SangP:
Again a rather curious response I wonder where you got the idea from this initial thread?
Regardless, I understand you have good intentions otherwise this thread could get......
SangP
I used to date a woman, who was very competitive. She had never been in the ocean, but was a good swimmer all her life. She knew I went to the ocean a lot as a freediver and scuba diver. One weekend, she asked if she could come along on a freediving trip. Strange request, but I agreed. We rented all the gear for her: fins, mask, snorkel, wetsuit, boots, gloves, hood, weight belt. She used my float. She had a blast! It was a wonderful weekend of fun and freediving.
We went again the following weekend as well. That was great too. It turned out that with little or no practive she could already hold her breath as long as me, maybe even longer, because there were times when I would wonder if she was ever going to surface!
She said she enjoyed watching the fishes underwater, how they come up to you, like goldfish in a goldfish bowl, only now you are in the goldfish bowl too, not just looking in. And the purplish coloration of the underwater world was something she said she had never imagined.
There was a sale at the scuba store, so we bought her all of her very own freediving gear. Color was the most important thing to her. I would be careful to check everything to make sure it fit her, but if she did not have it in her favorite color, she would not buy it, so we had to search all over town to find both the perfect fit and her favorite color. Finally we found everything.
After a few months of freediving like this, she wanted to try scuba. She enrolled in a class and we went together. She picked out a back-inflation B/C in her favorite color, and I bought it for her ($600 mistake).
She found the academic portion boring and difficult. She found the pool skills tedious and the pace of the class too fast. For the last weekend at the ocean she had the flu and could not participate in the final dive. After she got well, she had no interest in completing the last dive that she was still missing to get certified. She lost interest in freediving too. Work became really busy and challenging for her, and required a lot more of her time, and so there was never time to get back into scuba.
At no point in the process would I have dared to try to steer her one way or the other. She made her own choices. People are that way. And also, until someone is certified, you have no idea whether they will like scuba or not.
Hope that explains better what I was getting at. That way maybe I can save you $600.
