same procedure. And apart from putting my air tank on the wrong way round at first, there were no problems at this early stage.
If, like me, you’ve never donned a wetsuit and breathing apparatus, then your first breaths underwater will feel pretty weird. It is a peculiar sensation to keep breathing at the bottom of the pool when part of your brain initially screams for you to bolt to the surface.
We spent the next 4hrs in the pool, running through the basics:buoyancy underwater, swimming styles and buddy breathing.
The final challenge for the day was a’survival float – 10mins of treading water, which all the girls seemed to find easy, left me gasping.
By day two, the pressure to learn – and learn fast – was really stepped up. After another video and quiz session, we moved swiftly on to using tables to work out our ‘pressure groups’.
This involves figuring out how deep you dive and for how long. You can then determine how long you need on the surface before your next plunge.
If you don’t get your sums right, you risk getting a nitrogen build-up in your blood, which can lead to decompression sickness – often known as the bends. Very unpleasant.
The afternoon saw a pretty tough session of exercises. We all sat at the bottom of an 8ft pool while Nathan demonstrated certain tasks which we had to copy.
I had a great deal of trouble removing my weight belt and replacing it underwater; worse though was taking off the scuba rig and putting it back on, of which I eventually managed with all the grace of a hippo in treacle.
Next up was the part of the course I was really dreading – the 200-metre survival swim. This involved a dive off the nearby jetty and a swim across choppy waters to a rusting wreck and back again. And for someone like myself who thinks a couple of lengths down the local swimming pool is a hardship, it’s a real bother.
After telling Nathan of my swimming prowess, he told me to just ‘see how you go’. Wise words indeed. The others were soon way ahead of me and I plodded on with Nathan following in a motor launch. I managed it though, despite coming close to setting a world record for the slowest 200 metre swim.
Day three saw us ambling down the jetty – noticeably more subdued than before – for our first open-water dive.
When we reached the site we followed a long line to the bottom (around 10 metres) but most of us had trouble ‘equalising’ (getting the pressure in your head and outside the same) on the way down.
At the bottom, you repeat most of the exercises you practised in the pool as you bob about while being watched by a number of inquisitive fish. We even spied a swimming turtle which almost seemed to be making fun of our lack of grace underwater.
We went for a second dive after filling up with more air. As soon as we hit the water this time, we found a white-tipped reef shark under our boat – taking a nap. We went through our next series of exercises before taking a ‘walkabout’ dive, which seemed to involve a cast of thousands, including large coral cod, trigger fish and wrasse.
Back on dry land, we had a couple of hours cramming time before sitting a 50-question exam. Learning your dive tables is a must as they figure heavily.
On day four, and with only two open-water dives left before we passed, we were all eager to get going. The water was choppy on the first dive, and the current bobbed us up and down as we descended. We practised compass work at the bottom, made all the more difficult by the current and the possibility of crashing into the delicate but very sharp coral like a bull in a china shop.
The final reef dive at an area called Pam’s Point was superb.
An 8ft manta ray was darting about in the dive area and many of us saw the playful giant before it sped off into the blue. We got to see the splendour of the different corals and spied the sneaky reef sharks in the background, as well as more turtles and eagle rays.
After regrouping on our ascent, we hung around under the surface where Nathan scribbled out on a tablet: ‘Congratulations, you are now fully fledged bubble-blowers.’
Back on the boat we got a rousing applause from the qualified divers and all that was left was to sign all the paperwork on return. All in all a very successful trip – but Nathan was right – it’s a lot of fun but there’s a bit of hard work too.
MY DECISION to learn to dive on a coral cay 50 miles off the coast of Queensland, as opposed to a disused quarry somewhere near Staines, was not a difficult one.
While the sun blazed down on the first morning of our course – part of a Tourism Queensland diving educational – four Aussie specialists and myself headed to Heron Island’s dive centre to meet our instructor, Nathan. He told us that qualifying as a diver was a lot of fun but also a bit of hard work.
