Monday 18 September 2006 and Tuesday 19 September 2006
Diving theory and diving in the swimming pool
It was time to stick to our plan: getting our dive certificates! We arrived at 08:00 at the Pro Dive centre in Airlie Beach and we were seated in the class room to get our theory lessons about diving. We did the Open Water Diving course with the possibility to expand it with Adventure Diving course. At the start of the course we had to introduce ourselves. The theory was easy if you had read the course book already. Debs was scared she couldn’t understand the theory because it was in English, but she had the luck her theory book was in Dutch.
If you are not good at English it’s hard to understand some terms. We had a Japanese girl in our class and she could hardly speak or understand any English.
The first day we did all the theory and at the end of the day we did an exam. We passed and the next day it was time to do some diving exercises in the swimming pool.
The equipment we get handed out wasn’t really good. The fins were too small or too big, the masks were to tight and leaked and some of the BCD’s leaked too. (for the Dutch readers: BCD is een trimvest waaraan je je duikfles vast maakt).
Our instructor in the swimming pool was an ex-forces dive master and was very rude. He insulted the people who had some problems with diving in the pool.
A student asked the instructor: “How do you come to the surface, with a clenched fist or an open hand?” and the instructor answered: “If you want to pretend to be superman mate, help yourself!”. The same bloke passed the comment: “I’m a little cold” and the instructors response was: ”Take a spoon of cement and harden yourself up!”.
Because non of the fins fitted Debs she had to wear socks in her fins and she had to buy a mask to avoid leaking and fog. The exercises were quite easy if you listened carefully to the instructions. Some students were really struggling to do the exercises because they were very loud and not focused.
Rick finished the day with a bruise on his head because he crashed with a roll door and Debs finished this day with a sore toe because she was hit by the gate. This was a good start for the next days out in the sea…..
Wednesday 20 September 2006 till Friday 22 September 2006
Great Barrier Reef under water
We had eight dives to do. Four dives would get us to our dive certificate for Open Water Diving and the other four dives existed out of three fun dives and one night dive. In the first four dives we had to do different exercises. Nick was the instructor of our group. Our group of five people was big enough. Nick could give us extra attention because the group wasn’t big. Rick and I were each others buddy. Most of the exercises in the Great Barrier Reef were practised by buddy pair. We had to exchange regulators (automaat), finpivot for practising buoyancy control (controle over het drijfvermogen), mask clearance from water, correct ascent and descent (stijgen en dalen), use of alternate regulators from the buddy, under water navigation, correct using of your air and lots of other buoyancy exercises.
On the second day at sea we passed our Open Water certification and we had four more dives to go. We also wanted to get our Adventure diving certificate so our second dive on the second day was our Adventure naturalist dive to identify flora and fauna under water. We had to name five fish, four invertebrates (Bijv. Koraal) and two plants. The current was extremely strong we had a weak link in our buddy team. A third person to baby-sit. It took him ten minutes to make it to the bottom of the Great Barrier Reef while Rick and I consumed air waiting for him. We made the decision to stay within the lagoon because there was plenty to see. After we finished our task Rick and I wanted to explore more but our baby consumed his air to fast so we had to ascend to the surface.
Our third dive was the night dive and this was one of the most relaxed dives. It’s strange to dive in the dark with just the light of the torch. We had to do some navigation and this was quite simple to do.
The final part of our Adventure diving was a thirty metres deep dive with some mental skill tasks. We had to identify 16 numbers on a slate while touching our nose and being timed. Doing this under water and under pressure of the water is slowing your responsive. Very weird. The colour red vanishes beyond a certain depth and the pressure of water is enormous; it crushed a plastic bottle. We couldn’t stay longer under water because we consumed air at a greater rate. The current was strong. Nick tried to grab the bottle but it was all tangled around his tank so I had to untangle it, while we held each other to avoid drifting too far apart. This was our final task to get our Adventure diving certificate, we passed.
The Last dive was our fun dive. And it was fun. We were at Manta ray Reef which is a green zone. Fishing is not allowed over there so everything was huge. There were many fish and they were big, real big. Under the boat swam giant travelly’s who looked like sharks from the surface. When we were diving around the reef we saw a Bull ray (yes, the one which killed Steve Irwin), a blue spotted ray, turtles, a huge parrotfish and many other fish with all colours of the rainbow. Really wonderful. Now we have another addiction: diving……
We want to thank all the people at Pro Dive, especially Nick Leigh who gave us so much confidence and superb instruction, the skipper Simon for getting us there safely and Chris for keeping us so well fed. We thoroughly recommend it as it is exactly as the name suggests ‘Pro Dive‘. We also met a great couple at the Oceania, Maike and Muus from Holland. They still have a couple of months to go and we wish them lots of fun.
Now it’s Saturday the 23th and we are resting after an exhilarating week. The best week we have had but also the most exhausting week. Tomorrow we head south again because time is short and we want to visit another few destinations. Tot later.
To view the pictures go the photo gallery
