How many here were scared to death and still completed OW classes?

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NAUI Wowie

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Location
Silicon Valley northern CA
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Ok so I was just thinking back on my open water training way back in the dark ages of 15 months ago and got to thinking about the fears I faced and if those are all that common? I hear about OW classes having many students bolting to the surface and thats definitely not me but let me describe my experience and how I got through my fears.

First off ive always been a water person and in fact a few years ago I was snorkeling off a beach on Maui and I swear i must have been close to a mile out. way over half a mile easily. My friends on the beach werent even specks. I can snorkel all day long and dive down and play around in deep water.


That being said once I was on my first dive and I was about 40 feet under and just staring back up at the surface...it was cabo san lucas near pelican rock area.... and I just started feeling the weight and distance of all that water above me. On the second dive I started having I wont say mini panic attacks but just this sense of unreasonable fear. It wasnt obviously narcosis I never went deeper than 60 feet and the water was over 85 degrees. but I started having to talk to myself to get through the dive.
Ok Dale this dive is very short, wont last long, just do as the instructor says and you WILL get to swim up to the surface soon! Ok fine that all worked out.
Now the next day I walk up to the dive center realizing I have to do TWO more dives and these dives will be deeper closer to that 60ft depth.

I start rationalizing to myself, look its only a few minutes each dive, you just get these two dives completed and you dont have to EVER go under the water again! And the other friends on the cabo trip wont laugh at you for quitting! So I go on my third dive and were most of the way through it and one of my certified buddies is actually along on this one otherwise the other dives were just me and the instructor. and on this dive the entire dive ive just been talking myself through it....come on Dale you have maybe 15 more minutes under water on your next to last dive, youve got this!
And my air runs out.... now me being paranoid as a cockroach in a boot factory I have been watching my air like a dang hawk. I had about 650 psi left and we were about 40 feet heading up. I actually became quite calm at that point and swam over to the instructor, made the throat slitting gesture and waited to see what he would do.
At that point the instructor looked at me, saw I wasnt in distress and so I did it again, slit my throat with hand. He then handed me his octo, grabbed my primary, took a breath and mentally I could see him go OH WOW there is NO AIR in your tank...
We went up and I was so distracted by this I wasnt afraid any more. Until the next dive and I checked my spg on the boat and it read 3900 psi on an AL80. Noooo problem the instructor just said add 700 psi to the 700 that we would normally head up at and youll be fine. So I said at 1400 I go up. Yep its easy. I asked about four more times are you SURE im not going to run out of air? Oh no no worries amigo.

Well that fourth dive for me was the most hair raising experience of my life. The entire dive which felt about 4 hours long I had the original fear of being deep under the ocean compounded by the feeling that at ANY second my air would just stop working completely. But....its OK Dale you GOT THIS! Just dont die till you get back to shore and you will NEVER ever put a dive tank on AGAIN.

Well fast forward to a month later and girlfriend was talking about a trip to Cebu philippines and I had COMPLETELY forgotten all my fears. btw I also got some insane rash from the rented wetsuit and had to get antibiotic pills AND shots, god I hate shots... anyway I decide im going to go out and buy all my gear so I dont run out of air or get a rash and then I decide BEFORE i go to Cebu im going to get more training. Yep thats right Im a smart guy...im going to go do my AOW training....and boy was that a mistake , but I bet none of you thought that at all eh...

So fast forward to before i go to cebu ive signed up for AOW and ive only done my 4 OW check out dives. Im now in a 7 mil suit hood, gloves, etc and 4 of us including instructor are in Monterey at the breakwater.

Water is no longer about 88 degrees. Its about 52 degrees. Visibility isnt 100 or 200 feet anymore its about 15 feet and the water is dark green.

Well the other guys wade out into the water and I start wading out and get a little over waist deep and this unreasonable fear comes all rushing back times 10.... im standing there in chest deep water and going ok I just bought all my warm water scuba gear AND I bought all my cold water scuba gear and I am just going to turn around and walk back to my jeep and drive home. No WAY am I going out there! Well this instructor comes back after the other two students kept waving me to catch up and I wouldnt and says come on! Lets go lets go. Im like ah I cant go, and he says well just inflate your bcd and come out anyway.

RIght there I did some more rationalizing and said to myself ok Dale what your going to do here is inflate bcd and go out with them and just float on top of the water, under no circumstances are you going under the water!! Ok Dale great idea, no harm in that!

