Lets tell the less experienced what our OWC was like..... ( if you remember)

[adamonthecoast]

I have just finished my OW class about a week ago. What an amazing experience with a great instructor and awesome DM. (So much so I paid up for my AOW before I left after my last dive). There were 4 of us of all ages (17-35) and we had all done the e-learning, and did all the pool and open water dives in the space of 2 days. Very intense, but I learn well under pressure. First day I spent cursing the whole bouancy thing and bemoaning how anyone could ever control it (even while watching the instructor hover in front of us). After a long first day I went home exhausted, but happy I had completed everything and was on track.

Que day two, and I was sore and stiff, but still up at the crack of dawn ready to go. Not sure what happened overnight, but somehow my control was leaps and bounds better and as I relaxed more I found the skills getting easier to master and my air usage dropping.

Funiest moment....while mid 3rd dive I had a small panic thinking I had lost my regulator....only to realise about 2 seconds later that I was still breathing, therefore if was still there. Funny how quick you get so used to breathing though it and how naturally it feels.

 

[divingsiren]

These stories make me feel a whole lot better about my certification process recently. Thanks for sharing, especially since I go on my first post-class dive next weekend!

 

[cloudflint]

I did my OW in Scotland, it was all either sea work in a drysuit or class work. I dont recall going into a swimming pool for any of it. It ran over 3 days, usually an hour of class then a dive in the morning, then another class and another dive in the afternoon.

Oddly enough that was probably the time when i felt happiest underwater. I had no worries bouncing along the bottom over-weighted with no watch or computer. Swimming along at ten meters with a dry-suit that was slowly crushing me since i never realized I could put air in it I was quite happy. Then as i learnt more about diving i gradually got more and more paranoid, ignorance is bliss!


Most amusing moment from the whole course was my first time using SCUBA kit and i waded down the slipway to go in the water and somehow ended up stuck floating upside-own in the water in my dry-suit. I had my reg in and i couldn't get back up so i just crossed my arms and waited for my instructor to rescue me. My instructed said she had never seen someone so relaxed they could be stuck upside-own their first time in the sea and just casually sit there waiting for rescue

 

[adurso]

I learned to dive by borrowing an uncle's equipment and being told:"pinch your nose and blow gently, breathe in, breathe out, never hold your breath, pull the rod and come up when it gets hard to breathe, do not come up faster than your slowest bubble"

By 1978 shops were asking for a "c" card to get tanks filled, a bunch of us were in the same boat so an instructor someone knew charged us 30$ and gave us cards...

 

[RonFrank]

On my first OW dive my octo started free flowing when I got in the water. I thought it was great, but I later realized loosing 1/3 of my air was a bad thing. Overall I had a great time, but I did not clear as much as I should have, and I kinda wrecked my ears on those first 4 dives. I learned from it and practiced clearing until I can do it most anytime.

I'm glad my first dives were in the 62F water at Blue Hole, NM. Its a very good place to train, and the water is generally very clear. There are more challenges Diving cold, and that prepares you for diving in cold with current and low vis.

 

[hypnodiver]

I did my OW in New Zealand in January, so lovely mid-summer conditions for diving, right? Wrong.

Imagine a class of seven students with one instructor who loved telling stories about running out of air, etc. Half the class was lapping this up, the rest of us were much less impressed. My gear included a very well-worn wetsuit, regs that were such a wet breathe I couldn't see what all the fuss about breathing dry air was all about, escorters! (imagine an Air2 except the 2nd stage part is a standard 2nd stage, and the BCD inflator is a standard BCD inflator, and the whole thing is so short that if you're breathing off it, you can only look to your left) and stab jackets.

Open water dives up at Goat Island marine reserve off a RIB launched from Leigh. Had 3m swells around Cape Rodney, down to about half a metre in the lee of the island. Got told off severely for using my regulator on the surface after my snorkel got swamped the umpteenth time. The water was as murky as, and every time I moved I got a dose of cold water down the spine. Once we'd spent ten minutes or so sitting around getting cold while everyone demonstrated the required skills, the rest of the dive was finning hard trying to keep up with the instructor and not lose him in the murk.

