This was the first day we tried to dive a little more practical. The day began with us gathered at our PADI dive center to try out the equipment and have a little theory about that. We started by trying out wetsuits and then I realized that the wet suits they had were unisex / one size fits all. But actually it is the more like one size fits no one.
If you also have some female forms, and will try to put on a wetsuit that is right in the lenght, good luck. It´s hopless. I got hold of a wetsuit the instructor felt was a quite good match for me. I felt awkward already on land. But I thought that perhaps there was no better wetsuit for me so I tried it.
We received theory of how we connected the bottle with BCD and regulator package. Then we did it ourselves, we tried out weight belts and then we packed up everything. Holy shit, what things are heavy. I’m glad we do not have the high bottles, because them becomes so high that it is difficult to move them for me because Im not so long.
We went to the pool where we first swam 200 meters and then trod water for 10 minutes. After that we went out of the pool to try to put on the wetsuits and other equipment. We learned to do a buddy check, that is to check each other’s equipment and see that the air was on and everything looked fine.
Then we go down into the water again and should try to get the fins on the shallow side … Because I had a too big wet suit with more than 10 cm too long legs that made me floated extra much and the wetboots that gives extra buoyancy too. And maybe I lean back 1° to much so I ended up on my back … That combined with way too little buoyancy in the BCD was more like a fat sausage put in a shell of a turtle laying on his back. You understand, not good at all.
Got some half-panic because I couldn´t stand up or something. This was probably a little shocked that held by the rest of the dive. Once calmed down a bit we got on our masks and regulators and put us in a semicircle on the knees on the bottom of the pool around the instructor. He showed four or five different exercises that we would do, and then we made them one by one.
It was to fill the mask and drain the water, take it off and then put it on and take out the regulator and pretended to “lose” it to then find it and put it back in your mouth.
The exercises went ok but not awesome to be honest. It was probably because I still was little chocked from the incident at the start, I was not really in the game. I let out too much air from the mouth while I searched for the “lost regulator”, which meant I had to stand up so I came above the water and got some air. Good to practicing in shallow water anyways …
After that, we swam around the pool to try what we have learned, the equipment we had on us and our newly purchased ABC package.
Think it was a fun experience, it was fun to swim some more yourself than I did when I made my Discovering Scuba dive (See here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHanBs1fuiY) . Looking forward to the next time, I am going to try out a better wetsuit that I feel more comfortable with. For something I have learned from reading the book is that diving should be comfortable …