So I head out and watch them submerge after we get to a good spot. They are waving me down and im like OK Dale ALL you need to do is submerge about five feet maybe seven feet and look around. Ok lets do it! I head down and watch them get to the bottom at about 25 feet. very hazy cant see much lots of classes had stirred up the bottom something fierce. So I watched and waited for someone to I dont know, die or something? And they seemed to be having fun so I went down and the fear which was huge seemed to slowly melt away. And thats how I got rid of my fear of diving. Just baby step rationalizations each time I dove...
But wait it doesnt end there!!! I end up corking up to the surface during this search and recovery dive about 4 times because the instructor insisted I wear alot of extra weight. In his words better too much weight so I dont have to worry about you staying down. Well I learned much later that too much weight means more air in bcd and all the rapid transitions in the 20 to 35 foot deep areas we searched kept me popping up like the aformentioned cork. So then I had to deal with the fear at days end that I would ABSOLUTELY get the bends. It didnt help that I had to drive back over the santa cruz mtns which reach about 1700 feet high and I literally pulled over at one point in a near panic attack thinking I might just die while driving and drive off a cliff.

Later much later when doing monterey dives I now drive around those hills a different route. Just and fyi.

So anyhoo sorry for the rambling but just wondering if that is typical of most divers experiences.

and yes I completed dives 5 6 and 7 and the second day with the deep dive was postponed so I went to P.I. and did 10 tropical dives. When I came back and did the deep dive as dive 17 there was a whole new story regarding a deepwater blackout but that story is for another day. I think that I am either extremely dumb or extremely unluckily lucky at this sport. Im not sure which yet.

But I do try to keep a healthy amount of paranoia on all dives even though im no longer afraid.
 
Holy crikey, I just saw what I wrote, a wall of text! No ones gonna read that and I dont blame em. One thing Ill NEVER become an auther lol
 
Well fast forward to a month later and girlfriend was talking about a trip to Cebu philippines and I had COMPLETELY forgotten all my fears. btw I also got some insane rash from the rented wetsuit and had to get antibiotic pills AND shots

I didn't have a fear of diving, but now I have a real distinct fear of rented wetsuits.
 
I didn't have a fear of diving, but now I have a real distinct fear of rented wetsuits.

THAT fear is REAL my friend, I will never ever ever use a rented wetsuit. Ever. Be afraid, be very afraid. Large black spots appearing all over your legs and butt, girlfriend asking what ELSE I did in Cabo besides scuba dive. Was a VERY long conversation that. Thank god im a good car salesman. The skillset helped with that talk.....even though I was an innocent man....
 
My OW was in the mid 80s; I was too young to know fear but I do remember having some fear about under performing. My instructor was good enough that I was looking forward to being underwater. In fact I remember saying to myself why the dive is so short.

Some fear is normal and expected. Too much will hinder performance.
 
Nope, from the very first dive, I felt right at home under water. Once or twice over the years when something didn't feel right, I cut the dive short - we're doing this for fun, right?

Now ice-climbing... yeah the fun to terror ratio was WAY too small on that one. Never did it again after the checkout weekend.
 
Me. Really rocky beginning. I was very determined and just kept going. I’m stubborn.

Heck, I was scared of the deep end of the pool!
 
I took my OW class as a bit of a lark when I was 60. I had been working for years as a paramedic, with quite a bit of training in technical rescue on the side. SCUBA was just another set of equipment which I had to depend on to keep me alive in a hostile environment, so even though I've never been a water person, I was comfortable with the idea from the start.
 
The only thing I truly feared was my ears hurting. I snorkeled for decades (descending to collect shells) and noticed my ears hurt somewhat below 6 feet depth. Can you believe it--I actually didn't know about equalizing all those years AND wore conventional ear plugs.
On the OW checkout dives I was curious about going to 20-25' and staying down. Perhaps a bit tentative, though I knew I had been down maybe 15 feet snorkeling before lots, and knew what I'd be seeing down there. All went fine.
I am surprised that you would have such fear of depth, being a snorkeler and overall "water" person.
I have an odd "fear" if you will. Though I have no thoughts of fear going to any recreational scuba depth, I don't like being in water close to or over my head--without fins/mask, etc. Makes no sense. Guess we are all different.
 
I think we have an instinct that says, “whoa....breathing under water?....this ain’t right....”.

It just takes a bit of getting used to.
 
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