Review My OWD experience so far..

[jordaof]

Stressors are cumulative. The dark, reduced visibility, inability to communicate in normal manner, relying on a light and being on a boat in the dark and being tossed around on deck and not being able to see the horizon, and then to be frustrated with and untrusting of a buddy are all conspiring against you having a successful dive. Night dives ARE harder.

A failed dive where you are overwhelmed and scared is not really a bad thing as long as nobody gets hurt. You will learn a lot from it.

My suggestion is to get the pony bottle, get someone to teach you how to rig it and use it, do several dives and then try another night dive with someone who knows you bailed on the last attempt. Maybe you will have to pay for a dedicated, professional who will buddy up for the dive.

Doing the dive with a buddy who is calm, attentive and has done a similar dive 50 or 100 times might change things tremendously for you.

"
My suggestion is to get the pony bottle, get someone to teach you how to rig it and use it, do several dives and then try another night dive with someone who knows you bailed on the last attempt. Maybe you will have to pay for a dedicated, professional who will buddy up for the dive.

"

Yes exactly, I will do that, will get someone to teach me the basics of rigging it and also to supervise a training in situations of "out of air", although, I'm always doing a supervision of my SPG of my main 12 liter tank on a regular basis, it's basically a rare event of malfunction, cause I don't use the Pony as "extended air", is set on my brain, that tank is just for an emergency and that's it, the tank should be checked as the main tank every time before I jump into the water, and the pressure is also measured with a mini SPG. Thank you!

 

[60plus]

I remember a night dive in Madeira a few years ago. The water was swirling quite a bit around the pier and it looked a bit menacing. Only me and the guide had dived at night before. One of the group a PADI OW instructor asked if there was anything about night diving that bothered me. I replied not really but sometimes I get a feeling that a large shark is lurking in the darkness eyeing me up for breakfast. This made the group even more nervous than they already were and the guide said he wished I had not said that. Madeira is interesting for night diving because you can turn your torch off and still see in monochrome. I think that diving in poor visibility is harder than night diving in clear water. Practice diving and feeling your equipment with your eyes shut. When I was doing my SSI deep diver inside a wreck at about 25m the instructor deliberately stirred up silt by rubbing the algae / seaweed so I could experience zero visibility.