agesilaus
Contributor
OK let me set the stage here. I am a new diver, I got my OW cert in December of 13. Before this weekend I had 8 dives. I recently noticed an advert in the local Craigslist for AOW, OW and Nitrox classes. My wife needs OW since she is the last in the family to not have a cert. And we have a week at Marathon Key (Florida) coming up at the end of March. I wasn't worried that much about AOW cert but figured it was a good way to get some guided ocean dives.
I talked to the instructor and he has a lot of experience and seems to know what he was doing. So she signed up for OW and I signed up for AOW. We both signed up for Nitrox after her OW cert was done. My wife is unable to use her left hand and her pool session went well with him spending a lot of time working of how to develop special techniques for her handicap. So far so good.
I know that I'm not great with buoyancy control and have concentrated on that during my 3 dives in the springs after finished that OW class. I'm also concentrating on breath control. I have a Seaquest Pro i3 BCD and it uses a small lever on the left side bottom of the BCD to add/remove air. You just have to give it a tiny tap up to add air and I'm still getting used to it. I discussed my buoyancy control with Tom before we left on the trip and he was very critical of that BCD saying no one should have sold it to a beginner. Actually I sold it to myself.
I'm going to call the instructor Tom. He set up a weekend set of dives for me this weekend. Dive 1 was a night dive at Blue Heron bridge on Friday night. And then a morning 2 dive set on Saturday. He brought along his dive instructor trainee that I'll call Jane.
Now for the dives. The Blue Heron dive started out with problems. I usually dive with a steel 95 in freshwater. But he had my wife use that tank in the pools session and I just planned on using one of my AL80 tanks for the bridge dive. I had no idea what weight I was going to need in seawater and with the AL tank. I usually dive with 10 pounds in freshwater. So following his suggestion I tried 14# but could not submerge, I went back and got another 3 pounds and that still didn't work. I ended up at 20# but was still a little light tho I didn't realize it.
Then my mask started leaking a lot, it was filling up the mask in less than a minute and I have a inelastic slap strap that is not easy to adjust. Especially with gloves on. Since I was light still I was having buoyancy problems and the shallow depth was making that worse. We were also having problems with night signals for the first couple of minutes. That was my problem since he went over the circle with light before we went down along with a couple of others. But he pointed the light in my direction when showing me those and when we in the water I originally thought that he was just waving his light around on the sea bed looking for things until I figured out what he was doing.
I admit I am not great or even good at breath control yet. And with my mask filling up constantly and the buoyancy problem I burned thru my air fast. But we got to see three bat fish and a lot of other critters.
OK on to the next day. He gave me a 90 minute lecture in the motel that night. When we got to the dive shop (Scuba Adventurers in Riviera Beach) I found out that we were doing Shark Canyon and a ledge that I never got the name of for the dives. The ledge first and he planned to bounce down to 90 feet to make this a deep water dive and then spend the rest of the time at 70 ft. He told me several times that he wanted me to jump off the boat with no air in my BCD and head down as fast as I could go since the current was faster on the surface than deeper down and he didn't want to lose the dive master.
OK I still was not sure that I had fixed my equipment problems and this meant I could not check things near the surface before getting down to 70 feet. I dived with 20# of weight and my mask was still leaking but not as badly. OK he jumped in with this huge camera and lights, and Jane his trainee was supposed to me watching me as part of her instructor training. He was going to use the camera on the sharks. He said he wanted to do this dive for a long time. I was taken aback since the original plan as explained to me before we left on this trip was to do 1) a wreck dive for the deep dive followed by a 2) a drift dive.
I like looking at sharks but frankly was more interested in dealing with my technique development and being relaxed under water. I've been to 72 feet in the springs a couple of times and didn't expect any issues with diving a few feet further in the ocean. When we got under on the bottom he started doing the shark hand signal which I did not know and then he started jerking me every time he saw one. Remember Jane was supposed to be managing me. Incidently he had me on 31% Nitrox even tho we had not done the Nitrox class. The bottom was at 90 feet so there was no possibility of going too deep.
Every time he grabbed me I got a shot of adrenaline.I was still light and didn't know it. And my mask was leaking but not as bad as the night dive. We saw some sharks, got down to 86 feet, and I was stressed out. I signaled to him that I was down to 1200#, we were supposed to surface at 1000#. He kept on going. I got down to 900# and we kept on going for another minute of so. He was distracted by his camera work and Jane was just tagging along. He finally signaled her to take me up while he stayed down. We got to 30 feet and then I was down to 200#. I had to buddy breath with Jane and she did it differently than I was taught in OW.
