I just finished my AOW course today, and the deep dive this morning was, to say the least, interesting...
We got down to 95 feet and were instructed to sit down on a pile of rocks to do the "skill" requirements without silting up everything. I sat down and promptly got a bit of water in the nose pocket of my mask. No problem, right? I've cleared or otherwise adjusted my mask several times this weekend alone. Well it turned out to be a problem, I couldn't seem to get that tiny amount of water away from my nose and I started hyperventilating and just generally freaking out. I knew I had to calm down and get my breathing back under control but it just wasn't happening. At this point our instructor was going around asking for everybody's air pressure, and when he gets to me, my "problem" signal was with such an unsteady hand that I probably looked like I had Parkinson's or something. He took me aside and I still wasn't calming down quite yet, we went up 5, maybe 10 feet and after maybe 2 or 3 seconds I was perfectly fine, as if somebody had snapped their fingers and it was over. We went back down to the group, and at this point it was about time to start our ascent anyway. On the way up, I had a few anxious moments where I just wanted to get to the surface but it was otherwise alright.
My instructor said that I might have been narked based on how it got better when we ascended a few feet, but I wouldn't mind a few more opinions: was I narked or was I just panicked (and calmed down because my instructor was holding on to me)?
Thanks.
We got down to 95 feet and were instructed to sit down on a pile of rocks to do the "skill" requirements without silting up everything. I sat down and promptly got a bit of water in the nose pocket of my mask. No problem, right? I've cleared or otherwise adjusted my mask several times this weekend alone. Well it turned out to be a problem, I couldn't seem to get that tiny amount of water away from my nose and I started hyperventilating and just generally freaking out. I knew I had to calm down and get my breathing back under control but it just wasn't happening. At this point our instructor was going around asking for everybody's air pressure, and when he gets to me, my "problem" signal was with such an unsteady hand that I probably looked like I had Parkinson's or something. He took me aside and I still wasn't calming down quite yet, we went up 5, maybe 10 feet and after maybe 2 or 3 seconds I was perfectly fine, as if somebody had snapped their fingers and it was over. We went back down to the group, and at this point it was about time to start our ascent anyway. On the way up, I had a few anxious moments where I just wanted to get to the surface but it was otherwise alright.
My instructor said that I might have been narked based on how it got better when we ascended a few feet, but I wouldn't mind a few more opinions: was I narked or was I just panicked (and calmed down because my instructor was holding on to me)?
Thanks.