purbeast
Contributor
I'm going to the Keys on Thursday and we're staying in Marathon. Even though the reason for this trip was for Mother's Day, I've gotten the OK from the wife go to diving. I'm planning on trying to do a 2 tank dive trip Saturday morning.
Quick back story is that I got certified in March with OW and AOW. It was a total of 9 dives, and prior to that, I had 6 under my belt, 3 being DSD, and 3 being the first 3 of OW (on my first attempt - got sick and couldn't finish).
Now that I am going to be able to just dive, I'm a little intimidated by it. I really enjoyed the whole group feel to doing the OW and AOW dives, as we had a group of 8 for OW and 12 for AOW. We were all newbs and learning as we went, and I definitely could feel my skills progress in the 9 dives.
But now that I won't be with that group, I am a bit anxious/nervous about it. I'd like to do a shallower dive (30-40 ft maybe) so that I could just enjoy it and also work on my buoyancy a bit, as well as focusing on slowing my breathing down to last longer in the water. At the same time, I don't want to book a trip that has a bunch of experienced divers on it and then feel like a 5th wheel.
So I guess what I'm asking is, when booking and calling dive shops, what do I really say? Do I let them know my experience up front and what I'm looking for in a dive, and they will either say they can take me or not? Will I typically be buddied up with someone random when we get there, or will be go down in a more 'group' setting like we did when I did my training dives? When we did our training dives, there was also a group of 2 who were already certified that went down with one of the dive masters of the company and they just did their own thing. Is it going to be something like that?
I guess I'm just looking at what I should expect in this case, as I've never been in this situation and a bit intimidated by it.
Quick back story is that I got certified in March with OW and AOW. It was a total of 9 dives, and prior to that, I had 6 under my belt, 3 being DSD, and 3 being the first 3 of OW (on my first attempt - got sick and couldn't finish).
Now that I am going to be able to just dive, I'm a little intimidated by it. I really enjoyed the whole group feel to doing the OW and AOW dives, as we had a group of 8 for OW and 12 for AOW. We were all newbs and learning as we went, and I definitely could feel my skills progress in the 9 dives.
But now that I won't be with that group, I am a bit anxious/nervous about it. I'd like to do a shallower dive (30-40 ft maybe) so that I could just enjoy it and also work on my buoyancy a bit, as well as focusing on slowing my breathing down to last longer in the water. At the same time, I don't want to book a trip that has a bunch of experienced divers on it and then feel like a 5th wheel.
So I guess what I'm asking is, when booking and calling dive shops, what do I really say? Do I let them know my experience up front and what I'm looking for in a dive, and they will either say they can take me or not? Will I typically be buddied up with someone random when we get there, or will be go down in a more 'group' setting like we did when I did my training dives? When we did our training dives, there was also a group of 2 who were already certified that went down with one of the dive masters of the company and they just did their own thing. Is it going to be something like that?
I guess I'm just looking at what I should expect in this case, as I've never been in this situation and a bit intimidated by it.