My Open Water Diving course - Part 1 of 2

 

Swimming around

This past weekend, I undertook the first part of the Open Water Scuba Diving course. The idea of being able to undertake and master such a complex skill, along with the adrenaline of diving and the beauty of seeing different underwater environments, really appealed to me. So a few months ago I dropped a few hundred pounds, and signed up to the course!

This first weekend, the mornings are spent going through the theory of scuba diving, and most importantly, the safety aspects. This includes various concepts such as nitrogen accumulation,  air compression and expansion, no decompression limits (the amount of time you can spend at a particular depth before you would need decompression stops to safely ascend without getting decompression sickness), procedures for out of air emergencies and first aid priorities. This information is a very important part of the course, as without it, you wouldn’t have the background to really understand why certain scuba diving rules are in place. Plus, it takes place in a room with plenty of tea, biscuits and oranges! This of course is never a bad thing. The first day we had the added advantage of a bouncy (and slightly windy) black Labrador called Scuba wandering around the classroom, and making sad eyes at us whilst we ate biscuits.

The theory part

But of course nothing can be all theory. So after a few hours we all headed off for the swimming pool, in which we had lanes booked to try out diving for real! The first thing we had to do in the pool was jump straight in and swim eight laps nonstop! This was to test out fitness, and ensure we could actually swim. After we had finished we had to tread water for ten minutes. This bit was fun and easy! There is nothing better than the jump into water unencumbered. It was a bit different once all the dive equipment was strapped to me! Afterwards we had to learn how to set up and dismantle all of our equipment. This included the BCD (Buoyancy Control Device), the air cylinder, fins, mask and various bits of tubing that would help us stay underwater and, you know, not die there. Whilst we were standing there listening, I caught a sight of one of the other students looking a bit worse for wear. He stepped forward with a sway and announced:

“I don’t feel very well – very well at all!”

His face was bright red and he looked sort of unfocused. The instructor Jon sat him down, and he had to get some orange juice down him and eventually go home. Chatting to one of the other students about it, I think he had struggled a little with the initial swim, and it had made him feel unwell.

So now we were down to six, and it was time to get in the water and get kitted up. There is a wetsuit, boots, the BCD, the mask, fins and weight belt. It took a little while to get it all on, but finally we were ready to go! The first step was getting our faces in the water and ensuring we could breathe okay with our regulators. It took a while to all even get down on the bottom of the pool, especially as the student next to me kept rolling sideways into me, and I had to help stop her entirely rolling on her back! She was having some difficulty with the weights that were in the BCD. After this was the first of the skills. There are a lot of these to be covered within the course, and we seemed to do a lot of the scary ones today! The first skill was letting a small amount of water into the mask (just below the eyes) and then clearing the mask to remove the water. It is definitely a trick to get the hang of this one! My mask felt like it was constantly filling with water no matter how much I cleared it. After a quick change of mask it was much better and actually sealed to my face which I was fairly chuffed about! It still took a few tries to get the knack of the mask clearing though. We had to be able to easily find and replace our regulators if they were accidentally knocked out, so this was the next skill. Every time we took our regulators from our mouth we had to ensure we blew a little stream of bubbles the whole time. We have to develop the habit so that we don’t accidentally hold our breath when we are ascending, especially if we’re 20 foot underwater!

Practicing skills underwater

Then it was time for a little swim about. The first swim was a little iffy, as half the class was buoyed up at the top of the water, while the rest (including me) were scraping along the bottom having difficulty getting afloat. BCD control is a real skill, which I think would take quite a few dives to master. The second swim about went a little bit though, with a bit more practice, and some finning about! We all went in an ordered queue, so there was less confusion as well.

The final task of this first swim was practicing the ability to locate and use a partner’s alternate air source. I saw someone else doing it and trying to take a breath from the other side of the regulator (i.e., not the mouthpiece!), and determined not to do that. When it was my turn, I grabbed the instructor, signalled ‘Out of Air’, removed the regulator from my mouth and took his from the holder. Then we held arms whilst I breathed his regulator to simulate a buddy descent to surface.

By this time I was absolutely bursting for a wee, so thank god it was the end of the first swim. For some reason diving makes my bladder extremely unstable. I know how enriched I have made all of your lives now that you know that.

After a quick wee, and an undignified struggle trying to tug my wetsuit back up, I returned to the poolside for the second swim. Each time one swim officially ends we have a debrief on what happened in the water and how we did on our skills. Then we have to dismantle and set up our equipment. This gets lots of practice in so we have a clearer idea of what exactly we are carting around on our backs, and how to piece it together. We also had a prebrief before each dive so we knew the plan and didn’t have to rely too much on unintelligible underwater gesturing.

Now we got the chance to do a deep water entry (instead of simply sitting in the shallow end and putting on gear on like that). The first one to try was a giant stride entry, which we did from a rubber mat at the side of the deep end. Putting on all the heavy gear, I struggled to my feet and watched a couple of the others do their entries. It looked scary (mostly because I could imagine my other leg slipping and going ass over tit into the pool), but I knew that it should be a decisive movement. I stepped! And was in the water before I knew it. As I surfaced Ken gave me a little “Well done.” which I was pleased with!

There were a few more skills lined up to be practised. We hadn’t paid much attention to the snorkels attached to our masks thus far, but now we had to learn how to use them. Breathing through a snorkel is much more preferable if on the surface, as the air is not compressed, you don’t use your air supply but you still don’t have to hold your head up at the surface to breathe all the time. We practised swapping between regulator and snorkel underwater, and back. Sinking to the bottom of the pool, we learned how to orally inflate our BCD. It was bloody impossible taking off the pressure hose thingy, even though I was shown several times in the slowest mime the instructor could manage. Eventually he part undid it before I completely unscrewed it – so one to practice. When he let the air back out of his BCD it filled the water around our heads with a deluge of bubbles. When I let mine out, a short stream of maybe three bubbles emerged. Hmm.

