Dive Rarotonga - 2nd day

Another awesome day with the awesome guys at Dive Rarotona, Charles again was my personal dive master. I had been worried because yesterday the weather was so awful. Its not like rain affects you scuba diving but the lack of sun reduces your visibility and the waves can cause currents underwater you have to swim against and animals tend to stay hidden.

But worry not my diving listeners, by lunch it was again tropical, warm and sunny, not a cloud in the sky, the scuba gods were with me again!

My personal chauffeur came to get me, we packed up my gear and headed off to the boat. I was told that we were going to be going back to Edna's Anchor for the 2nd dive because an older couple was coming out to experience scuba diving. They spend an afternoon in the pool learning the gear, then each has an instructor beside them as they swim in the ocean no deeper than 12 meters. Anyhoo Charles and I were going to have to be at Edna's Anchor for the 2nd dive but the first dive we went to a place called Mushroom Forest. Massive strange coloured corals and of course ....FISHIES!!!

There was another Triggerfish that hung out with us for an urchin lunch. We saw a Spanish dancer that was actually floating/flying in the air like it was supposed to as opposed to that lazy one from the other day. A massively huge Napoleon Maori Wrass that made Charles look excited and the best part...a school of 200 Convict Surgeon fish. It was a sparkling ribbon of fish and swimming with them was a single large cornet fish. I figure he was pretty safe hanging with them, any predator was more likely to get one of the convict surgeons than him.

We headed back ashore to do our surface interval and wait for the other two people to show up. We headed back out to Edna's Anchor and Charles and I headed off in the other direction from last time. This time was just as cool, I saw a moray eel swimming by and pointed him out to Charles (i got a double okay symbol on that one) and at one point I looked back and saw 4 huge, long white fish swimming above us. They looked quite long and toothy, I knew not shark but I wasn't sure what, quickly swimming over to Charles and grabbing his leg I pointed up to show him what I had seen. Again I got 2 Okay symbols. Turns out what I had spotted was some barracuda which Charles called Big Eyed barracuda. Not to be outdone Tommy the Triggerfish, the big one from my first dive in Cook Islands showed up demanding his urchin lunch. As he was meal was being prepared I looked back and there was the huge school of convict surgeon fish swimming by us. I knew it was the same group...how do I know you say, the same dang cornetfish was hanging with them and we weren't too far away from that earlier dive sight. I was torn between going to pet Tommy or watching the silvery school, I managed to do both. Not to be outdone by my awesome fish spotting skills Charles managed to find under a beautiful rock formation some Spotfin Lionfish which were pinkier and "fluffier" looking than the spikey lionfish of two days ago. There were two just hanging out but this was a definite no touch fish (highly toxic venom in their spines).

Again awesome dive, can't do it just justice in a blog description but simply amazing.

I saw a seahorse in the sea

Today being Saturday, it meant i was about to take my first ocean plunge. I arrived at the shop at 9am and began to collect my gear and 2 tanks of air. Our instructors talked in a foreign language about southerlies, swells, visibility and names of places i had never heard. however, after a bit they decided and off we went.

Turns out we ended up going to Whitireai bay, which Blaise is familiar with because he has kite surfed there. we arrived, geared up totally (this means 14mm of wetsuit), cross-checked, were briefed on the skills we would practice and then waded into the water to be weighted.

...heavily weighted...i ended up with 6 big weights pulling in at about 14 kilos (about 30 pounds). we had to take off our weight belt on the surface and then put it back on. its a relatively simple procedure, grasp the free end in your right hand, bring it right to your hip, lie on your back and "turn away from the nasty weight belt". do it fast btw because thats a lot of weight on an arm and you drop it....well you don't want to do that to the instructor who is marking you. by doing this manuver you rotate it onto your back and then you can float face down (with your respirator in), all the weight safely on your back and re-clip the belt.

did i mention that 30 pounds? in the waves which are moving around you and in full gear which makes it really quite frustrating to get it back between your wetsuit and buoyancy vest. as i struggled away trying to get it on (and not drop it!) a strong wave hit my foot and i guess i hadn't tightened the flipper enough because it pushed around off my foot and became a charming anklet bracelet. Now i was really struggling i was being spun in circles cause the one flipper was getting pushed around like a rudder. i couldn't get upright for fear of dropping the belt. all i could do was breathe through the respirator and keep working on the belt. i knew the instructors wouldn't let me float away. i was breathing hard, swearing through the respirator. my instructor said i was very 'creative' in my wording, he could hear me underwater as he swam up to me through the water. he grabbed my back leg and was holding me still and getting my flipper back on and i kept fighting the damn weight. 30 pounds is hard to lift when you can't rotate your arms fully backwards and can't move in any real direction. i eventually got the d*mn thing clipped and tight enough not to slip off. i used a pile of air though in my struggles, the tank started at 210 psi, and dropped to 160 psi in that 5 minutes; i ended with my tank at 70 psi. as a comparison my 2nd dive later that day i started at 200 psi and ended at 130. you can see by the numbers i was really sucking the air desperately that first dive.

