Memories & Experiences OW/Basic class.

We all started here.

What fond/wierd/scary/funny memories do you have of your OW/Basic class and checkout dives?

Falling right onto my face in the sand coming out of the sea - did that each and every time over the three days....at least it made everyone else laugh :)

Seeing the look in my buddies face when he descended with his snorkel in his mouth. :eek:
Being buzzed by diving ducks at 9m. "what are those superfast silvery things going past ? They don't look like fish!", then spotting the two little webbed feet hammering away behind them.
Finding myself at the surface, (again!), after another episode of crap bouyancy and shouting in sheer frustration, "What the %*@^ am I doing up here?" and then realising that some 50-60 students and their instructors have turned to stare at me!

Getting sea sick for the very first time in my life :(

Bama, there are those that have and those that will, but non that won't!

Watching the instructor and the rest of the class getting picked up and tossed by the sets after he told us to enter right as the sets were on the horizon while I was in ankle deep water waiting them out. But the best part was kicking out past the instructor while he was disoriented trying to fix his mask.

LadyDog and I were the only students for the week at SE Fly 'N Dive in Aruba...and the four instructors on staff had nothing better to do than drill the crap out out of us all week long. It was a real boot camp kind of experience, and we're better divers because of it.

My favorite experience of all was the day of our final check-out dive. We were riding on three-footers at the surface, with a pretty good current. After we got our kits all prepped the lead instructor threw them as far overboard as he could. Then he made us sit there and watch them float away. When they were a good 100 yards away and drifting ever faster out to sea (or so it seemed, anyway) he told us to get our fins, masks and snorkels on and go. Once we had retrieved and donned the gear we were to swim back to the boat and he would hand down our weight belts. Of course, he had also secretly turned off the air valve and generally screwed up the harness so as to make donning a major pain in the a**.

It was tough, and we swallowed a good bit of the Caribbean in the process, but it was invaluable training that we completed successfully.

Mountain Dog

ooooo ... I like that idea ... :D

Mine was at Santa Cruz Island in the month of January! The water was cold and clear and standing on the back of the old dive boat the "Emerald" was like standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon! I could look down and see the team that had gone in before me at 60ft plus! In those days you had to do your water skills and then "Blow and Go"! That was a controlled ascent from 60ft blowing bubbles all the way to the surface! You learned that you could make it on one breath in a practical demonstration of dive physics!

I stood there waiting for my turn telling myself that "I can do this" over and over as the anxiety built in my throat starring into the cold clear water. The surface was being broken by bubbles from the teams below me expelling twice as much air then any two seasoned teams! Then a team would break the surface with a gasp and then a smile!

I was shaken from my trans by Stan Jackson telling me and my buddy Dave Michalski "Your next, lets go"! I will tell you Dave went first and it was all I could muster to to step out of that plane at 15000ft and that is how it felt! The next is a blur and to this day I can't tell you how I stepped off the back of that boat, but the bubbles and cold engulfed me and my breathing was close to hyperventilation!

I gathered myself and tried to relax eying my buddy and wanting to keep up my end of the team! Dave's eyes were as wide as mine and we put the regs in our mouths and dropped below the surface fallowing Stan Jackson down to where Otto Gasser awaited on the bottom! We did our skills, putting the numbing cold out of our minds and taking off our simple gear and then dawning it with ease!

It was time to "Blow and Go" as a team under the eye of the third diver and instructor Mr. Jackson! You held your reg just outside your mouth and blew those bubbles and we pushed off the bottom looking up! We were committed and I will always remember the smile on Dave's face as we took our place as divers on the surface behind the Old Emerald in the cold clear water that didn't feel so cold anymore!

We were now divers free to explore our new world and use the 15 minutes of air we had left in our steel 72s! Get out of our way we had a new world to cover!;) I guess you never forget your checkout dive!

Having just returned to Santa Cruz Island it is still beautiful and we here in southern cal are lucky to have such a diving resource!

Wow.. You know, during my initial O/W, nothing really stands out except when my Instructor handed me my temporary c-card. That was cool. But my instructor told me he wanted me in his "adavanced" class in three weeks. So I did it. It was on that trip my first real fond memory comes: We are all at dinner talking and he was talking about each person and how they did in the class. (15 out of 17 were there for O/W) When he got to me, he said, "Dale was in my O/W class last month and after watching him on his cert dives, I told myself, 'This guy is a diver." That was very cool to hear coming from an instructor I respected.

March of ’79, South Coast of England in little village called Itchenor. This is part of the Chichester Harbour area and is all tidal estuaries. Mud flats for half the day and murky brown water when the tide comes in. If you’ve ever been there, you’ll know what I mean.
The plan was to explore a little of Itchenor Creek. I was told that there had been a lot of Roman settlements in the area and so we may find clay pipes or other Roman artifacts. Sounds pretty exciting so far, huh?

I got kitted up in the parking lot in the wet suit I had borrowed from a friend, I was 5’8” and he was nearer 6 foot, so it was a pretty good fit. I was using the old backpack type set up, no BCD or any of that fancy stuff, and a reg that was also borrowed with the understanding that I would buy it if it worked OK.

We entered the water down the slipway, much to the amusement of several locals who clearly thought we were completely mad. As we descended the gentle slope to a depth of about 15 or 20 feet it was obvious that this was not going to be like the Cousteau films I had seen. The water was probably about 50F (such details fade with time), the visibility was a good foot, maybe 18 inches in places (OK, maybe 3 feet, but who’s story is this?). Bottom of the creek is a fine, muddy silt and, being a tidal estuary, there is always a current of some sort and it stirs up nicely.

We cruised along, 18 inches from the bottom, looking for Roman artifacts, funnily enough, didn’t find any. I was breathing what seemed about a 50/50 air/water mixture, but wasn’t entirely sure that there was anything unusual about that. Only later, having bought the reg, did I open it up and find a split in the diaphragm. It worked a lot better once I replaced that and cleaned it up a little.

As we continued the dive, one of the straps on my backpack came loose, don’t recall if something broke or it just worked itself loose, but it was hanging off one shoulder. I stopped to try to figure out what was wrong and viz went immediately to zero as I wrestled around in the mud. Any communications at this point were being done by touch but fortunately my buddy/instructor/dive leader, I forget the official title, had a hold of me, figured out what was wrong and he managed to get it reconnected and we carried on our archaeological exploration.

Dive finished and we made our way back to the slip. Clay pipes – zero, living creatures – zero, mud – plenty!

That was my first open water dive and the thrill of being underwater, breathing (sort of), being able to see (sort of) and swim about in this new environment completely outweighed any minor issues we had faced. I scrambled up the slip with a grin like a Cheshire cat and couldn’t stop talking about it. As for my buddy that day, he may well put that down as one of his worst dives, but it was good enough to get me hooked. Here I am 29 years later, spending weekends at Athens, Texas, diving in a muddy lake, in chilly water, visibility “limited” and, hopefully, helping introduce a few more people to the wonders of diving.