Lenaxia
Contributor
Whew.... Just got back from Monterey. Two rather interesting days and now I am AOW certified though after taking the class I've come to realize that really doesn't mean much. Next up is Nitrox before my liveaboard in December!
What I've learned from the class:
1. I need a drysuit because I'm a pansy
2. I can't add and therefore can't navigate
3. Night dives are awesome.
4. Having to look after a buddy who is completely uncomfortable at depth is more stressful than I realized and makes navigating and buoyancy countrol much more difficult.
5. Did I mention I need a dry suit?
6. Jellyfish suck.
7. LP 95's have horrible trim compared to HP100's
8. Apparently I get sea sick when inhaling diesel fumes, go figure.
It's been so long since I've done any kind of math in my head that, during our square pattern navigavtion portion at Lover's 3, I managed to figure out that 60* + 90* = 240*.... we ended up doing the square at the wrong angle, but would've completed it if my buddy hadn't freaked out and surfaced. In the end though, its a good thing he did, he was down to 200 PSI when we surfaced. His consumption was more than 3x what mine was, not to mention its more like his weights were filled with helium as he kept rising to the surface while swimming, but insisted he didn't need more weight. More than once I heard his computer start blaring at him because he was surfacing too fast...
The night dive was pretty awesome too, managed to see 4 octopii and some sort of huge fish, probably around 1m long. It's so much easier to keep track of your buddy when you can see their beam instead of having to look for them. The bioluminescence was pretty cool too.
Our deep dive was down to 86'. We had pretty amazing visibility of about 40ft down there, definitely impressive. Ended coming up far from my NDL with half of my tank left because all the other students were sucking down their air. My buddy actually hit 1000PSI (planned ascension pressure) and also freaked out, he started dumping his air and looked like he was about to bolt. I had to grab him and practically drag him to the anchor line so we could surface according to plan. During our safety stop, two huge sea nettles (read 0.5m wide bells) got tangled on the anchor line and the person below me nearly swung both of them into me when they were flailing on the anchor line, I swear, I thought I was going to die...
Either way, it was a rather small class. With only 4 people the instructor and a dive master. Even then though, there were only 4 of us, I didn't really get any instruction time because the other three people had some serious work to do with not only their skills but also their comfort levels in the water.
I think the thing that surprised me the most though, was during our night dive, my instructor straight up told us not to swim behind them because they would be "kicking up a lot of sand." I suppose everyone has their own priorities, but one of the first things I learned to do after getting my buoyancy trimmed in was how to not silt when bottom swimming. He's definitely a good instructor for OW and for people who need some more work on basic skills especially 1:1 attention, but I feel that in terms of advanced skills, he's not used to teaching to that audience.
I have someone to take nitrox from but I'll probably be looking for a new instructor, probably tech oriented, for specialties and for rescue in the future.
What I've learned from the class:
1. I need a drysuit because I'm a pansy
2. I can't add and therefore can't navigate
3. Night dives are awesome.
4. Having to look after a buddy who is completely uncomfortable at depth is more stressful than I realized and makes navigating and buoyancy countrol much more difficult.
5. Did I mention I need a dry suit?
6. Jellyfish suck.
7. LP 95's have horrible trim compared to HP100's
8. Apparently I get sea sick when inhaling diesel fumes, go figure.
It's been so long since I've done any kind of math in my head that, during our square pattern navigavtion portion at Lover's 3, I managed to figure out that 60* + 90* = 240*.... we ended up doing the square at the wrong angle, but would've completed it if my buddy hadn't freaked out and surfaced. In the end though, its a good thing he did, he was down to 200 PSI when we surfaced. His consumption was more than 3x what mine was, not to mention its more like his weights were filled with helium as he kept rising to the surface while swimming, but insisted he didn't need more weight. More than once I heard his computer start blaring at him because he was surfacing too fast...
The night dive was pretty awesome too, managed to see 4 octopii and some sort of huge fish, probably around 1m long. It's so much easier to keep track of your buddy when you can see their beam instead of having to look for them. The bioluminescence was pretty cool too.
Our deep dive was down to 86'. We had pretty amazing visibility of about 40ft down there, definitely impressive. Ended coming up far from my NDL with half of my tank left because all the other students were sucking down their air. My buddy actually hit 1000PSI (planned ascension pressure) and also freaked out, he started dumping his air and looked like he was about to bolt. I had to grab him and practically drag him to the anchor line so we could surface according to plan. During our safety stop, two huge sea nettles (read 0.5m wide bells) got tangled on the anchor line and the person below me nearly swung both of them into me when they were flailing on the anchor line, I swear, I thought I was going to die...
Either way, it was a rather small class. With only 4 people the instructor and a dive master. Even then though, there were only 4 of us, I didn't really get any instruction time because the other three people had some serious work to do with not only their skills but also their comfort levels in the water.
I think the thing that surprised me the most though, was during our night dive, my instructor straight up told us not to swim behind them because they would be "kicking up a lot of sand." I suppose everyone has their own priorities, but one of the first things I learned to do after getting my buoyancy trimmed in was how to not silt when bottom swimming. He's definitely a good instructor for OW and for people who need some more work on basic skills especially 1:1 attention, but I feel that in terms of advanced skills, he's not used to teaching to that audience.
I have someone to take nitrox from but I'll probably be looking for a new instructor, probably tech oriented, for specialties and for rescue in the future.
).
