First dives report - Riviera Maya awesomeness!

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stuartv

Seeking the Light
ScubaBoard Supporter
Scuba Instructor
Messages
11,573
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8,124
Location
Lexington, SC
# of dives
500 - 999
I'm not sure where the most appropriate place to post this is. But, since I'm a new diver and this is a report of my first dives following my OW certification, I guess I'll stick it here and someone can move it, if appropriate.
My g/f and I just got back from our first post-certification diving, in Riviera Maya. We got our SDI OW certification at the beginning of November. I did Computer Nitrox shortly after. Then we both did the Advanced Buoyancy Control certification 2 weeks ago. Also, during the last month, I bought a used DSS SS BP/W Hogarthian setup, a new Hollis reg set (DC3 + 2 x 212), and a new Oceanic Atom 3.0 w/wireless AI PDC. I used all this new gear in the pool for 1 tank just before I left on my trip to make sure it all worked and to get some idea of weighting and setup with the BPW.

Thursday, the 18th, was supposed to be shallow reef dives off Playa del Carmen. But, Frank, the dive shop (Blue Life) guy called the night before and offered a free upgrade for the first dive of the day to be a dive to swim with Bull Sharks (pregnant females). I made the mistake of asking Megan, instead of just saying no. She said sure! Then I asked how deep we'd be and Frank said 60-70 feet. Then Megan said oh, maybe not. Frank talked her into it. I definitely screwed up on this by allowing this to happen.

We met our guide, William, the next morning down at the beach. He was super nice and seemed to be generally a very good diver and Dive Master. But, we made our first mistake of the day right away, though we didn't know it at the time. William told us to go ahead and put on our wetsuits, but he didn't ever say anything about putting on anything else. Gareth, from London, who was there for the same dive, and we put on our suits and left the rest of our gear in our bags. We walked from Will's truck down to the water's edge and waited for the boat. Meanwhile, about 10 other divers showed up. They were from a different shop but we were all going on the same boat.

And they were all wearing all their gear except for carrying their masks and fins. As we should have done. We all waded out and climbed into the boat, which filled it to the gills. The ride to the site was only about 15 minutes, during which time everyone else simply hung their BCs on their tanks, attached their regs, put on their fins and were ready to dive. Meanwhile, we're scrambling around to test Nitrox tanks, get our BCs out and ready, put on our dive boots, etc.. We were at the site and people were already getting in the water while we were still getting ready. And Will had told us during the dive briefing at the beach that we needed to be prompt in getting in and descending to avoid having the boat drift past where the sharks would be.

All this pressure was EXACTLY what I wanted to NOT happen to Megan. Argh! We got in. Megan started to descend then freaked out (just a little) and bailed. She got back in the boat and we went on without her. :-(

We descended straight away to about 70 feet and started swimming along the bottom. It was pretty much just bare sand with somewhere between 50 and 100 feet of visibility (guess). We saw a big stingray on the bottom and another 1 or 2 swimming. We saw 4 or 5 lobsters hiding in holes. And we had 5 shark sightings. I think it was the same one every time, though. Or all 5 were 6-7 feet long and looked very thick. I would guess 150-200 pounds. Each time we saw one we would settle onto the bottom and kneel with our hands held close to our bodies. The closest one got was maybe 15 or 20 feet.

Of course, I got down to 1000 psi first and then we began our ascent. Dive time was something like 36 minutes. I got out with 400 psi left. My max depth ended up being 85 feet!

For the second dive, we moved to a spot that was 30 feet deep, at most. Megan was not going to get in again, but Will convinced her to do it. Gareth and I got in first, descended a ways along the anchor line, and waited. Megan and Will started down but she was having to pull herself down along the anchor line. She got maybe 15 feet under and turned around. By then, Gareth and I had descended all the way to the bottom so when Will and Megan went back up, we could not see them any more. We waited for about 15 minutes and finally went on by ourselves. We found out after, that they went all the way back to the boat, then the boat captain dropped a straight line down off the bow and they descended on that. Megan said she still had to pull herself down, but she got all the way to the bottom and once there, her buoyancy was fine. They couldn't find us so they just swam around for a bit and then went back to the boat.

Gareth and I found the reef and swam around on and next to it until I got low on air again. We saw some coral, tropical fish, and another stingray or two. Cool, but nothing amazing.

Back in the boat, back to the beach, out, taxi, and back at our room before 1.

