My first dive experience with Underwater Sports, Christchurch, New Zealand
May 15th 2007 09:30
Hi everyone
Well tonight was the night that I confronted my fear of deep water and took the plunge.
Many people have asked me why? Good question but recently I was looking through some old photos and found some of my brother scuba diving in Grand Caymen. Plus I used to go out with girl who did some diving, so this sort of got me thinking about it.
Anyway, as my route home passes Underwater Sports in Tuam St, Christchurch, I decided to stop in and see what it was all about?
They are a friendly bunch there and I started chatting with Paul the owner who in the course of the conversation told me that he decided to turn his 10 year hobby of diving into something more by taking over the business 18 months ago. After being asked was this something I was interested in? I explained sort of although I had bit of a fear of deep water and drowning and was mostly likely to panic.
Paul showed me their indoor practice pool, which is about 4m deep if I can remember correctly? He said that I was more than welcome to try it out to see how I got on and that we could just go at a pace that I was happy with and if at any time I wasn’t happy then I could just stop.
With that thought in mind, I agreed that I would give it ago.
I arrived in the afternoon, having been getting second thoughts during the day but decided that I would give it my best shot. The staff were very welcoming and as Paul met me, I advised him ‘I might well panic or only get half way through this’. ‘I’m sure you will be just fine’ he replied reassuringly. We then went upstairs to one of the classrooms and proceeded to watch a dvd about the basics of diving, this was followed by going through standard medical forms and wavers etc.
Following this was a flip chart about Pool and Confined Water Training, which is what we were going to do. This covered the following skills:
Entering the water, Ear cleaning/equalizing techniques, Underwater breathing,Regulator retrieval , Mask clearing ,Air sharing, hand signals etc.
After this was all explained, it was back downstairs to the pool to be kitted out with the gear we were going to use. At this stage I was starting to feel just a little bit nervous again but focused my mind on getting the equipment on correctly and following instructions.
After getting the wetsuit on and weight belt, it was time to get into the shallow end of the pool, trying out the flippers, mask and snorkel. Now this was a lot better than when I had tried it in Greece years ago.
Then it was time for the air tank and buoyancy vest to be fitted. As you can see by the photos, Paul took the time to carefully explain everything to me, so by this time my confidence in what I was about to do was getting higher all the time.
Then it was time to try it for real, breathing through the regulator whilst swimming around the shallow end.
Paul and Myself
Now this actually wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be and under Paul's expert guidence, I found myself starting to enjoy it.
This was becoming great fun and although I had to concentrate on my breathing, I didn't feel uneasy at all and Paul was always close by, checking I was okay by the relevant hand signals I had learnt. I didn't even notice it when we slowly descended to the bottom of the pool, focusing on swimming around. Totally awesome!
Due to the length of this post, I will do a couple more with just the photos.
'Can't fake that smile, great fun!'
Now if I want to go the next step, an open water dive course consists of a weekend at the shop, followed by a weekend at Kaikora. The costs of the course are $425 which includes tuition/cert, rental gear & accomodation for one night in Kaikora. Additional costs are medical, transportation, fins and mask.
Now Paul did say that if any of my readers wanted to do the course then he would take $15 off the price. So print a page from this post and take it in there or email uws@clear.net.nz or check out www.underwatersports.co.nz . Sounds like a bargin to me, so after today I have gone from no I wouldn't do it, to hmmmm might well think about getting my open water cert. As I asked about the costs of gear and he advised that they always have great deals on top range gear etc.
So this is something else for me to think about. And for anyone else out there, sometimes you just have to feel the fear and do it anyway, as you might just suprise yourself, I know I did.
Hal
Well tonight was the night that I confronted my fear of deep water and took the plunge.
Many people have asked me why? Good question but recently I was looking through some old photos and found some of my brother scuba diving in Grand Caymen. Plus I used to go out with girl who did some diving, so this sort of got me thinking about it.
Anyway, as my route home passes Underwater Sports in Tuam St, Christchurch, I decided to stop in and see what it was all about?
They are a friendly bunch there and I started chatting with Paul the owner who in the course of the conversation told me that he decided to turn his 10 year hobby of diving into something more by taking over the business 18 months ago. After being asked was this something I was interested in? I explained sort of although I had bit of a fear of deep water and drowning and was mostly likely to panic.
Paul showed me their indoor practice pool, which is about 4m deep if I can remember correctly? He said that I was more than welcome to try it out to see how I got on and that we could just go at a pace that I was happy with and if at any time I wasn’t happy then I could just stop.
With that thought in mind, I agreed that I would give it ago.
I arrived in the afternoon, having been getting second thoughts during the day but decided that I would give it my best shot. The staff were very welcoming and as Paul met me, I advised him ‘I might well panic or only get half way through this’. ‘I’m sure you will be just fine’ he replied reassuringly. We then went upstairs to one of the classrooms and proceeded to watch a dvd about the basics of diving, this was followed by going through standard medical forms and wavers etc.
Following this was a flip chart about Pool and Confined Water Training, which is what we were going to do. This covered the following skills:
Entering the water, Ear cleaning/equalizing techniques, Underwater breathing,Regulator retrieval , Mask clearing ,Air sharing, hand signals etc.
After this was all explained, it was back downstairs to the pool to be kitted out with the gear we were going to use. At this stage I was starting to feel just a little bit nervous again but focused my mind on getting the equipment on correctly and following instructions.
After getting the wetsuit on and weight belt, it was time to get into the shallow end of the pool, trying out the flippers, mask and snorkel. Now this was a lot better than when I had tried it in Greece years ago.
Then it was time for the air tank and buoyancy vest to be fitted. As you can see by the photos, Paul took the time to carefully explain everything to me, so by this time my confidence in what I was about to do was getting higher all the time.
Then it was time to try it for real, breathing through the regulator whilst swimming around the shallow end.
Paul and Myself
Now this actually wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be and under Paul's expert guidence, I found myself starting to enjoy it.
This was becoming great fun and although I had to concentrate on my breathing, I didn't feel uneasy at all and Paul was always close by, checking I was okay by the relevant hand signals I had learnt. I didn't even notice it when we slowly descended to the bottom of the pool, focusing on swimming around. Totally awesome!
Due to the length of this post, I will do a couple more with just the photos.
'Can't fake that smile, great fun!'
Now if I want to go the next step, an open water dive course consists of a weekend at the shop, followed by a weekend at Kaikora. The costs of the course are $425 which includes tuition/cert, rental gear & accomodation for one night in Kaikora. Additional costs are medical, transportation, fins and mask.
Now Paul did say that if any of my readers wanted to do the course then he would take $15 off the price. So print a page from this post and take it in there or email uws@clear.net.nz or check out www.underwatersports.co.nz . Sounds like a bargin to me, so after today I have gone from no I wouldn't do it, to hmmmm might well think about getting my open water cert. As I asked about the costs of gear and he advised that they always have great deals on top range gear etc.
So this is something else for me to think about. And for anyone else out there, sometimes you just have to feel the fear and do it anyway, as you might just suprise yourself, I know I did.
Hal
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Cheers
Hal