Mantra
Contributor
Hi Scubaboarders!
Ive just passed the first anniversary of my OW certification, and am feeling reflective and grateful. I thought Id share the journey of my first year of diving (and of Scubaboard). This is LONG, and I dont expect anyone much to read it, but its a way of marking a milestone for myself.
Anyway, I was just reading this thread about buoyancy in the New Divers forum:
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/ne...5920-buoyancy-1-0-sudden-fly-away-effect.html
And there are Lynne and Andy telling this guy exactly what he needs to hear right now. Two instructors of the highest calibre sharing their expertise out of generosity rather than obligation, and others piling in with awesome advice too.
This was exactly my experience when I joined Scubaboard a year ago. I, too, was brand spanking new out of OW, and blown away by breathing under water and flapping about for the first time. I lurked for a while and asked my first question about how best to hold a blue water safety stop with no line on the 4th of March last year. I havent stopped asking questions since, which is why I am one of those dreaded members whose post count exceeds their number of dives
In many ways, Scubaboard has been my most important mentor over this first year of diving.
A year has passed now and Im approaching a hundred dives (as is my beautiful wife-slash-dive-buddy). I didnt expect what this year would hold. Ive explored wrecks, swum alongside sharks half as big again as I am. Ive been within touching distance of mantas, flamboyant cuttlefish, frogfish, seasnakes, several types of sharks, pygmy seahorses, stingrays in their hundreds, barracuda and pipefish not to mention a hundred kinds of those crazy little things called nudibranchs which I hadnt so much as heard of Christmas 2012. Ive seen flame fire shells flashing their electrical lightning-displays, thresher sharks circling in dawn waters, octopus going from fake-rock camoflauge to bright-colour threat display in an instant. Ive seen a swarm of cuttlefish passing by in the inky blackness of a night ocean, their ghostly topographies lit from within by the beam of a dive torch. Ive swum in a phosphorescent ocean, my arms trailing stars, with the moon visible overhead on the other side of that silver veil where the water and sky meet.
Ive heard (and felt in the hollows of my body) humpback whales singing as they passed me by.
Ive seen ecosystems on the edge of collapse.
Ive been enriched and uplifted by this new sport in ways I didnt anticipate. I took this up for fun. Its been fun! But its been more than that as well.
Scubaboard has been a big part of this journey.
My experience of my Open Water course was typical for a holiday-learner, I think. Standards (PADI) were met. Everything of importance was explained, and my instructor was thorough, professional, experienced and competent. We took a four-day course while on holiday in Bali. There were two-day OW certification courses on offer, but even then those sounded like dangerously rushed for training in something that was already making me nervous. I was never a particularly water person before this, you see, so this has been a life changer in that respect too now.
Anyway, our instructor was thorough and conscientious, and the course went well. It was a lot of new information very quickly. We were overweighted for ease of training. The course did precisely what it was designed to do it gave us the basics we needed to know to dive in open water as a buddy pair within acceptable margins of safety. Did we learn how to dive well? Impossible in that timeframe. But we knew enough not to get ourselves hurt while learning more through doing. From that point, the onus was then very much on us, as divers, to be diligent in continuing to consciously improve.
And this is where Scubaboard came in. It has been hands down the best continuing education resource I have found, and in many profound ways the culture here has shaped my attitude and my practices as a diver. This was the benefit of arriving here early, I think. I was newly certified, without a community of divers or mentors around me, and I didnt know what I didnt know.
Compared to many real-world spaces, Scubaboard strikes me as a safety-conscious and best-practice oriented culture. It doesnt tolerate recklessness gladly. Its core values (to the extent that value-cohesion can exist in any large group of people) encourage mastery of skills, good training, and informed decision making.
So right from the get-go I got the message that this sport had the potential for mishap (my first week was spent reading the accidents-and-incidents forum start to finish), but that good training and practice mitigated that potential. Diving is fun and its fun in the same way sex is fun. Love makes it better, as does respect, familiarity and practice.
We joined a local dive club and started diving every fortnight. We were (thanks again to SB) diligent about practising our skills and drills. Taking my mask off, for example, was troublesome to me at first, even kneeling, overweighted in 5m of water as I did in OW. So I was sure to do this at every opportunity in the shallows at the end of a dive, hanging onto a rope during my safety stop, and so on. Soon I could do it horizontally in open water without too much discomfort or loss of buoyancy. We were very conscientious buddies, never skimping on our pre-dive checks and post-dive debriefs, keeping situational awareness of the other at the top of our goals for each dive, continually improving our in-water communication and so on.
We took training slow reading all we could about buoyancy and propulsion to begin with, and only taking AOW after 30 dives when we felt we were vaguely competent with all the OW stuff. At the time, AOW felt like it didnt add much, but the exposure to different environments like night diving opened more doors for our own later exploration.
