We've been on land for the last week, a nice break after three liveaboards in a row. Went to Phuket with Koen, Ploy and Uly, got fitted for a custom-made wetsuit (hopefully it'll be ready for the next trip!), watched the remake of Carrie at the theater (it was the only movie that wasn't in Thai and was playing at the right time), had some time to do laundry, go to the supermarket, actually wash my equipment properly, go to the hairdresser to dye my hair... All those little things that I hadn't had time to do before. My room is still a mess, and I really want to go up to the Store of Many Things and get some hangers and maybe some drawers to just organize myself. But it was a good start.
Being on land was also a good chance to go over the skills circuit in the swimming pool. The skills circuit consists of going over all the 20 skills that we learn during the open water course, and bringing that up to a perfect demonstration level so that we can assist instructors in open water courses, discover scuba diving, and refresher courses. We were lucky enough to get two refreshers, so I could actually see how Koen demonstrates, and the kinds of problems that are usually encountered. One of our refreshers couldn't clear his mask, mainly because he wasn't breathing out through his nose (although he really thought he was!). It's an interesting exercise, to be able to demonstrate everything slowly and clearly, with confidence, and then observe closely what the person is doing and correct whatever is wrong. Definitely not as easy as it looks!
It took us three pool sessions to get through the entire skills circuit with the refresher courses. The first two sessions were at Chris's pool, which is in a lovely spot up in the hills, nice and quiet, with a great structure and fun hosts. The pool is nice and deep (about 2.5m), but not very big, especially when there's another group also doing their own skills. On the third day, we went out to a different pool (don't remember what the place is called), which was also really nice, but much shallower (I think the deep end doesn't even come to 2m). That makes it a bit harder to practice the fin pivot and the hover, but we managed well enough, and brought most of the skills up to a level 5 (which is perfect demonstration), with a couple of 4s thrown in (like the equipment removal and replacement under water, which I still struggle with my balance a bit). All in all, not bad!
After we were through with the 20 skills, Koen suggested we do the full equipment exchange under water. That's one of the things I was the most worried about, along with the swim tests (which we'll hopefully do and get over with on the next Peter Pan trip). The equipment exchange is basically a stress test, to see how comfortable you are under water in a stressful situation. The idea is to change your full set of equipment - fins, weight belt, bcd and mask) with someone else, while breathing from a single air source (handing one reg back and forth between you and your buddy, also called buddy breathing). Not an easy thing to do, so I was a bit nervous going down...
We started off just with buddy breathing, so I could get used to it. After that, we switched fins. All good... And then, for absolutely no reason, I just panicked and swam up to the surface. Boo. Still don't know why, and I'm sure that if I'd just stopped and relaxed a bit, I could have done it all in one go... Ah well, too late for that... Koen came up, we switched our fins back, I took a couple of deep breaths, meditated for a bit (ha! Not really, but close enough), and we started again from the beginning. This time it went pretty smoothly, just a bit of a problem with the weight exchange (I kept floating up, obviously!). The worst part was the mask exchange, it just feels so weird to not have your mask or your regulator in! Also, Koen's mask is ridiculously big if compared to my micromask, and was really hard to clear! But I managed it, and came up feeling accomplished. A big bonus was seeing Koen fully geared in my tiny equipment, absolutely priceless! Especially the micromask, it just looked so tiny on his face! I guess I must have looked pretty ridiculous with his huge mask as well :-)
After that, all we had left to do in the pool was the skin diving skills, which consists of swimming around with a snorkel, demonstrating snorkel clearing techniques, and and underwater swim of at least 15m. I managed better than I expected, especially considering I haven't really snorkeled at all... I figure if you can figure out everything that goes into diving, snorkeling comes pretty naturally. I'd really like to do some apnea training as well, just so I can get a hang of the whole holding-your-breath-for long-periods-of-time-so-you-can-look-at-cool-fish-without-an-oxygen-tank thing.
