My recent trip, although a holiday, kept me busy most of the times and hence i am documenting my 1st Dive experience right now.
After a few hours in the swimming pool session the day before, i was feeling excited and yet apprehensive about my 1st open water dive. And as i know that i suffer from sea sickness, i was fearing that it might spoil my dive. As i precaution i had taken an anti-nausea tablet before i jumped into the boat.
We had to get into a small speed boat which would take us to the Dive boat which was anchored a about a km away into the sea. It was a nice an sunny day and the sea was calm. Dive boats as they are called are small launches with an upper and a lower deck. They are customised to hold air cylinders and other diving equipments. They also various dropping points from where the divers drop into the water.
As soon as we got into the dive boat we had to get our equipment ready, which was BCD attachment to tank, 1st stage attachement to tank, and getting fins, weights and masks ready. After getting the equipments ready, we had to go for a briefing with our instructor, who was giving us a briefing of what exercises and activities we would be doing in dive-1.
Dive-1 majorly consisted of us getting our bouyancy control right, which meant neutral bouyancy or floating underwater. This takes a while as you need to get the perfect weight and air balance to be neutrally bouyant.
And as we are more bouyant in sea water than in fresh water, it was more important to learn bouyancy control in the open. So there we were in Mango bay floating on the surface and awaiting instructions from our dive master. We had swam close to the shore and standing on the ocean floor with the water upto our chins. The next step was to get underwater and kneel on the ocean floor and then lying down on it face down, equalising all the time (equalization is what you do when you are in an airplane about to land and you pinch you nose and blow to pop you ears). As we layed on the floor we had to release air into the BCD little by little until there is a perfect balance of the weights and the air and we are neither floating nor sinking - we are neutrally bouyant. Neutral bouyancy is important to be able to effortlessly glide through the water.
It takes a while to get this right but when you do, it open the doors for you into the underwater world. After getting our bouyancy right, we had to do some more exercises on the ocean floor like, half flooding and clearing your mask, purging the 2nd stage, practising a controlled ascent and so on. After this was done we were allowed to glide around spotting fishes and corals which was the most exciting part.
The water was blue/green with a slight eriee feeling to it. Everything looked green underneath. The fishes had accepted us as some bigger underwater creatures and were swimming around us lazily. There were live and dead corals which i assumed were brightly colored but which we could not see underwater. For dive-1 we were alowed a maximum depth of 12mts for about 40mins after which we had to ascend and swim our way back to the boat.
Once in the boat we had to change our air tank, and get the equipment ready again and go for the next briefing for Dive-2. Hydration is necessary at this time as the ocean dehydrates you. The out of water time was about 1hr, where we had tea and biscuits while our dive master briefed us about the next dive.
Dive-2 was a much better and less clumsier dive. We were still in Mango bay but on the other side of the reef. There were much more fishes here and swimming here was a total delight. Here our bottom floor excercises consisted of full flooding your mask and buddy breathing. Now full flooding ur mask is a piece of cake and so is breathing from the alternate air source from ur buddy. But when i took the alternate 2nd stage from my buddy to breathe it started flooding and i drank a mouthful of sea water. So i purged it and tried again... again i drank a mouthful of sea water....3rd time i purged the regulator for a longer time in attempts to remove any sea water from it, and tried breathign again... again a mouthful of water. All this while i am under water kneeling on the ocean floor at 10mts depth. My divemaster noticed soething was wrong and immediately gave me my primary air source. The she tried to breathe through my buddy's alternate to check it and it flooded again. She then confirmed that there was something wrong with it. But i was in no real danger here as my regulator was working properly and i had the dive master around me.
We finished the rest of the dive which was a total of 40mins and went back to our boat. Once in the boat we dismantled our eqipment and put them back in their proper places. We then had a review meeting to talk about the dive. My dive master appoligised to me for the faulty equipment saying that this happens very rarely with training equipements.
But at the end of the day i was really proud of myself having completed Day-1 of the OWDC successfully.
