling part of diving, mainly because I'm a 5'4", 115 pound female and everything is heavy as hell. (No, I don't want any cheese with my whine, thanks anyway. :d) So our dives usually start out with the gear part kinda sucking, but once we're in the water everything is awesome. Today that was not the case.

We got there, geared up, and everything was still okay. I was a little anxious because we had to rent gear from a new place and the quality sucked compared to our usual dive shop. It was usable though so okay, whatever. We get in the water, descend down to about 40 feet to look at a cave entrance, and we're having fun. My husband was trying to work on his buoyancy for a few minutes after this and I thought he was having problems, but after surfacing and asking each other, I figured out he was just working on skills. (Yes, I thumbed the dive just to surface and immediately exclaim, "WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?!" Prooooooobably should have talked through those anxious feelings creeping in at that point in time before going back down, but hindsight is 20/20.) So we go back down and wander around. At one point he signals to share air (just practicing), and I give him my alternate except he can't breathe through it. He immediately shakes his head and switches back to his reg, and now I'm worried. He signals okay to me though and I breathe out of it and everything is fine, so I don't know what happened. I'm now reminded of the uneasy fact that we can't TALK underneath water, and I'm worried about the quality of the gear. After this he signals that he'll follow me, knowing that I want to explore more. Okay, great. The only problem is that I don't know anything about this spring and have no clue where I'm going, so I kind of just wander aimlessly. At one point we end up in 4 feet of water and I'm thinking, "Maybe it gets deeper again? We'll keep going?" My husband surfaces and frustratingly says, "We're in 4 feet of water. It just stays 4 feet and you can float down it." So now I'm annoyed at everything - not knowing where I'm going, the crappy gear, the tank that's sitting too high on my back and keeps hitting me in the head when I glance up, the brand new wetsuit I'm wearing for the first time that really isn't that great of a fit and feels like it's choking me, the fact that spring diving is now quite boring to me after ocean diving, the fact that I'm super stressed at work right now and diving is supposed to be a FUN outlet but I wasn't having fun, EVERYTHING. In a normal situation I would have been able to talk myself back down but I couldn't today for some reason. Everything just piled on and before I knew it, it was a full-blown anxiety thing. I irritably descended and quickly realized I didn't even have my reg in my mouth, and shot back up sputtering and feeling like I was going to scream. FROM FOUR FEET OF WATER! We called the dive, headed back home, and now I guess I'm trying to figure out if diving just isn't for me.

I'm trying to nail down my source of anxiety and maybe it comes back to the dive plan, or lack thereof in our case. The past two times we've dove (this time being our second time), we didn't really have a thought-out, vocalized dive plan before we went down. The dive sites were new to us both and we weren't really sure what to expect, so the dive plan consisted of, "Ready? Let's go!" That's about it. I realize now that if we would have talked for 5 minutes and planned to, say, look at the cave entrance for 10 minutes, then work on skills for a few minutes, then map out where we were going to explore to next and who was going to lead, I would have felt better and knew what to expect. I don't know if I would have had the urge to surface to talk and say "where are we going? what are we doing?" if we had had a dive plan. Or hell, I don't know, maybe the lack of a dive plan doesn't bother most people this much and this just isn't for me.

Did anyone else have problems at first with the small little stressors creeping in and causing a really crappy dive? Is it dumb to throw in the towel now and just say "diving isn't for me", or is this not something that happens to people who are made to dive? I feel discouraged and sad because I had a lot of fun on our shore dive, and I want to be able to do this sport. The idea of never going diving again may or may not be making me cry in frustration on this otherwise beautiful Sunday afternoon. Help!

We (I) at least tried hard to explain to you (in the prior) thread that you (two) must attempt to plan your dive so there is NO TALKING, no discussions, no big choices, no disagreements. You should be planning simple dives with the intent to always avoid coming to the surface to talk etc.

That may sound harsh, but I think that is a good goal. You may still want/need to surface to talk, but try hard to avoid it. When you begin to do "real" dives, you really can't be doing that. Plus, for ocean diiving the surface can be rough, the LAST thing I like to do is to be talking on the surface. It is a good way to inhale water. I like to keep a snorkel or a regulator in my mouth when in the water.

Somehow you need to move away from this psychological crutch that you need to surface to talk.

Also, it really does sound like you are somewhat over the top with organization and planning. That is fine, if that is the way you are and it makes you feel comfortable... just do it before going down..

 

[Steve_C]

I but assuming you only have PADI OW, you have to remember that by and large, they aren't really training you to conduct dives on your own.

Tbone gives a lot of good advice but I will disagree with this one a bit. I was SDI OW but a similar program. After that there are two things I needed. Get more skilled in the water is one and classes can help with that. But in classes you still are being babysat to some extent. And classes, and I have taken a number with different agencies, tend to push you to keep up, get the task done, etc. Your ability to make decisions in many classes is limited. The other thing you need to work on is conducting your own dive. Making decisions for your self. That comes with practice making those decisions. In a Nav class in low viz you may run a compass heading while in a real dive you may decide to stay near the anchor line and use a reel to explore the area.

Pick a nice easy place to dive and do some dives. I find it helpful when I enter the water to just stop for a bit. Dial in my buoyancy. Get mellow. Look around. And then start exploring. Any time it gets stressful. Just stop. Breath in a deep relaxed manner. Center yourself and then continue. Have a stop I need to get centered signal.