Ive always been the scholarly type, and never much good at sports. It has been wonderful to see myself gradually getting good at a physical activity! It may not be as challenging as base jumping or whatever, but seeing myself slowly become competent at something physical and relatively complex has been very enriching. I was looking through my computer logs the other day my SAC in my first few dives was in the high 20s (38, to be honest, on one barely-controlled first encounter with strong current). After a while, it settled at around 20litres a minute. And then, after 50 or so dives, it began creeping lower and lower, recently getting as low as 11.5 litres a minute as I have learned to relax and feel comfortable. I expect it will keep getting better, although perhaps not as markedly. Getting a half-decent frog kick was a challenge for me (my legs couldnt seem to learn what to do my wife picked it up in an instant), and rewarding to feel come together. And buoyancy! It started coming together for me after 40 dives or so, and now I can float quite stably (eight times out of ten anyway) with my mask centimetres from the smallest of creatures and stay put just where I want to be without harming or spooking them.
Being around people like you, and hearing the voices of experience here made me want to be a better diver right from the outset, and it turns out Im a better diver because of it. I have miles to go, of course, but am at a point where I can just be present during a dive and enjoy it rather than focus too much on how Im doing what Im doing.
We have dove Tulumben in Bali, Byron Bay and many sites in South East Queensland here at home, and Malapascua, Bohol, Moalboal and Dauin (and their associated sites like Apo and Pescador and Panglao Islands) in the Philippines. Weve gradually gotten deeper and longer in our diving. Anything under an hour dive time feels short now, and we are comfortable to the limits of recreational depths, even including being narced, although depth for depths sake holds little interest. As I alluded to above, I have seen things I never even imagined were down there.
Diving has:
Given me a series of wonderful adventures to share together with my wife. A good dive is a great thing to share with the person you love! After being all fussy about getting our individual buoyancy right for months there, I confess we now often find ourselves holding hands while drifting along a wall, or looking at an exciting critter.
Introduced us to a number of new friends from all walks of life.
Revealed to me a whole new side of where I live. It has made my hometown interesting again (who knew the diving would be good in a city that is near both Byron Bay and the Barrier Reef, huh)?
It has opened my eyes to ecological concerns I knew intellectually were out there, but have now experientially been a part of.
It has encouraged me to take up swimming and stop smoking, both of which are good things for a fat guy in his early 40s (I confess to the odd slip).
So thanks, Scubaboard. Good instructors are important to find, and you have been a superlative one knowledgeable about every minutae, and on hand 24 hours a day for the dumbest question. Moreover, your ideals have become mine, and for that I cannot thank you deeply enough.
Peace, all, and happy bubbles!
Craig.
Ive just passed the first anniversary of my OW certification, and am feeling reflective and grateful. I thought Id share the journey of my first year of diving (and of Scubaboard). This is LONG, and I dont expect anyone much to read it, but its a way of marking a milestone for myself.
Anyway, I was just reading this thread about buoyancy in the New Divers forum:
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/ne...5920-buoyancy-1-0-sudden-fly-away-effect.html
And there are Lynne and Andy telling this guy exactly what he needs to hear right now. Two instructors of the highest calibre sharing their expertise out of generosity rather than obligation, and others piling in with awesome advice too.
This was exactly my experience when I joined Scubaboard a year ago. I, too, was brand spanking new out of OW, and blown away by breathing under water and flapping about for the first time. I lurked for a while and asked my first question about how best to hold a blue water safety stop with no line on the 4th of March last year. I havent stopped asking questions since, which is why I am one of those dreaded members whose post count exceeds their number of dives
In many ways, Scubaboard has been my most important mentor over this first year of diving.
A year has passed now and Im approaching a hundred dives (as is my beautiful wife-slash-dive-buddy). I didnt expect what this year would hold. Ive explored wrecks, swum alongside sharks half as big again as I am. Ive been within touching distance of mantas, flamboyant cuttlefish, frogfish, seasnakes, several types of sharks, pygmy seahorses, stingrays in their hundreds, barracuda and pipefish not to mention a hundred kinds of those crazy little things called nudibranchs which I hadnt so much as heard of Christmas 2012. Ive seen flame fire shells flashing their electrical lightning-displays, thresher sharks circling in dawn waters, octopus going from fake-rock camoflauge to bright-colour threat display in an instant. Ive seen a swarm of cuttlefish passing by in the inky blackness of a night ocean, their ghostly topographies lit from within by the beam of a dive torch. Ive swum in a phosphorescent ocean, my arms trailing stars, with the moon visible overhead on the other side of that silver veil where the water and sky meet.
Ive heard (and felt in the hollows of my body) humpback whales singing as they passed me by.
Ive seen ecosystems on the edge of collapse.
Ive been enriched and uplifted by this new sport in ways I didnt anticipate. I took this up for fun. Its been fun! But its been more than that as well.
Scubaboard has been a big part of this journey.
My experience of my Open Water course was typical for a holiday-learner, I think. Standards (PADI) were met. Everything of importance was explained, and my instructor was thorough, professional, experienced and competent. We took a four-day course while on holiday in Bali. There were two-day OW certification courses on offer, but even then those sounded like dangerously rushed for training in something that was already making me nervous. I was never a particularly water person before this, you see, so this has been a life changer in that respect too now.
