Wednesday, May 24, 2006

A Weekend Of Diving

So this weekend I did my advanced open water diver training with Alisa. Our first two dives were a little troubled but the last three were a load of fun. Here is what we did:
  • Night dive at Ogden Point: Here I learned that having 20 lbs of weight on your tank makes for very awkward weighting.
  • Deep dive at Willis Point:
    • In your open water course they tell you not to dive while recovering from a cold. This is good advice as I found out here. Well, we decided to neglect it so I can have my advanced for this weekend, and we had some trouble diving here because both Alisa and I were recovering from a cold. With some work, however, we made it to 80 ft. After surfacing I had a nosebleed. The lesson to be learned I suppose is not to push too hard.
    • Also, I can solve puzzles faster at depth then at the surface.
  • Navigation dive at Willis Point: Floating in the middle of the ocean, seeing nothing but Alisa floating off to the right is a little disorienting. Thus trying to navigate a square pattern by compass makes for a fun little challenge.
  • Naturalist Dive at 10 Mile Point: See if I can find five plants, five invertebrates, and five vertebrates. We had the five plants done before we started diving :)
  • Drift dive at 10 Mile Point: Wait for the current to kick in a bit and then get taken for a ride along the amazing wall out there.
The last three dives were a load of fun and it all worked out nicely in the end. Now I can go dive with everybody this weekend.

2 comments:

  1. Well that sounds like a fun Advanced coure. For my two optional adventurer dives i did a Wreck dive and peak performance boyancy. Two good choices in my opinion.

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  2. I was thinking of doing PPB instead of underwater naturalist, but I was mostly using rental gear. I will do the PPB specialty once I have all my own gear.

    Wreck would have been a lot of fun, but a little harder to do. I'll have to do that as specialty sooner or later :)

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