Scuba Diving Adventure
7 August 2013
After trekking the Grand Canyon from Rim to Rim I was looking for a new adventure. I found a Scuba diving facility close to home and thought, hmm, why not try this. I had seen beautiful pictures of the underwater world and always wanted to see those beautiful coral reefs. So I went into the store and asked a few questions. Then the lady mentioned that they are running a Groupon deal, it was very tempting, just $150 for open water ANDI Diving certification. I signed up. "What if I don't know swimming very well", the lady said "oh, you will be fine"; my confidence soared, I was ecstatic. So here I am today, I have completed the first two days of the week-long class. Last two days we went over the bookish part of it. Today, I will going in the pool with full gear on and learn breathing with the mask on.Its going to be interesting, I am a little anxious. I don't like losing control of myself and knowing that my life depends on a flimsy mask and a cylinder of compressed air makes me very nervous. I will report how I feel tomorrow but for now, It's killing me.
8 August 2013
So yesterday afternoon, we did the first test of our swimming, water trading skills. We were asked to trade water for 10 min, now I have never done this before, ok...FAIL, right. Well instructor said that back float will count. So I survived floating on the water for 10 min, while going "is it time yet?" Next, swim 8 laps around a small swimming pool, okay that was not a big problem. Next, put fins on and swim without using arms, then put mask on and swim with a snorkel, now dive to the bottom and pick a sack from the bottom of the pool with fins, snorkel, and masks on. This was the hardest part for me. I managed to get the sack but could never get myself to go vertically down in to the pool.
After the pool excercises were done we got to get our scuba equipment ready, i.e. tank, secondary tank, RBS, floatation device, and so on. With all gear weighing at 25 Kg, this thing is starting to look scary to me. Last night I got up at 4AM wondering how am I going to go down 100 feet in water, what if my mask gets fogged, what if my mouth piece comes out of my mouth, what if the mask gets flooded, what if I need to cough, I was going crazy thinking of all the things that can go wrong. How do I make myself comfortable under water.
During the day I went and bought a more comfortable swim trunk, as if that's going to help me. Then I researched some snorkels and nose clips to see how to practice breathing with mouth only.
posted by Vijay @ 2:49 PM
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