Anyway, our instructor was thorough and conscientious, and the course went well. It was a lot of new information very quickly. We were overweighted for ease of training. The course did precisely what it was designed to do it gave us the basics we needed to know to dive in open water as a buddy pair within acceptable margins of safety. Did we learn how to dive well? Impossible in that timeframe. But we knew enough not to get ourselves hurt while learning more through doing. From that point, the onus was then very much on us, as divers, to be diligent in continuing to consciously improve.
And this is where Scubaboard came in. It has been hands down the best continuing education resource I have found, and in many profound ways the culture here has shaped my attitude and my practices as a diver. This was the benefit of arriving here early, I think. I was newly certified, without a community of divers or mentors around me, and I didnt know what I didnt know.
Compared to many real-world spaces, Scubaboard strikes me as a safety-conscious and best-practice oriented culture. It doesnt tolerate recklessness gladly. Its core values (to the extent that value-cohesion can exist in any large group of people) encourage mastery of skills, good training, and informed decision making.
So right from the get-go I got the message that this sport had the potential for mishap (my first week was spent reading the accidents-and-incidents forum start to finish), but that good training and practice mitigated that potential. Diving is fun and its fun in the same way sex is fun. Love makes it better, as does respect, familiarity and practice.
We joined a local dive club and started diving every fortnight. We were (thanks again to SB) diligent about practising our skills and drills. Taking my mask off, for example, was troublesome to me at first, even kneeling, overweighted in 5m of water as I did in OW. So I was sure to do this at every opportunity in the shallows at the end of a dive, hanging onto a rope during my safety stop, and so on. Soon I could do it horizontally in open water without too much discomfort or loss of buoyancy. We were very conscientious buddies, never skimping on our pre-dive checks and post-dive debriefs, keeping situational awareness of the other at the top of our goals for each dive, continually improving our in-water communication and so on.
We took training slow reading all we could about buoyancy and propulsion to begin with, and only taking AOW after 30 dives when we felt we were vaguely competent with all the OW stuff. At the time, AOW felt like it didnt add much, but the exposure to different environments like night diving opened more doors for our own later exploration.
Ive always been the scholarly type, and never much good at sports. It has been wonderful to see myself gradually getting good at a physical activity! It may not be as challenging as base jumping or whatever, but seeing myself slowly become competent at something physical and relatively complex has been very enriching. I was looking through my computer logs the other day my SAC in my first few dives was in the high 20s (38, to be honest, on one barely-controlled first encounter with strong current). After a while, it settled at around 20litres a minute. And then, after 50 or so dives, it began creeping lower and lower, recently getting as low as 11.5 litres a minute as I have learned to relax and feel comfortable. I expect it will keep getting better, although perhaps not as markedly. Getting a half-decent frog kick was a challenge for me (my legs couldnt seem to learn what to do my wife picked it up in an instant), and rewarding to feel come together. And buoyancy! It started coming together for me after 40 dives or so, and now I can float quite stably (eight times out of ten anyway) with my mask centimetres from the smallest of creatures and stay put just where I want to be without harming or spooking them.
Being around people like you, and hearing the voices of experience here made me want to be a better diver right from the outset, and it turns out Im a better diver because of it. I have miles to go, of course, but am at a point where I can just be present during a dive and enjoy it rather than focus too much on how Im doing what Im doing.
We have dove Tulumben in Bali, Byron Bay and many sites in South East Queensland here at home, and Malapascua, Bohol, Moalboal and Dauin (and their associated sites like Apo and Pescador and Panglao Islands) in the Philippines. Weve gradually gotten deeper and longer in our diving. Anything under an hour dive time feels short now, and we are comfortable to the limits of recreational depths, even including being narced, although depth for depths sake holds little interest. As I alluded to above, I have seen things I never even imagined were down there.
Diving has:
Given me a series of wonderful adventures to share together with my wife. A good dive is a great thing to share with the person you love! After being all fussy about getting our individual buoyancy right for months there, I confess we now often find ourselves holding hands while drifting along a wall, or looking at an exciting critter.
Introduced us to a number of new friends from all walks of life.
Revealed to me a whole new side of where I live. It has made my hometown interesting again (who knew the diving would be good in a city that is near both Byron Bay and the Barrier Reef, huh)?
It has opened my eyes to ecological concerns I knew intellectually were out there, but have now experientially been a part of.
It has encouraged me to take up swimming and stop smoking, both of which are good things for a fat guy in his early 40s (I confess to the odd slip).
So thanks, Scubaboard. Good instructors are important to find, and you have been a superlative one knowledgeable about every minutae, and on hand 24 hours a day for the dumbest question. Moreover, your ideals have become mine, and for that I cannot thank you deeply enough.
Peace, all, and happy bubbles!
Craig.