Chris Corbett was my OW instructor. He taught us that the diver sharing his air was supposed to grab the first stage reg of the guy getting air. But she wanted me to hold on to her arm with my left arm meaning could not see my computer. We got to the surface finally and I did not have enough air to inflate my BCD. Right then I instantly understood how someone could drown on the surface. Fortunately the boat was about 75 feet away and I swam over to it feeling safer doing that than I did dog paddling on the surface. Got back on board OK. But when I climbed up the ladder my tank slipped off, the tank that Tom had 'tightened' up before the dive.
I will have to compliment the crew of the boat they were great and very helpful. OK on to the second dive: Shark Valley. There was maybe a 2-3 foot swell and when the boat turned beam on to the seas I was feeling a bit queasy so I didn't drink anything not wanting to have to throw up over the side which would make me look like more of an idiot.
We got to the second dive site. I was attaching my gear to the tank and when I tested the regulator that little knob that says max-min on it blew off the second stage causing air to blast out of the hole. Fortunately the boat had a spare reg again kudo's to the boat crew. But I felt like even more of a neer-do-well.
I had tightened up my mask strap some more, Jane thought that I was still a little light on weight and gave me a three pound weight that I stuck in a side pocket. We entered the water with the same technique. The bottom was at 70 feet for the ledge. I did the navigation exercise easily and then thought I was doing OK on buoyancy with the 3 pound extra weight, I was probably a little heavy which was OK with me. We kept on going until I was down to 900#, saw sharks a couple of turtles and a Goliath Grouper about 4-5 feet long tagged along with the group for 10 minutes of so with a shark swimming circles around it and us.
At 900# he wanted to buddy breath with him on the bottom to extend our bottom time. He wanted me to hang on to one of his BCD straps with my left hand while we did this. He continued with the d#$@ jerking during this dive. And then he turn signaled that we would surface. And for me to shift over to my own reg. I'll tell you what, while we were floating at 30 feet or so doing the safety stop that surface looked a mile away. There is no comparison to the feeling in a springs and in the open ocean and I gained an appreciation for why someone would bolt for the surface.
Now my failings:
1) Multiple equipment problems.
2) Getting stressed and burning thru my air, in the springs I could dive to 70+ feet using my ST90 overfilled to 3000 and spend an hour in the springs, not all at 70 feet and get out with 1200-1600# in my tank. Of course we went down to 70 feet and stayed there so I didn't expect as much bottom time.
3) I did not know some of the hand signals-shark and turtle for example.
4) I was on the edge of being sea sick and didn't drink anything between dives.
5) I didn't check my gear before diving after letting him attach the tank strap.
6) Maybe I should look for a different mask. This one always leaks a little bit. It is a Mares Liquid Skin which had high ratings on the Scuba Diver tests.
7) I should have manually inflated my BCD when we surfaced on the first dive.
I'm the alpha male type but I take instruction well when it is calmly given. I don't take physical attention getting very well.
What I see as his failings:
1) Knowing that I customarily used used a st95 (he sold it to me) and had only done freshwater dives he didn't make sure that my equipment was OK using the Al80 before it got dark and the time pressure was on because of the tide on the bridge dive. When I mentioned that I thought that I should have checked my gear before it got dark (when we were back in the motel) he just gave me a blank stare.
2) Expecting me to concentrate on looking at sharks rather than concentrating on what I needed to do in my first ocean dive. Looking at sharks was secondary in my mind and some to the colorful reef fish were more interesting. The trumpet fish for example.
3) The d$#@ jerking. If I want to repeatedly startle someone under water I would keep jerking their arm when the didn't expect it. And this because a shark was swimming off in the distance.
4) Him using that blasted camera and not concentrating on his student. I got the impression that I was just along to pay for his dive and room and was a very irritating presence that he had to deal with.
5) Not attaching that tank to my BCD correctly.
Chris my OW instructor was very patient with the group, watched us like a hawk and wasn't concentrating on other things. That's what I was expecting from an instructor.
I will say that Jane when, he let her, was OK and patient.
We have two more dives scheduled both in springs where I'm confident I'll be fine. But I can say that Tom could have put me off of diving for good. I'm now nervous about ocean diving thanks to him. But I expect a week of diving on the shallower reefs in the keys will dissipate that.
It also taught me not to pick the low price leader when selecting a instructor next time. I just want to get these next couple of dives finished and get my AOW and Nitrox cards from him now. If we had to do a couple more dives in the ocean I would be very nervous.