And as he introduced us to the open-water course by handing out a 250-page diving manual, it was clear he wasn’t joking. All thoughts of lazing by the pool were suddenly extinguished. This was serious study.
The course is broken up into a series of video modules with question-and-answer sessions and the pace is pretty quick. Before we knew it, we were learning about the basics of buoyancy, pressure and all manner of diving paraphernalia. After a whole morning in the classroom, we moved to the pool for the afternoon session and the real business of taking the plunge began.
Nathan took us through assembling our gear before watching us go through the same procedure. And apart from putting my air tank on the wrong way round at first, there were no problems at this early stage.
If, like me, you’ve never donned a wetsuit and breathing apparatus, then your first breaths underwater will feel pretty weird. It is a peculiar sensation to keep breathing at the bottom of the pool when part of your brain initially screams for you to bolt to the surface.
We spent the next 4hrs in the pool, running through the basics:buoyancy underwater, swimming styles and buddy breathing.
The final challenge for the day was a’survival float – 10mins of treading water, which all the girls seemed to find easy, left me gasping.
By day two, the pressure to learn – and learn fast – was really stepped up. After another video and quiz session, we moved swiftly on to using tables to work out our ‘pressure groups’.
This involves figuring out how deep you dive and for how long. You can then determine how long you need on the surface before your next plunge.
If you don’t get your sums right, you risk getting a nitrogen build-up in your blood, which can lead to decompression sickness – often known as the bends. Very unpleasant.
The afternoon saw a pretty tough session of exercises. We all sat at the bottom of an 8ft pool while Nathan demonstrated certain tasks which we had to copy.
I had a great deal of trouble removing my weight belt and replacing it underwater; worse though was taking off the scuba rig and putting it back on, of which I eventually managed with all the grace of a hippo in treacle.
Next up was the part of the course I was really dreading – the 200-metre survival swim. This involved a dive off the nearby jetty and a swim across choppy waters to a rusting wreck and back again. And for someone like myself who thinks a couple of lengths down the local swimming pool is a hardship, it’s a real bother.
After telling Nathan of my swimming prowess, he told me to just ‘see how you go’. Wise words indeed. The others were soon way ahead of me and I plodded on with Nathan following in a motor launch. I managed it though, despite coming close to setting a world record for the slowest 200 metre swim.
Day three saw us ambling down the jetty – noticeably more subdued than before – for our first open-water dive.
When we reached the site we followed a long line to the bottom (around 10 metres) but most of us had trouble ‘equalising’ (getting the pressure in your head and outside the same) on the way down.
At the bottom, you repeat most of the exercises you practised in the pool as you bob about while being watched by a number of inquisitive fish. We even spied a swimming turtle which almost seemed to be making fun of our lack of grace underwater.
We went for a second dive after filling up with more air. As soon as we hit the water this time, we found a white-tipped reef shark under our boat – taking a nap. We went through our next series of exercises before taking a ‘walkabout’ dive, which seemed to involve a cast of thousands, including large coral cod, trigger fish and wrasse.
Back on dry land, we had a couple of hours cramming time before sitting a 50-question exam. Learning your dive tables is a must as they figure heavily.
On day four, and with only two open-water dives left before we passed, we were all eager to get going. The water was choppy on the first dive, and the current bobbed us up and down as we descended. We practised compass work at the bottom, made all the more difficult by the current and the possibility of crashing into the delicate but very sharp coral like a bull in a china shop.
The final reef dive at an area called Pam’s Point was superb.
An 8ft manta ray was darting about in the dive area and many of us saw the playful giant before it sped off into the blue. We got to see the splendour of the different corals and spied the sneaky reef sharks in the background, as well as more turtles and eagle rays.
After regrouping on our ascent, we hung around under the surface where Nathan scribbled out on a tablet: ‘Congratulations, you are now fully fledged bubble-blowers.’
Back on the boat we got a rousing applause from the qualified divers and all that was left was to sign all the paperwork on return. All in all a very successful trip – but Nathan was right – it’s a lot of fun but there’s a bit of hard work too.