So that's it for the pool sessions! Still a lot to go through, and I still have the swim tests to keep me worried, plus rescue scenarios, search and recovery, dive site mapping, knot tying, and oh so many other things. There's a reason why it takes about two months to get through everything... But it's a good feeling to see things start to get checked off on the huge list of requirements. We'll see what comes next!
Being on land was also a good chance to go over the skills circuit in the swimming pool. The skills circuit consists of going over all the 20 skills that we learn during the open water course, and bringing that up to a perfect demonstration level so that we can assist instructors in open water courses, discover scuba diving, and refresher courses. We were lucky enough to get two refreshers, so I could actually see how Koen demonstrates, and the kinds of problems that are usually encountered. One of our refreshers couldn't clear his mask, mainly because he wasn't breathing out through his nose (although he really thought he was!). It's an interesting exercise, to be able to demonstrate everything slowly and clearly, with confidence, and then observe closely what the person is doing and correct whatever is wrong. Definitely not as easy as it looks!
It took us three pool sessions to get through the entire skills circuit with the refresher courses. The first two sessions were at Chris's pool, which is in a lovely spot up in the hills, nice and quiet, with a great structure and fun hosts. The pool is nice and deep (about 2.5m), but not very big, especially when there's another group also doing their own skills. On the third day, we went out to a different pool (don't remember what the place is called), which was also really nice, but much shallower (I think the deep end doesn't even come to 2m). That makes it a bit harder to practice the fin pivot and the hover, but we managed well enough, and brought most of the skills up to a level 5 (which is perfect demonstration), with a couple of 4s thrown in (like the equipment removal and replacement under water, which I still struggle with my balance a bit). All in all, not bad!
After we were through with the 20 skills, Koen suggested we do the full equipment exchange under water. That's one of the things I was the most worried about, along with the swim tests (which we'll hopefully do and get over with on the next Peter Pan trip). The equipment exchange is basically a stress test, to see how comfortable you are under water in a stressful situation. The idea is to change your full set of equipment - fins, weight belt, bcd and mask) with someone else, while breathing from a single air source (handing one reg back and forth between you and your buddy, also called buddy breathing). Not an easy thing to do, so I was a bit nervous going down...
We started off just with buddy breathing, so I could get used to it. After that, we switched fins. All good... And then, for absolutely no reason, I just panicked and swam up to the surface. Boo. Still don't know why, and I'm sure that if I'd just stopped and relaxed a bit, I could have done it all in one go... Ah well, too late for that... Koen came up, we switched our fins back, I took a couple of deep breaths, meditated for a bit (ha! Not really, but close enough), and we started again from the beginning. This time it went pretty smoothly, just a bit of a problem with the weight exchange (I kept floating up, obviously!). The worst part was the mask exchange, it just feels so weird to not have your mask or your regulator in! Also, Koen's mask is ridiculously big if compared to my micromask, and was really hard to clear! But I managed it, and came up feeling accomplished. A big bonus was seeing Koen fully geared in my tiny equipment, absolutely priceless! Especially the micromask, it just looked so tiny on his face! I guess I must have looked pretty ridiculous with his huge mask as well :-)
After that, all we had left to do in the pool was the skin diving skills, which consists of swimming around with a snorkel, demonstrating snorkel clearing techniques, and and underwater swim of at least 15m. I managed better than I expected, especially considering I haven't really snorkeled at all... I figure if you can figure out everything that goes into diving, snorkeling comes pretty naturally. I'd really like to do some apnea training as well, just so I can get a hang of the whole holding-your-breath-for long-periods-of-time-so-you-can-look-at-cool-fish-without-an-oxygen-tank thing.
So that's it for the pool sessions! Still a lot to go through, and I still have the swim tests to keep me worried, plus rescue scenarios, search and recovery, dive site mapping, knot tying, and oh so many other things. There's a reason why it takes about two months to get through everything... But it's a good feeling to see things start to get checked off on the huge list of requirements. We'll see what comes next!
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