After the first dive, we were a bit longer getting back to shore for lunch after the outboard on the RIB wouldn't start.

Second dive was more of the same, and the following morning I called the second day, not at all comfortable with the conditions.

I ended up completing the last two dives about three weeks later with another class and a different instructor.

This time we didn't go as far as the marine reserve (which can be busy at that time of year) so we dived off the Outpost, just outside Leigh Harbour. This was all very well, except we were in a STRONG current, and I spent most of the dive clinging on to a rock while doing a flag-in-the-breeze impersonation until my buddy and I had to do our buddy breathing ascent (yes, I did my OW course quite a while ago) only to find that our instructor wanted us to use a method that neither of us had seen or heard of before. This was accompanied by many hand signals and much shaking of tanks by our instructor.

After demonstrating the required skills, I had the choice of either carrying on the dive with one of the assistant instructors, or heading back to the boat, so feeling a bit shattered, I headed back to the boat.

The last dive was in the same area, and the current had died down, so I stayed underwater while the group had a poke about around the rocky guts in the area, and for the last 10 minutes in the water, I finally saw that you could actually enjoy this diving thing.

After the first day's diving, I was probably considered the least likely person out of the seven to stick with diving, but nearly twenty years later, I'm probably the only one who still is.

 

[phasechange]

My first open water dives I could not equalize. While I was totally comfortable in the water from growing up around lakes, I never had to truly equalize my ears (depths greater than 20 ft). I found a video on here (scubaboard) that had an ear doctor explaining how hard you had to blow to clear your ears. Before that I was worried about blowing to hard as many had recommended against. I started practicing equalizing on land and by the time the next set of OW there was no issue.

OWs were also in 1-2 ft of vis and instructor said if you can dive in that you can dive in anything.

 

[ScubaSam]

My first OW dive was part of a Discover Scuba Dive at the GBR. I remember thinking how odd it was to hear myself breathe underwater. For the first five minutes all I kept hearing in my head was Darth Varder saying, "Luke, I am your father." Yes, I know in the movie he actually says, "No...I am your father".

All I could think about was the sound of my exhales and inhales for about the first five minutes of the dive. Afterward, it felt like someone opened a curtain and I was in another world of bright color coral and marine life. I no longer concentrated on the sound of the exhales/inhales but on the alien world before me. I felt the MOST alive I'd ever felt and knew I'd truly found my greatest love.

The following year, I did my OW class in Bora Bora after completing the classroom and pool work in NYC. I think we did four to five dives OW dives for my OW certification. I had the instructor all to myself except for one day when another student joined us for her refresher class. I remember grabbing the instructor during the first dive because a 6 ft lemon shark (I did not know it was a lemon at that point) passed above us and I thought it was a great white. I'd NEVER seen any shark in the water until then. Instructor jester for me to calm down, we stayed under the shark until it left and we continued the dive. I remember blurting out, "Was that a great white?" once we broke the surface and I spat out my reg.

I remember seeing dozens of spotted eagle rays, eels, blacktip sharks and many other fishes on our dives. I remember doing a CESA and skills in warm clear water and being distracted by the marine life all around me. We did a series of skills, ie: mask removal, reg recovery, breathing off a free flowing reg, buddy breathe, etc. I had done all these skills in the pool in NYC and was replicating them in Bora Bora. I also remember one morning after I set up my gear on the boat the instructor took my rig and flung it over the boat and said, "go and get into your rig in the water." :shocked2: I struggled trying to get the rig on until he said, straddle the tank, I did and had no problems getting the rig on.

The dive I remember the most from my OW class was the final dive when it was just the instructor and I. He said, "Let's pretend you are already certified and we are two buddies doing a dive where you're going to lead and navigate the dive. You have to get us back to the boat after the dive to pass the class."

During that dive the instructor pointed out various coral and fishes my untrained eye missed or maybe I was too focused on the compass. Toward the end of the dive, we ended up in some current and he had to grab onto a coral/rock and pull me to him otherwise I would have ended up God knows where. It was my first experience with current and it did not register for a few seconds what was happening. I was finning this way but ending up another way. I was disoriented from being in the current and had to rely on my compass bearing to get us back to the boat. I was so fixated on the compass that I did not notice we'd navigated back to the boat until the instructor pointed to the boat above us.

