First Boat Dive Jitters w/ master diver pal

[Charlie99]

bmuise once bubbled...
My old pal is the dive instructor on the boat so he's really understanding about my being a newbie and all. He calls me a whimp jokingly and wants to see me go on a "real dive" at 90 feet. I say no way - not ready.

Can anyone relate to this situation?

If you look through the DAN accident and incident reports it's easy to relate to this situation. Lots of accidents seem to happen when peer pressure gets someone, against their better judgement, to do a dive they are not ready for.

Joking or not, peer pressure like that is not good. He's not being a good pal.

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As to the navigation stuff --- a lot comes from just being overall aware of your surroundings. When I first started diving, just the mechanics of diving kept me busy. My awareness of other divers and my awareness of our exact route were pretty minimal.

Don't sweat it too much right now, as long as you are doing dives where getting lost just means the embarrassment of having to surface to find the boat, and then swimming back at 15'.

As basic diving skills become more automatic, then you can spend more time noting compass headings, judging distances, and keeping a mental picture of distance and bearing to the boat.
It's more complicated to explain than do it ---- just imagine sheet of grid paper on which you mentally draw your path across the ocean, using each general compass direction and distance. I don't bother with accuracy better than 8 or 16 points on the compass, since your estimates of distances aren't going to be very good either. Look backwards at the bottom around the anchor or mooring pin as you first swim away. Then you just need to navigate good enough to get back to something you recognize.

 

[FFMDiver]

I spent the night roaming around the house strictly by compass headings. I obssesively read all the navagation tips on this forum.

This morning before the dive I corned my dive master pal and had him draw out the topography of the floor. I even approached one of the dive boat workers and confirmed the layout.

When I hit the floor I immediately started looking for landmarks and understanding where things were in relation to the anchor line. Reading floor ripples and examining benchmarks from different angles. This helped tremendously. I was ready.

I completed two full boat dives today and felt I knew where the dives were going.

For the first time I feel I can say I'm a "certified scuba diver. " It only toook 16 lake dives and four ocean boat dives!

Aloha!

 

[writer]

While you're getting that sausage and whistle, grab a signalling mirror. Just in case!
It can't hurt, stows safely out of your way, and might just save your life —_all for less than 10 bucks! What a deal!

See you at the bottom!

Ken

 

[jbd]

and keep up the good work. Apply these same efforts to all of your diving and you will progress nicely and safely to the point you can comfortably and safely go on the 90 foot dive with your friend.