Skydiver wanting to turn to Scuba Diving

[ruaanfs]

Hi people

Newbie here. My name is Ruaan and I am from South Africa.

I want to try out scuba diving on a recreational level. I am actually more of a trill seeker and I am a skydiver but since I messed up my shoulder I am thinking of leaving skydiving before I hurt myself more. Now I never Scuba dived before but I think its something else. I personally don't think I will get the rush from it as I got from skydiving but the idea of seeing a whole new world intrigues me.

So yes that is my story and hopefully I will learn a lot from the more experienced divers on the forum

 

[porgyhunter]

Just to let you know.....You're not going to be able to decend 10,000 ft like you did skydiving

 

[highdesert]

Decades ago, before I met my wife, I had a lady friend who was an ex-skydiver. She quit when she broke her back landing wrong. Thereafter, whenever she met up with her skydiving friends, one of their topics of conversation was catching up on who else they knew who had died skydiving.

I think you'll find a different kind of rush with scuba. Give it some time, get some solid skills and experience, travel to some world class dive spots. And I think your odds of doing it for the rest of your (long) life are much higher in scuba than skydiving.

 

[BoltSnap]

Hello Ruaan,

Did you mess up your shoulder while skydiving?

 

[gypsyjim]

The thrill is going to be different.

You can "fly", weightless for an hour or so at a time, over the reef like an underwater bird. A lot of "thrill" in that, but not the adrenalin rush you must be used to, steping out into the open air, and dropping weightless toward the earth below.

I have yet to skydive, but intend to do it once, at least, just to experience that rush, but I have kept coming back to the underwater world sort of flying since 1970, and it has never grown old and stale, and it has never tried to kill me. At least not too seriously, or successfully.

 

[Dhboner]

As someone who has done both, I can tell you that they are two completely different experiences. Skydiving is an out and out total rush and that is exactly what draws people to the sport. Scuba diving is a little more like "extreme ecotourism". There is some adrenalin from the knowledge that you are in an environment that requires a life-support system but the sport is more about the things you see while underwater...marine life, shipwrecks, artifacts. There are a few divers who get off on going deeper for the thrill alone and they are dangerous divers but there are other very well-trained divers who go deeper to explore even further and see things that just aren't in shallower water. They have the proper gear, gas, training and ALOT of experience.

I think you will fall in love with diving just don't look for that same rush you got from skydiving.

Bob (Toronto)

 

[ScubaBadger]

On my first drift dive i was buddied up with a guy who did skydiving as well and he described a fast drift dive as being the closest thing he'd found to the feel of skydiving.

 

[wmw999]

As a long-time skydiver who is a fairly inexperienced scuba diver, I'll agree with dhboner that they're entirely different, but both fun.

In both, you're faced with realtime situations where you have to do the right thing the first time (or at least the potential of that). By thinking about it, understanding your gear and the environment, you can increase your margin of safety. There are definitely scary things in both. The difference seems to be that it's easier to get lulled into complacency in scuba, because you don't have that rush of adrenaline, and that focus that you get with a 1-minute skydive. But if things go wrong, you don't have significantly more time to deal with it in scuba than you do on a skydive, so you still have to be ready.

Wendy P.

 

[LakeCountyDiver]

Cool man your going to love it. I would look up your Local Dive Shop and see what they have to offer. I am scared of heights so skydiving was not for me.

 

[northen diver]

Decades ago, before I met my wife, I had a lady friend who was an ex-skydiver. She quit when she broke her back landing wrong. Thereafter, whenever she met up with her skydiving friends, one of their topics of conversation was catching up on who else they knew who had died skydiving.

I think you'll find a different kind of rush with scuba. Give it some time, get some solid skills and experience, travel to some world class dive spots. And I think your odds of doing it for the rest of your (long) life are much higher in scuba than skydiving.

The last time I looked at the stat's, there were a lot more deaths in SCUBA than there was skydiving. I believe there were 54 skydiving deaths in the world with 23 being in the USA. Several of these were suicides. I'll take my chances with skydiving for staying safer.