An early start this morning for pick up at 7.15 to go to our boat. The boat is a good size and has a few people on it ranging from other learners to people doing fun dives. We were given breakfast which was just a buffet of cereal, bread for toast, cheese jam salads etc. there was fruit and snacks available throughout the whole day to keep our energy levels up with endless drinks and rehydration juice. It's strange but just from the last couple of days knowing you're using your body as a working machine makes you so much more conscious of looking after it and fuelling it properly.
We did some more work in the books and theory with our instructor, holli, as well as another knowledge test before going down and sorting our equipment out. We went over all the steps of checking the valves were ok, the air quality, attaching all the valves and tubes etc in the right places and checking everything was working. It's a bit scary because you know that if you miss something it's very serious once you're down there! Obviously at this stage everything we do is checked so no dangers there. He changed my BCD to an extra small one because apparently the small was too big yesterday, and also took a weight off my weight belt...which surprised me but was also nice because the weight belts and the oxygen tank equates to around 20kg weight on you so it took some of the weight off.
Once suited up and checked over for anything missing in we went. Inflate your jacket, breathing piece in, goggles on, flippers on, one giant step over the boat and you're in. Nice and toasty warm and a wonderful 30c! We swam away from the boat, a difficult task when you're geared up with so much stuff. We went over some skills like changing from snorkel to regulator under water, all the while keeping your breathing going so once a breathing apparatus is out of your mouth you continue to breath out, not hold your breath.
We completed 17 skill sets at about 6m under, stuff like filling our masks with water and emptying it whilst down there. Simulating running out of air and changing to another persons alternate air source and swimming to the surface together. All the while keeping in mind the science of being at depth and how it changes your lung size, the density of air, the amount of nitrogen in your body etc. there's a lot to think about, you cant just go up and down willy nilly theres a science to it. And a lot of it is also a numbers game which makes it quite difficult for me!
After completing the skill sets we went for a tour of the reef for about 45 minutes or so which was so fun. There's so much to see, a whole different world at a completely different pace. Once you settle into it and you trust your oxygen supply its actually really relaxing! You take everything really slowly, if you're getting out of breath you're not doing it right. It was chance for us to hone in the skills we'd been learning like clearing your mask if it gets foggy and checking your depth gauge to figure out how much you may need to inflate or deflate your jacket, getting to use all the communication signals etc.
After this dive we had chance to change cylinders for the next dive...where we began to realise than Liam uses a hell of a lot more oxygen than us. The instructor said its mostly because he's male so he has a bigger lung capacity, I think it's also because he used to swim and so his lungs are actually in really good condition. Holli told us about a mountain climber student he had once and he did the oxygen turn off under water, where most people get 3 or 4 breaths before its gone so have time to change. He did it with this guy and half a breath took it all...all because he was fit, active and had good lungs.
We had about 50 minutes where we topped up on food and water before we went back in and did it all again. We were in the water for about 50 minutes, the reasoning for the times is all to do with working out how much residual nitrogen is in your body after dives and how long you rest in between etc. we have a table to work out the timings and what is safe.
It took us about anhour and a half to get back because we had travelled out quite far to get to the lagoon and the cave. In that time we did more reading and theory work.
Tomorrow we have our final exam so we spent most of the evening studying, the difference in me and Liam was unbelievable, you can tell I'm the highly strung academic. He just wasn't really that bothered, distractible, was confused when I stated I wanted to pass through knowing the material not through asking despite the fact that we are allowed to during the exam....I even caught him writing an answer on his palm in pen at one point, I was mortified and made him rub it off!! He calls me a boffin, I prefer to think of myself as conscientious and a non-cheater!
We were both worried today because of the history of my ears being bad under pressure but i was absolutely fine. It took me a little longer to go down than the others to clear my ears but i did it. We're both looking forward to more dives tomorrow now :)
