JanR
Contributor
This afternoon, my wife and I became independent divers with our first two dives without an instructor or guide!!!
To my surprise (and delight), the dives seemed so much less stressful than previous dives. I think that with our previous dives there is always that stress of evaluation. While the evaluation and constructive criticsm is appreciated, it was nice to be rid of it for the afternoon.
The dives weren't complicated...
First dive was out to one of the 30 foot platforms where we shot another azimuth to bring us to a stack of cars at about 45 feet. After a couple minutes at the stack, Tracey (who was diving the quary and the low temperatures for the first time) signalled "too cold" and we moved back up to 30 feet and slowly started our way back to our entry point. When we finally surfaced after 29 minutes, we found ourselves 45 feet to the right of our entry point.
For the second dive, we decided to stay on the shallow shelf (20-30 feet) and work on some bouyancy, kicks, and looking at the few fish. We gradually worked ourself out to one of the other dive platforms and moved back to the entry point. We followed the slope up to where the bottom was only 4 feet and finally came up, this time 30 feet to the left of our entry point.
We were diving later in the afternoon, so the visibility was no more than about 5 feet...less in some portions.
Overall, what a great feeling. We fully felt in control, had a great time, and proved to ourselves that we can do this.
Now, if I could only get into my dive profile to change my number dives from 0-15 to 16-50...working towards that new log book!!
Jan
To my surprise (and delight), the dives seemed so much less stressful than previous dives. I think that with our previous dives there is always that stress of evaluation. While the evaluation and constructive criticsm is appreciated, it was nice to be rid of it for the afternoon.
The dives weren't complicated...
First dive was out to one of the 30 foot platforms where we shot another azimuth to bring us to a stack of cars at about 45 feet. After a couple minutes at the stack, Tracey (who was diving the quary and the low temperatures for the first time) signalled "too cold" and we moved back up to 30 feet and slowly started our way back to our entry point. When we finally surfaced after 29 minutes, we found ourselves 45 feet to the right of our entry point.
For the second dive, we decided to stay on the shallow shelf (20-30 feet) and work on some bouyancy, kicks, and looking at the few fish. We gradually worked ourself out to one of the other dive platforms and moved back to the entry point. We followed the slope up to where the bottom was only 4 feet and finally came up, this time 30 feet to the left of our entry point.
We were diving later in the afternoon, so the visibility was no more than about 5 feet...less in some portions.
Overall, what a great feeling. We fully felt in control, had a great time, and proved to ourselves that we can do this.
Now, if I could only get into my dive profile to change my number dives from 0-15 to 16-50...working towards that new log book!!
Jan
Heh--you had your umbilical cord cut, I had my appendix cut out. 