Saturday, the 20th, we were supposed to dive off Cozumel. Megan decided not to go. :-(

I met Hugo, my guide, and Ian, an Englishman, down by the ferry terminal in Playa del Carmen. We rode over, took a van to a marina, and boarded a dive boat that ended up with 7 or 8 other divers aboard. We motored out to Palancar Reef (not sure exactly which site) and got in. The reef was beautiful. It made the PDC reef from 2 days earlier look like a barren desert. Ian is an accomplished Tech diver who'd just spent a week doing Trimix dives on wrecks in Truk Lagoon right before coming to PDC. He was a great dive buddy. And Hugo was a great guide. We had him to ourselves as all the other divers on the boat had another guide. Hugo took us through 3 different swim-throughs (the Palancar Caverns). Two were of the variety that you could see out the exit from the entrance. One was such that you could not see the exit from the entrance. You entered swimming slightly up, went in a bit, then made a left turn and continued climbing a little bit through the exit. I was quite pleased with myself that I navigated them all without ever touching anything (wall, ceiling, etc.). It was not difficult at all, but the many tales of new divers bouncing off ceilings, etc., had me feeling a little self-doubt at first.

The swim-throughs were all relatively early in the dive, then it was mostly just leisurely drifting and finning along the bottom as it got gradually shallower. I had one good turtle encounter during this dive. Hugo pointed the turtle out that was swimming right along the bottom. Just as I got my GoPro going, the turtle literally dug a flipper into the sand and made a hard left turn and started coming right towards me! The evidence:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/urx762f080bwoqe/GOPR0009.MP4?dl=0

The dive time ended up being around 38 minutes, I think. But, that was no credit to me. When I hit 1000psi, I signaled Hugo and he passed me his octo and I held onto his 1st stage and breathed off that for 5 or 10 minutes as we drifted along. Max depth was 89 feet.

For our second dive, the boat moved and we got in at Tormentos. The current seemed stronger there and we pretty much just drifted along the bottom. The reef was still quite beautiful. We saw a fair number of different kinds of fish, and a couple of cool anemones. I got one good video of a stingray that swam past.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/1rvqveaz4b226bn/GOPR0030.MP4?dl=0

This time, I paid a little more attention to my breathing and I think the dive time ended up being 50 or 55 minutes (I don't have my log book handy right now) with no buddy breathing this time. And I think the max depth was around 60 feet.

Another day off, then Monday, the 22nd, Hugo and Ian (again) picked me up and off we went to the Dos Ojos cenote. We met William there and William led Ian, Anna (new to me), Oliver (new to me), and me on two cavern dives while Hugo led 3 snorkelers on their own swimming excursion.

The caverns were awesome! We followed the Barbie Line first. I saw why it is named such:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8rexa2t9568kc5x/GOPR0042.MP4?dl=0 (pardon the length on that one - I failed to turn the camera off when I finished filming and tucked it back in through my belt loop)

After the first dive, we were back at the trucks and I overheard Ian talking to William. For the cenotes, Ian had brought his ($10K?) camera rig. William had put us in order behind him with Anna first, then Oliver, then me, then Ian. Ian was asking if he might go first behind William on the next dive to get better pictures. I heard William tell Ian that he wanted the best diver last. I took a little bit of a compliment from that in thinking he put me third. It's not much, but I'll take it. :) After the day was done, Ian and I were talking and he told me he thought I'd done very well - I stayed the right distance off the cave line, never hit any walls, floor, or ceiling, and never kicked up any silt. That definitely made me feel good. Particularly being in contrast to what he had to say about Oliver, in front of me. Particularly, he noted that I was never using my hands for anything except holding my light and my GoPro, where Oliver was constantly swimming with his hands. It wasn't something I'd thought about until Ian pointed it out. And Oliver was constantly up near the ceiling. I don't know if he ever actually hit it or not.

The second dive of the day took us around to the Bat Cave. That was reall cool, too. I must admit I had a couple of moments of apprehension, though, as William did not warn us that surfacing in the Bat Cave would mean going away from the cave line on the bottom. It was only a few feet away, but I didn't know that at the time that I saw him turn right when the cave line on the bottom was going left. I watched him and the 2 divers behind him head off. I waited. I swam about 10 feet in the direction they went and then saw what was going on and thought "Oh! Good! *pshew*!"

