"Discovering Scuba"

Last Night was my "Discovering Scuba" experience and I loved it. It would've been hard not to. Although I was on time, by the time I got changed & in the pool room couple I would be going through the program with me were already suited up & in the water.

Paul, the instructor, gave them a quick introduction to using the regulator & helped them adjust their equipment. Then he invited them to start pacing the shallows of the pool to get used to the equipment while he suited me up.

Sizing and suiting me up was a pretty quick process. First, he handed me two masks to try out. I got a much better seal on one of them so that was the one I was supposed to use. After a few more quick questions for sizing, they were helping me into a suit & handing me fins. Once in the pool we started with some basic instructions on breathing through the regulator. We tooled around a bit in 4 foot water, then got weighted down and played around 'til we were used to our reduced buoyancy.

Once we had acclimated, school started. We learned:

• How to use our BCD to achieve buoyancy.
• Where to find our backup regulator.
• How to find our primary regulator if it gets knocked out or lost for some reason.
• How to clear water out of our masks.
• How to clear water out of our regulators (exhale & blow it out or use the big button to let the tank blow it out).
• What happens when you drop a regulator in the water with the mouthpiece pointing up (it starts spewing air and makes a lot of bubbles).
• How to fix a spewing regulator (turn it over under water).
• Some basic dive signs (surface, I'm OK, descend, I'm not OK, Look).

The entire process took approx. 20 min. Paul made sure we demonstrated each skill in turn and gave pointers when we had trouble.

Going Deeper
After we'd all checked out with the basic skills it was time to go deeper. Starting from the bottom of the four foot section, we slowly descended. First into 8 foot water where we slowly acclimated to increased pressure. I had a really hard time with this. As soon as I hit 6' down my ears caused a lot of pain, no matter how much I tried to equalize the pressure.

Since I was having so much trouble, Paul sent me back up to the 4' water and got the other 2 students down to 8'. I acclimated to the bottom of the four foot completely while I was watch him with the others. When he got back around to me, he had me try again. I had problems at 6' but went back up a few feet, equalized and made it all the way down. We got used to 8' by throwing a torpedo back and forth. (Something I learned I am completely incapable of doing).

Finally, we were ready for the pit. I waited and watched while the first two divers went out. It took a few minutes for each of them to get too depth, when my turn came I grabbed the rope and started to descend. Suddenly, I realized that I had too much weight on. I was supposed to be neutrally buoyant, instead, It felt like my body would have dropped like a rock if I didn't hold on. I had a little ear trouble at around 10' but otherwise it went pretty smoothly. Soon, I was looking at myself in a mirror & playing frisbee while sitting on the bottom.

After a short while, Paul had us all check our gauges; one of us was already in the red. The three of us surfaced. Since I had plenty of air left, Paul invited me to go back down on my own if I wanted while he got the others out of their suits. I made it all the way back to 15' on my own, turned around and made it back to the surface without help. By the time I got back up, both of the other divers had packed up and left.