[Khao Lak, Thailand] Today is the start of our 4 day open water dive course at Sea Dragon dive centre.

We met our instructor Eleanor and after the usual pleasantries got down to business. Sitting and watching a DVD covering the sections we reviewed in our book yesterday. After each little section we were given a simple quiz. They were pretty easy. Sim did make a mess of his one quiz though but only because he started it on the wrong page and messed up all the little boxes. It was all about the basics of scuba diving, nothing too taxing.

After lunch we kitted up in our wetsuits ( Sim looks good in one by the way ) and started the practical parts of the course. My mask and fins were to me extremely uncomfortable and foreign. The first three of five confined water ‘dives’. which are all about practicing in a pool various different skills. I have never been a ‘water’ person so I was especially nervous. Sim is also not really a water person, but he was much more relaxed about the course and the idea of going under water.

We were shown how to set up our tank and buoyancy control device (BCD) and check everything before finally climbing into the shallow end of the pool. The strap on Sims mask broke immediately and we had to get him another one. Not exactly a good sign. The first thing we did was put our faces under water and start breathing through our regulators. I can not describe to you how freaky the feeling of breathing underwater is. And to be honest it panicked me a little bit. But we were still in the shallow end of the pool and I could get my head clear of the water just by standing up on my knees. Not so bad. New things can be uncomfortable. I figured I would get used to the feeling and the fear would go away. Then we moved to the deep end of the pool. Oookay a little more scary. We practiced removing our regulators and putting them back in, clearing them in different ways. Grabbing each others spare regulators for an out of air situation and so on. So far so good. As long as I was concentrating ferociously on the task at hand I was able to ignore thinking about breathing underwater. Allowing our masks to partially fill with water was not so great though, but I managed it. Then came the big one. Completely removing your mask for a minute, breathe with your regulator and then put your mask back on and clear it. It was more than I could handle. The sensation that I was about to breathe through my nose was too great and I shot to the surface. Sim offered helpful solutions like going back to the shallow end and practicing some more, but our instructor was adamant that these tasks had to be done in the deep end and that I must never just go to the surface like that again. After exchanging my mask for a more comfortable fitting one we tried again. I was able to compose myself long enough to perform the mask removal and replacement properly this time. Whew. The rest of the pool time was used to practice much easier things like floating on our fins or pushing each other round the pool.

The both of us finished the day exhausted from the exertion of having to use our brains and the new and alien experience of being under water. Sim did fantastically even though he had been a little nervous about it all. For me it was a tough day. I really did not like sensation of the regulator and it felt like we were progressing too quickly for me to just relax and get used to breathing underwater. I was not exactly looking forward to getting back in the pool the next day but hoped it would go ok.

[Pictures: None at all for the day.. to busy learning.. so we nicked one off their site]

– Posted from my iPhone via WiFi