Day 42: Under the Sea

WHEY! Today, I am (officially) a PADI certified Open Water Diver. I got a congratulations e-mail and everything.

So it was a 4-day course which consisted of DVD-watching, pool-training (confined water dives) and then open-water training/ dives. We also had to do a swim test (200m swimming non-stop- ARG) and a float test (10 minutes floating in fresh water- double ARG). But (incredibly) I passed BOTH of them!!!!

The 200m (9 lengths of our pool) swim was tough. My course consisted of 3 boys, one of them was in the RAF and another one was an ex-police diver........ *thumbs up*

So I did like 2 lengths and was TOTALLY knackered. Eventually managed 9 lengths (even though everyone else actually did 10 so they could get back to the shallow end) and was "air lifted" out of the pool by Steve (our instructor). It was great.

We basically had 3 instructors: Steve, our proper instructor and Sophie, who didn't actually work for Emperor (our dive centre) but was shadowing Steve whilst waiting for her PADI to finish her instructor paper work. And also Nick, our Day 2 stand-in instructor coz Steve was away for the day doing... Something. They were all great! And boys of course were boys and were *constantly* telling dirty or BAD (so bad they're good) jokes.


Um, had a few panicky ("wobbly" as Nick described it) moments of GOD-I-CAN'T-BREATHE whist underwater in the pool (Day 1 & 2), but once we got out to the deep blue, I was ok.

Open water dives 1 & 2 was at Shark's Bay, where I'd been snorkelling with Alice, so it wasn't anything particularly new and/ or exciting. But today, open water dive 3 was at this place called White Knight and it was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G. There was soooo much reef which parted and made a canyon-type ?landscape. And the SEA! Was just BLUE. It was proper clear blue. You could see to such depths! We had to do a "compass swim" (so swim to a random place in the sea on a bearing then back again) and on the way back, the sun was almost directly above us, so you could see the rays of sunlight shining down into the water and down deep. It's so difficult to describe, but it was incredible. Absolutely beaut.

Open water dive 4 was at Near/ MIddle Garden, which were so called because the reef (supposidly) resembles an English garden... (They don't.) There are 4 parts to the Garden: Near, Middle, (Fiddle,) and Far.. They are named in relation to Na'ama Bay. Creative, hey?


Shit, I can't believe I'm an open water diver! It's amazing. And I now understand why people fall in love with it and rave about it so much.. Well, coz I pretty much have. (I'm even going to attempt to do my Advanced Open Water Course next week..!)