Into the sea

Into the sea

Today was the day we were all back to what we were like all those months or years ago, when we got into the ocean for the very first time… Nervous and scared!

When we arrived at the Dive Center, the first thing we did was to present our briefings for the Open Water Exercises. We had to combine the two skills into one briefing, and my skills for today were the regulator recovery and clearing, and the partial mask flood. I think I am very lucky with these skills, but before I get to excited, we’ll just see how they go.

We drove to the Marina in several cars, fully loaded with tanks and equipment. When we got there, we set up our equipment, gathered our slates and thoughts together and got onto the boat.

It was a cold, windy day, so we are hoping that we won’t be in the water for too long, as you start to cool down very quickly after about 30 minutes.

The candidates with surface skills were up first, and the waves didn’t make it easier for them! I was lucky to have two underwater skills. Some of the skills were done very quickly, but others took about 10 to 15 minutes to complete both their skills and get their students (us) to do it. My skills went fine, really good actually, maybe to good! I am afraid I might have missed a problem that the Course Director / Examiner gives out, but we’ll see when we get our scores. Let’s hope it was all fine and I achieved a good score.

Because some of the candidates took so long to do their Open Water Exercises, we ended up in the water for 72 minutes, and this was only the time we spend under the water! Obviously, we were all shaking and wanting to get out by the end of it. Fortunately, when we were back in the marina, the sun was out to warm us up quickly.

We did our debriefs in the marina, packed up our equipment and had a nice English Breakfast for lunch.

Back at the dive center, we got our scores, and it turned out I had been worried for no reason at all. I scored two straight fives on my Open Water Exercises.

We listened to one more presentation; “Keep Diving”, and went home to do our homework for the next day; preparing more presentations!!

Wish me luck!

Love, Alice