How do you get over the nervousness/fear when jumping into unfamiliar dive sites?

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

@alex_can_dive are you diving from shore? Do you have more experienced divers to dive with?
Personally I prefer to use time vs kick count for approximate distance before turning, regardless of method (out and back, box or triangle); easy to check than count while doing nav in my opinion. Try the out and back (bearing out, back bearing in) for a while, 10 minutes out and then back, extend your time as you bet more comfortable. As you get better you may get wet notes or a slate and then plan more complicated patterns and write your bearings down prior to diving so you aren't busy doing math as you learn.

After you are comfortable with out and back perhaps try triangle as you can come back to your start point (ideally) without diving parallel to shore.
 
I try to find youtube videos of where I am going to dive, and then watch as many dives as possible, I also tend to listen to books on tape (Audible) when headed to a dive, it takes my mind off the silly fears
 
I have no experience with overhead environment so will be writing about OW only. I also used to have a problem with this and the following helped me:

1) In case you dive often in area with lot of boat traffic, practise SMB deployment beforehand so you become confident in doing it. That will reduce a stress/danger from surfacing when you get lost.

2) Find couple of shallow dive sites you can dive from land, grab a buddy who is good in navigation and agree with him/her you are going to lead the dive. Breef them that you want their interference only if there is a risk of a dangerous situation. If you are just lost - let them you to resolve the situation.

3) Allow yourself to get lost. If you get lost, shoot SMB, surface, take a new compass course, pack SMB, go down, continue. Repeat if needed.

4) Realise that everybody gets lost sometimes. Yes, practising navigation skills will of course help a lot, but the magical solution is not to learn how to never get lost (because that will just never happen), but shift the mindset a bit - once you become confident in resolving situations when you got lost, you will realise it is not such a big deal to get lost and you will be no longer afraid of "it can happen".
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

Back
Top Bottom