Now we had to do more messing about with our masks. I can obviously see the reason for this, as it would be fairly rubbish if you were to go into a panic just from your mask being knocked off, but I hate it with a passion. It’s so unpleasant. We had to fill our mask right up with water, and then do the technique to clear it out. I was hyperventilating a little as I did this, which I’m sure Ken could see, but I managed it. After this step the next was, of course, to completely remove the mask and have it off for a full minute whilst we simply sat and breathed through our regulators. I thought I was going to freak, but I did manage to last quite a long time doing this. Whipping it off, I squeezed my eyes closed as the water swirled around my nostrils and tried to concentrate on the slightly panicked pace of my regulator breathing. After ten seconds I calmed a little and got into the rhythm of it. I opened my eyes. Everything was blurred around me, and I could only see the faint shapes of the instructor Ken sitting in front of me. It looked like he was looking at his watch, timing it. Then, by accident, I breathed in through my nose! Argh! I huffed out the water and then continued breathing with my mouth. But, again! It went through my nose! This time I couldn’t regulate it, and I panicked. I shot up to the surface with Ken gamely trying to stop me. But, mid panic, I wasn’t having any of it! I broke the surface, my regulator already out of my mouth, tearing my mask off. Then proceeded to have an epic coughing fit at the surface. Ken came up and waited for me to recover myself before going back down under the water.

The final test was the one I was absolutely dreading all day. The instructor sits behind you and turns off your air supply. Yup, you did hear that right. Part of the course is knowing what it feels like when your tank is empty of air. The main instructor Jon referred to this as the Dead Man’s Suck once during the briefing. It literally is breathing in, and realising there is nothing to breathe. Once you feel it, you look at your gauge, see it reads zero, and give the ‘cut’ sign. Then the instructor turns it back on. I am telling you right now, if this happens to me on an open dive, I won’t waste time looking at the gauge if I can’t breathe!

That was the end of day one! But not the end of the weekend. As despite a half four start in the morning, I still had another long day to go.

 Day 2

Before I knew it, the morning’s theory session had flown by, and I’d passed the theory exam. Now I was standing back at the pool, assembling the kit which no small amount of confusion. Today the instructors focussed much more on the buddy system, and made sure we were paired up and checked each other before getting into the water.

“Hey...” I piped up to Steve who was walking past looking relaxed “Is...my air working?”

It was an odd question, I know, but even though I had taken a couple of breaths from it, I had a feeling it wasn’t really working, or wouldn’t if I got in the water. Having heard all about the things that can go wrong underwater (and yes, I admit, googling a few Scuba horror stories), I was getting quite paranoid about suddenly running out of air. The fact that I was diving in less than 2 metres of water probably makes the likelihood of dying a little less likely. Steve took a couple of breaths, and pronounced it fine.

Out of air drill

Then we got to practice another water entry, this time the backwards roll. I really wasn’t sure what on earth I was meant to be doing here. A head over heels backwards? A short step backwards? A backflip? I hadn’t managed to see the others doing the entry, and I was first up. So shuffling to the pool, I queried:

“So I step backwards?”

“Roll backwards.” Said the instructor.

“As in the literally roll? Or step? Or bum first?”

“ROLL backwards.”

“What’s the difference?!” I cried, a little exasperated. But with that explanation, I had to go. So backwards I went. Bum first, into the water, knocking my mask sideways as I went. Probably the clumsiest water entry anyone has effected. Replacing the various diving accompaniments, I swam aside to make way for the next student. We also practised a little sideways swing in, which is definitely my favourite, as it’s much less splashy!

Remember I said that buoyancy control was quite a difficult skill? Well, the master divers don’t just use their BCD to control it. They breathe in and out to control the air in their lungs (and thus their buoyancy). We knelt on the swimming pool bottom and practised this. We also had to try and hover horizontally midway between the top and the bottom of the pool.

So, wanna know something fun about the regulator which provides all your air underwater? Sometimes, it malfunctions, and starts to gush air out uncontrollably. This is called free flowing. In this instance, having it in your mouth normally could overinflate your lungs. So you have to learn how to breathe in and out from the bubble of air coming off of the regulator. Ever played that sonic game where you have air bubbles coming from cracks at the bottom of the ocean? It’s just like that. In other words, if you can do it properly, IT’S AWESOME! Alas, I did not do it properly for about the first four tries, and incurred no small amount of the instructor’s wrath. As the free flow eats up an almighty amount of air each time, I imagine that was probably linked.



Sonic gets some much needed air

Now for the mask off swim! I thought that I would be terrible at this, but once I had mentally prepared myself, it was actually much less unpleasant than having your mask on but flooded. The worst bit is putting the mask back on and having to clear it.

Now, for some reason that I possibly missed in the briefing, we have to practice taking all our equipment off above and below the water. I can definitely see the reason for knowing how to ditch the weight belt, but we also had to do it with the BCD. Taking off all your gear makes you bob and swing about a fair bit, and it’s pretty hard to control it!

Today we also combined two of the skills; we did the out of air, and then used the alternate of our buddy to get air underwater. We did pretty well in this I think!

Near the end of the swim, the instructor made the sign asking how much air left to one of the other students. She didn’t understand what he meant. Finally he grabbed the gauge and looked at it, and immediately told her to go up. I found out later on that her air was pretty much at zero!

So that was the first part of my diving course! Exciting, scary, interesting and more than a little stressful. But I figure it is all going towards my zombie apocalypse training! Next weekend I will be back in the water, this time in a Baltic lake, to complete the course. Catch the second part here next week!

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