The Bat Cave (including snorkelers who were there sitting on the rock island in the middle):

https://www.dropbox.com/s/x9f2bpdnr46u1y9/GOPR0050.MP4?dl=0

All in all, it was a great trip! I really wish I had insisted on sticking with the original plan for the first dive day, so that Megan would have had a better chance of enjoying it and completing both dives. For that, I mostly blame myself. But, all is not lost. We're going to Hawaii in March and she said she'll have another go then.

Other than that, I am extremely happy with my BP/W setup. I needed no weight in the caverns (fresh water). A little bit to my surprise, I needed 10 # in the ocean. From input on ScubaBoard, I was expecting to need 4 - 6 #. I tried 6 and it was definitely not enough. I tried 8 # and it was still hard to hold the SS stop at the end (of the 3rd dive of the trip), with an almost empty AL80. 10 # worked fine. This was with wearing a 3/2 full suit.

The Atom PDC worked great. The wireless air integration worked flawlessly - which was good, since I elected to go with no backup SPG. I figured if I had a problem with it, I would switch to a rental reg set. I am looking forward to downloading the dive data and doing some analysis on it. I'm especially curious to see what my SAC rate did over the course of the different dives.

A couple of the dives were (obviously) deeper than I'm certified for. But, I figured that doing them with a DM who is also an instructor was adequately safe. The conditions were certainly pretty much ideal.

Next up, Hawaii in March! I can't wait! And maybe a class on something (Underwater Nav, maybe?) between now and then.

Thank you to all of you who have given me such valuable advice in getting to this point! The bug has not just bitten. It has latched on and is firmly attached. :D
 
Wow good report very detailed, good you had fun, the GF only went out once ? any picks of the bulls ?
I would very highly recommend getting a backup SPG as my dive computer Aerius a300 has the air integration which works fine
except for when the damn computer is defective and pops at 40ft FML / LOL ( just for safety sake )

Thanks for the report
 
Thanks, Scott. Yes, the g/f only went out once. And I was so rushed to start the bull shark dive, I didn't pause to get my GoPro rig together. :-( on both counts.
 
Just a thought... It may be better not to use real names if you are going to be critical of your dive buddies skills. They may read SB and everyone isn't as fabulous a diver as you apparently are ;-)
 
Just a thought... It may be better not to use real names if you are going to be critical of your dive buddies skills. They may read SB and everyone isn't as fabulous a diver as you apparently are ;-)
What would make you think I used actual names? :) And anyway, what would make you think that if any of my dive buddies read this that they wouldn't recognize themselves even with their changed names?

Anyway, I know I'm no fabulous diver. I've now seen firsthand what dive skills look like that are much better than mine. I'm just very happy to feel like I did better than some people seem to expect a brand new diver to do. And happy I didn't damage any coral or the cenote!
 
I'm glad to hear the pride you have in the level of skill you've attained. I love it when new divers care about good technique. And thank you for not damaging the caverns!
 
I finally got around to downloading my dive data from my computer. I loaded it into Subsurface.

Of my last 4 dives of the trip, the 2 cenote dives and the reef dive with the swimthroughs, my SAC was 0.65 ft3/min (for all 3, exactly the same). And the second reef dive (after the one with the swimthroughs), which was mostly just drifting, my SAC was 0.57 ft3/min.

Subsurface seems pretty cool. It shows me a graph of each dive and I can see my momentary SAC throughout the dive, with color coding for high consumption versus low. I can see that I had moments of consumption as high as 2.04 (when I first got in, so maybe that includes using some gas to inflate my BC and float at the surface). The highest momentary consumption during mid-dive looks to be right around 1.0. And I see lows as low as 0.28.

0.65 over a whole dive is decent, isn't it? At least, for a new diver? 0.57 is obviously even better, but I'm considering 0.65 as being more "normal" for me, since I had that on 3 separate dives, where the 0.57 was pretty obviously because I really had to do almost nothing but descend and then float along taking the occasional video recording.
 
Those are reasonable numbers for a new diver, but they may also be reasonable numbers for an adult man, period. My husband runs about .5 in cold water, and a little less in the caves. My beloved favorite dive buddy, who is one of the most efficient and stable divers I know, runs .7 all the time. He's solid muscle.
 
Frog kicking my way through Dos Ojos. :D Pics courtesy of Ian and his monster camera rig.

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Looking good! Is it out of line to say that it looks like all your reading on SB has paid off beautifully?
 

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