I also gained an appreciation of how to drown on the surface and that intense yearning for the surface. I should mention that I am somewhat hard of hearing (thank you USN) and my OW class made it worse. Strangely that 86 foot dive seems to have cleared up an obstruction in my right ear that started with the OW dives. And to have restored it to it's previous not so good level. I don't have a problem equalizing.
BK
I talked to the instructor and he has a lot of experience and seems to know what he was doing. So she signed up for OW and I signed up for AOW. We both signed up for Nitrox after her OW cert was done. My wife is unable to use her left hand and her pool session went well with him spending a lot of time working of how to develop special techniques for her handicap. So far so good.
I know that I'm not great with buoyancy control and have concentrated on that during my 3 dives in the springs after finished that OW class. I'm also concentrating on breath control. I have a Seaquest Pro i3 BCD and it uses a small lever on the left side bottom of the BCD to add/remove air. You just have to give it a tiny tap up to add air and I'm still getting used to it. I discussed my buoyancy control with Tom before we left on the trip and he was very critical of that BCD saying no one should have sold it to a beginner. Actually I sold it to myself.
I'm going to call the instructor Tom. He set up a weekend set of dives for me this weekend. Dive 1 was a night dive at Blue Heron bridge on Friday night. And then a morning 2 dive set on Saturday. He brought along his dive instructor trainee that I'll call Jane.
Now for the dives. The Blue Heron dive started out with problems. I usually dive with a steel 95 in freshwater. But he had my wife use that tank in the pools session and I just planned on using one of my AL80 tanks for the bridge dive. I had no idea what weight I was going to need in seawater and with the AL tank. I usually dive with 10 pounds in freshwater. So following his suggestion I tried 14# but could not submerge, I went back and got another 3 pounds and that still didn't work. I ended up at 20# but was still a little light tho I didn't realize it.
Then my mask started leaking a lot, it was filling up the mask in less than a minute and I have a inelastic slap strap that is not easy to adjust. Especially with gloves on. Since I was light still I was having buoyancy problems and the shallow depth was making that worse. We were also having problems with night signals for the first couple of minutes. That was my problem since he went over the circle with light before we went down along with a couple of others. But he pointed the light in my direction when showing me those and when we in the water I originally thought that he was just waving his light around on the sea bed looking for things until I figured out what he was doing.
I admit I am not great or even good at breath control yet. And with my mask filling up constantly and the buoyancy problem I burned thru my air fast. But we got to see three bat fish and a lot of other critters.
OK on to the next day. He gave me a 90 minute lecture in the motel that night. When we got to the dive shop (Scuba Adventurers in Riviera Beach) I found out that we were doing Shark Canyon and a ledge that I never got the name of for the dives. The ledge first and he planned to bounce down to 90 feet to make this a deep water dive and then spend the rest of the time at 70 ft. He told me several times that he wanted me to jump off the boat with no air in my BCD and head down as fast as I could go since the current was faster on the surface than deeper down and he didn't want to lose the dive master.
OK I still was not sure that I had fixed my equipment problems and this meant I could not check things near the surface before getting down to 70 feet. I dived with 20# of weight and my mask was still leaking but not as badly. OK he jumped in with this huge camera and lights, and Jane his trainee was supposed to me watching me as part of her instructor training. He was going to use the camera on the sharks. He said he wanted to do this dive for a long time. I was taken aback since the original plan as explained to me before we left on this trip was to do 1) a wreck dive for the deep dive followed by a 2) a drift dive.
I like looking at sharks but frankly was more interested in dealing with my technique development and being relaxed under water. I've been to 72 feet in the springs a couple of times and didn't expect any issues with diving a few feet further in the ocean. When we got under on the bottom he started doing the shark hand signal which I did not know and then he started jerking me every time he saw one. Remember Jane was supposed to be managing me. Incidently he had me on 31% Nitrox even tho we had not done the Nitrox class. The bottom was at 90 feet so there was no possibility of going too deep.
Every time he grabbed me I got a shot of adrenaline.I was still light and didn't know it. And my mask was leaking but not as bad as the night dive. We saw some sharks, got down to 86 feet, and I was stressed out. I signaled to him that I was down to 1200#, we were supposed to surface at 1000#. He kept on going. I got down to 900# and we kept on going for another minute of so. He was distracted by his camera work and Jane was just tagging along. He finally signaled her to take me up while he stayed down. We got to 30 feet and then I was down to 200#. I had to buddy breath with Jane and she did it differently than I was taught in OW.
