PADI Certified

Well, I was hoping to write each day of my certification process but it ended up that I had so much studying to do that it took all my time and there was no time left for writing! So, here is a brief summary of my experience:

Day 2-I met with my instructor, Kev, and we went over the homework quizzes we had been assigned the night before. He talked a lot about things we needed to know, explaining how scuba diving works. In the afternoon we got fitted for gear and headed to the pool where we had to take a 200 meter swimming test and then float for 10 minutes. Basically you have to show that you feel comfortable in the water before they allow you to continue on. Luckily I passed the test. I put on my scuba equipment got into the pool and took my first breaths underwater. While in the pool we practiced a lot of worst case scenario situations. We learned to take our respirators out of our mouths and replace them, take off our masks and replace them, etc. We also worked on controlling our buoyancy. That was a bit more difficult than I expected. The 3 of us in the class kept bumping into each other and floating to the top...it was pretty comical. After several hours in the water the day came to an end. We were given 2 more chapters to study...This is turning out to be much more studying than I anticipated.

Day 3-This morning we went over the chapters we were given to study the night before. It was hard to fit all that information into my head in such a short period of time but I did it! I passed all the quizzes and that afternoon we headed out for our first real dive! I was nervous but excited. We would do 2 dives each lasting about 30-40 minutes at 12 meters. We headed out in a boat with several other divers at differing levels. The water was choppy and setting up the equipment while the boat was moving made some unsettled stomaches. I'm not prone to sea sickness but I could definitely understand one could feel that way after that experience! We got to our dive location, suited up and jumped in. Down we went into the water...down, down, down, stopping to equalize our ears every few feet. We weren't underwater to enjoy the scenery just yet. We were there to practice the skills we had learned in the pool setting. My mask kept fogging up so I didn't see much around me but I passed all the skills and I didn't drown! The second dive was more skill practicing and a little more swimming around. It was so cool! I was doing it! I was swimming with schools of fish, admiring the coral...very cool.

Day 4-The last day started at 6 AM. We gathered our equipment, loaded into the truck that took us to the pier where we crawled across one boat to get into the boat that would take us to our dive locations. We would do 2 more dives to finish demonstrating we could do each of the skills. It was amazing except that it took so long for one guy to get to the bottom (20 minutes to be exact) that by the time we were all at the bottom we didn't have much time to pass off the skills AND swim around. A bit frustrating but...we are all learning so, it's all good. The last skill we had to do was to practice an emergency, out of air ascent. Let's pray that I never find myself in such a situation...but just in case, I know how to handle it. Once we had passed our skills we loaded the boat and headed back to the resort for the final exam...which, thankfully, I passed!!

That's all there is to it! Just a whole lot of studying...lots of worst-case-scenario skill practicing and if all goes well you end up with a dive license and a dive log book where you log each of your dives, the depth of your dive, the length of the dive, the water temperature, what you saw, etc. We filled out our books, logging our 4 dives and walked away excited for future dives, which I'll write about in my next post.