Sweet memories and looking forward to Day-2
(pics below courtesy Ban's Diving Resort-Koh Tao)
After a few hours in the swimming pool session the day before, i was feeling excited and yet apprehensive about my 1st open water dive. And as i know that i suffer from sea sickness, i was fearing that it might spoil my dive. As i precaution i had taken an anti-nausea tablet before i jumped into the boat.
We had to get into a small speed boat which would take us to the Dive boat which was anchored a about a km away into the sea. It was a nice an sunny day and the sea was calm. Dive boats as they are called are small launches with an upper and a lower deck. They are customised to hold air cylinders and other diving equipments. They also various dropping points from where the divers drop into the water.
As soon as we got into the dive boat we had to get our equipment ready, which was BCD attachment to tank, 1st stage attachement to tank, and getting fins, weights and masks ready. After getting the equipments ready, we had to go for a briefing with our instructor, who was giving us a briefing of what exercises and activities we would be doing in dive-1.
Dive-1 majorly consisted of us getting our bouyancy control right, which meant neutral bouyancy or floating underwater. This takes a while as you need to get the perfect weight and air balance to be neutrally bouyant.
And as we are more bouyant in sea water than in fresh water, it was more important to learn bouyancy control in the open. So there we were in Mango bay floating on the surface and awaiting instructions from our dive master. We had swam close to the shore and standing on the ocean floor with the water upto our chins. The next step was to get underwater and kneel on the ocean floor and then lying down on it face down, equalising all the time (equalization is what you do when you are in an airplane about to land and you pinch you nose and blow to pop you ears). As we layed on the floor we had to release air into the BCD little by little until there is a perfect balance of the weights and the air and we are neither floating nor sinking - we are neutrally bouyant. Neutral bouyancy is important to be able to effortlessly glide through the water.
It takes a while to get this right but when you do, it open the doors for you into the underwater world. After getting our bouyancy right, we had to do some more exercises on the ocean floor like, half flooding and clearing your mask, purging the 2nd stage, practising a controlled ascent and so on. After this was done we were allowed to glide around spotting fishes and corals which was the most exciting part.
The water was blue/green with a slight eriee feeling to it. Everything looked green underneath. The fishes had accepted us as some bigger underwater creatures and were swimming around us lazily. There were live and dead corals which i assumed were brightly colored but which we could not see underwater. For dive-1 we were alowed a maximum depth of 12mts for about 40mins after which we had to ascend and swim our way back to the boat.
Once in the boat we had to change our air tank, and get the equipment ready again and go for the next briefing for Dive-2. Hydration is necessary at this time as the ocean dehydrates you. The out of water time was about 1hr, where we had tea and biscuits while our dive master briefed us about the next dive.
Dive-2 was a much better and less clumsier dive. We were still in Mango bay but on the other side of the reef. There were much more fishes here and swimming here was a total delight. Here our bottom floor excercises consisted of full flooding your mask and buddy breathing. Now full flooding ur mask is a piece of cake and so is breathing from the alternate air source from ur buddy. But when i took the alternate 2nd stage from my buddy to breathe it started flooding and i drank a mouthful of sea water. So i purged it and tried again... again i drank a mouthful of sea water....3rd time i purged the regulator for a longer time in attempts to remove any sea water from it, and tried breathign again... again a mouthful of water. All this while i am under water kneeling on the ocean floor at 10mts depth. My divemaster noticed soething was wrong and immediately gave me my primary air source. The she tried to breathe through my buddy's alternate to check it and it flooded again. She then confirmed that there was something wrong with it. But i was in no real danger here as my regulator was working properly and i had the dive master around me.
We finished the rest of the dive which was a total of 40mins and went back to our boat. Once in the boat we dismantled our eqipment and put them back in their proper places. We then had a review meeting to talk about the dive. My dive master appoligised to me for the faulty equipment saying that this happens very rarely with training equipements.
But at the end of the day i was really proud of myself having completed Day-1 of the OWDC successfully.
Sweet memories and looking forward to Day-2
(pics below courtesy Ban's Diving Resort-Koh Tao)