Chris Corbett was my OW instructor. He taught us that the diver sharing his air was supposed to grab the first stage reg of the guy getting air. But she wanted me to hold on to her arm with my left arm meaning could not see my computer. We got to the surface finally and I did not have enough air to inflate my BCD. Right then I instantly understood how someone could drown on the surface. Fortunately the boat was about 75 feet away and I swam over to it feeling safer doing that than I did dog paddling on the surface. Got back on board OK. But when I climbed up the ladder my tank slipped off, the tank that Tom had 'tightened' up before the dive.
I will have to compliment the crew of the boat they were great and very helpful. OK on to the second dive: Shark Valley. There was maybe a 2-3 foot swell and when the boat turned beam on to the seas I was feeling a bit queasy so I didn't drink anything not wanting to have to throw up over the side which would make me look like more of an idiot.
We got to the second dive site. I was attaching my gear to the tank and when I tested the regulator that little knob that says max-min on it blew off the second stage causing air to blast out of the hole. Fortunately the boat had a spare reg again kudo's to the boat crew. But I felt like even more of a neer-do-well.
I had tightened up my mask strap some more, Jane thought that I was still a little light on weight and gave me a three pound weight that I stuck in a side pocket. We entered the water with the same technique. The bottom was at 70 feet for the ledge. I did the navigation exercise easily and then thought I was doing OK on buoyancy with the 3 pound extra weight, I was probably a little heavy which was OK with me. We kept on going until I was down to 900#, saw sharks a couple of turtles and a Goliath Grouper about 4-5 feet long tagged along with the group for 10 minutes of so with a shark swimming circles around it and us.
At 900# he wanted to buddy breath with him on the bottom to extend our bottom time. He wanted me to hang on to one of his BCD straps with my left hand while we did this. He continued with the d#$@ jerking during this dive. And then he turn signaled that we would surface. And for me to shift over to my own reg. I'll tell you what, while we were floating at 30 feet or so doing the safety stop that surface looked a mile away. There is no comparison to the feeling in a springs and in the open ocean and I gained an appreciation for why someone would bolt for the surface.
Now my failings:
1) Multiple equipment problems.
2) Getting stressed and burning thru my air, in the springs I could dive to 70+ feet using my ST90 overfilled to 3000 and spend an hour in the springs, not all at 70 feet and get out with 1200-1600# in my tank. Of course we went down to 70 feet and stayed there so I didn't expect as much bottom time.
3) I did not know some of the hand signals-shark and turtle for example.
4) I was on the edge of being sea sick and didn't drink anything between dives.
5) I didn't check my gear before diving after letting him attach the tank strap.
6) Maybe I should look for a different mask. This one always leaks a little bit. It is a Mares Liquid Skin which had high ratings on the Scuba Diver tests.
7) I should have manually inflated my BCD when we surfaced on the first dive.
I'm the alpha male type but I take instruction well when it is calmly given. I don't take physical attention getting very well.
What I see as his failings:
1) Knowing that I customarily used used a st95 (he sold it to me) and had only done freshwater dives he didn't make sure that my equipment was OK using the Al80 before it got dark and the time pressure was on because of the tide on the bridge dive. When I mentioned that I thought that I should have checked my gear before it got dark (when we were back in the motel) he just gave me a blank stare.
2) Expecting me to concentrate on looking at sharks rather than concentrating on what I needed to do in my first ocean dive. Looking at sharks was secondary in my mind and some to the colorful reef fish were more interesting. The trumpet fish for example.
3) The d$#@ jerking. If I want to repeatedly startle someone under water I would keep jerking their arm when the didn't expect it. And this because a shark was swimming off in the distance.
4) Him using that blasted camera and not concentrating on his student. I got the impression that I was just along to pay for his dive and room and was a very irritating presence that he had to deal with.
5) Not attaching that tank to my BCD correctly.
Chris my OW instructor was very patient with the group, watched us like a hawk and wasn't concentrating on other things. That's what I was expecting from an instructor.
I will say that Jane when, he let her, was OK and patient.
We have two more dives scheduled both in springs where I'm confident I'll be fine. But I can say that Tom could have put me off of diving for good. I'm now nervous about ocean diving thanks to him. But I expect a week of diving on the shallower reefs in the keys will dissipate that.
It also taught me not to pick the low price leader when selecting a instructor next time. I just want to get these next couple of dives finished and get my AOW and Nitrox cards from him now. If we had to do a couple more dives in the ocean I would be very nervous.
I also gained an appreciation of how to drown on the surface and that intense yearning for the surface. I should mention that I am somewhat hard of hearing (thank you USN) and my OW class made it worse. Strangely that 86 foot dive seems to have cleared up an obstruction in my right ear that started with the OW dives. And to have restored it to it's previous not so good level. I don't have a problem equalizing.
BK