I don't recall any real issues with the entire class other than the unexpected current I led my instructor and I into during the final dive. This is my 4 year of diving and the love of diving has not waned. I had no buddies when I first got certified because no one in my family or circle of friends dive. I did vacation dives and had insta-buddies until I joined SB. I now dive salt, fresh, warm, cold, wrecks, kelp, lakes, rivers, oceans and caves. I have more buddies and more invitations to dive (I blame Scubaboard) than I have time or money to do so. :depressed:

 

[Akimbo]

I posted this in a thread on the Vintage Forum titled: http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/vintage-equipment-diving/326131-your-first-time.html

I can’t remember if you need to sign up to that forum to play, but there are a lot of interesting stories from some of us [-]geezers[/-] saltier dogs in there.

1962, the Breakwater in Monterey, California. I was 11 and my parents drove me down from the San Francisco Bay Area. Probably more interesting than the dive was how I got there.

My dad made the mistake, after my relentless badgering, of telling me that he would not only let me buy diving gear, he would pay for it and the lessons if I could swim the length of the local high school racing pool on one breath (no fins). I was a very skinny 10 years old. In hindsight I now realize he didn’t think I could make it until I was maybe 16 and I would probably forget the whole thing by the time I discovered girls.

I could barely make it half way across the pool that summer. Twenty-five yards seemed like a mile. I trained hard over the next year and happened to go through the biggest growing streak in family history (slight exaggeration). I could hold my breath 3:20 (minutes:seconds) static by the time the pool opened the next summer and do 50 push-ups. I still remember what the other end of the pool felt like when I made it that summer afternoon.

Dad honored his commitment, but (big surprise) I had a hard time finding someone who would take me in their class. About 100 phone calls and a swimming test later I was in somebody's backyard pool learning to clear a mask. I was so stoked that I didn’t realize until years later how everyone else in the class was weirded-out by this little kid. Being able to hold my breath about twice as long as the adults got me accepted though. Thanks Dad.

So, time-shifting back to the start of the story, I found myself on the beach at one of the most heavily dove spots on California's central coast. Abandoned canneries (as in Cannery Row) were boarded up but accessible by sea. We did a lot of snorkeling in the kelp that morning and burned up a tank that afternoon.

As I remember, the gear was:

• Voit single 50 with reserve valve complete with pull rod and a double hose regulator
• An off the rack ¼" skin-2 wetsuit that fit like a pair of coveralls — classic diaphragm height pants, brass zipper, and snaps on the beavertail. Yes, I was covered with powder and put a small rip in it the first time.
• Voit Viking fins with full foot pockets. For some reason those triangular fin grippers/keepers were called Fixi-Palms — no idea why or if the spelling is even close. They were mandatory since nothing fit.
• Standard round mask with attached snorkel
• Weight belt with double D-ring quick release
• Horse-collar with CO2 cartridge & oral inflator
• I am pretty sure I had a depth gauge at that point
• A no-name "diving watch" purchased at the local drug store to time breath-hold training.
• Mike Nelson knife, probably on the weight belt.

I tagged along with two old guys in the class (like seniors in high school) and got inside one of the canneries. Seagull crap must have been 6" thick and it smelled like a seal lion ho-house — at least I remember it that way. There were rusting canning machines, boxes of labels, and rotted floor boards. What a kick. I slept the whole two hour drive back to the Bay Area.

 

[coldwaterdufus]

Nothing really happened on my OW certification, but it was still an interesting experience. I did my class room / pool in Canada and my initial 4 open water dives during a trip to Cambodia. 4 hour boat ride off the coast to an island called Ko Tang. The island in itself, wasn't that interesting, but during the pre dive briefing, we were warned not to touch anything on the bottom. Turned out, the Americans had bombed the crap out of the island during the Vietnam war. Some of the bombs had missed their intended targets and now lay on the bottom where we were going to do our certification dives. After doing our skills in a " clear " area on the sandy bottom, I distinctly remember nobody getting within 10 ft of the bottom during the fun part of the dives. Buoyancy was of utmost importance. DM watched us like a hawk. Certainly got my attention and respect.