ok that was the bad but it wasn't really bad. onto the fun stuff ^^bb

getting down still seemed slow but i was definitely going down. so much weight that i had to inflate my buoyancy vest so that i could get off the bottom and actually swim. the visibility was horrible, less than 0.5m; on the plus side the instructors pointed out that we essentially got the worst visibility we could have ever gotten so it could only get better. we lost my dive buddy at one point so we even got a chance to practice lost buddy procedures (we popped out at the surface about the same time, he was fine). we went down essentially touching the next go and the instructor had us all connected when we swam.

compass work: i rock! seriously. i had a busted compass on my guages (i get a new one for tomorrow) but i was still able to follow it and arise less than a meter from the dive flag. the 2nd instructor gave me his arm compass and sent us off on a mission. pick a direction, swim that way without looking across the water surface, use only your compass, swim about 20 kicks, do a 180 and get back to the flag. i surfaced about 50 cm from it. my dive buddy was meters away and the other 2 didn't do much better, one girl was swimming in circles (quite literally). why did i do so good? i'm the slowest swimmer by far of our group, i have the worst buoyancy control of the 4 of us but because i'm a slow swimmer anyway i just kept kicking at my speed and reading the compass. turns out i got it right because by going slow it adjusts (and you too) more accurately and you stay on course. HUZZAH!!! Instructor Roy was actually extremely vocal in his praise for my compass skills, i felt so awesome.

the swells above us were getting worse and rather than trying to swim across the rough surface Graham said we would just swim in along the bottom of the ocean. so linking it up so we didn't lose anyone we headed in. i was between the 2 big guys so it wasn't hard work (remember i'm the slow one, i was literally being pulled along), so i got to enjoy looking around as best i could and i saw a wandering anemone. looked like a big soft tubular plant with white hairy looking feathers on its head. "cool" i thought as it moved back and forth with the waves. then i felt a squeeze on my hand, i stopped and there was Instructor Graham with his hands in front of him. It took me a sec to see what was the hold up, in front of him was this beautiful tiny little seahorse. it couldn't have been bigger than my whole hand and it floated amongst us 5 divers, Graham gently moved it towards my mask when it started to float away. I was so calm for a moment, it seemed like a perfect moment. We let it float away and continued into shore.

my first 2 ocean dives. better each time and that second time i saw "FISHIES".
i like this scuba thing.

do not rely on me to be your dive buddy just yet

So scuba lessons are still progressing nicely.
the theory while dull is going quickly and last night we were introduce to Dive Tables. I must say with a little bit of pride I seem to have the knack for calculating dive tables. The two Danish guys sitting next to me kept saying they'd buy a computer but i was whipping through the problems like no ones business.

We got back into the pool tonight, the 5 meter dive pool. The instructors don't understand why i'm not cold in the water, i show up in my two-piece and everyone else including them are wearing poly-prop tshirts and bermuda shorts. Guess the Canadian in me still hasn't lost her cold resistance.

I'm good at some maneuvers like flushing out my mask and replacing my regulator, i've improved to be good at finding my regulator (turns out the issue was the instructor kept using the phrase tummy button which is really belly button but i have it now). Buoyancy needs works, i'm still popping up and down like a cork. It doesn't help that when i go up when i expected to stay down i take deep breathes and flail around which only increases my buoyancy.

what i failed on...and this is why you don't want to be my dive buddy just yet...is buddy breathing. This is when your dive partner runs out of air and comes to get some from you. Now in the real world when diving the first you'll know of this is when your buddy rips your regulator out of your mouth or is pawing wildly at your suit. In the pool they teach us this nice polite method of swimming up to you making two distinct gestures at which point you should have ripped your back up regulator (the octopus) off your jacket, turned it right way up and be aiming it towards their face. Yeah ... i failed to respond to Roy's (the instructor) signal until he did it twice. Ooops.

But on the plus side when i was signaled to do the same to my training buddy by the instructor he handed me the octopus upside down. You breathe from an upside down regulator you'll have a mouth of water. Now at the time i swear i felt my instructor pulling/pushing my side when i was doing this but i was kind of focused on getting the regulator turned right side up while still blowing "little bubbles" so i didn't really pay attention. When we resurfaced he pointed out to my training buddy that you can't hand the octopus upside down or the mouth of water thing occurs. He however did congratulate me on recognizing the problem and resolving it on my own. He was pulling on me because he had his spare out right side up and was going to jam it in my mouth if i choked on water. YEAH!! i did good on that.

Buoyancy coming full cirlce

I went through the Red Cross swimming program as a kid. My parents drove me to lessons, i swam huge amounts of distance. I couldn't do that much swimming now without some hard core training i might add but i digress. I distinctly remember failing a badge, I think it was grey, and the instructor trying to console me by saying "its just a factor of buoyancy kid, you need another year to gain more buoyancy (wait for puberty then you'll float)".
She was right, by the next year i did it no problem.

I had my first scuba lesson last night, we only played in the 2 meter pool but thats totally cool, as the instructor pointed out, if you panic and forget to breath using the regulator at least you can bounce up to the surface.

1)so the flippers contrary to the fears of the shop keeper worked out fine.
2)the mask which seemed to fit well in the store and when i wore it in the pool to do laps has a small quirk. when my head gets completely wet (and my hair) there is water slowly filling the nose area. they said to bring it back before the lesson tonight and we'd try a different one.
3)my scuba outfit (tank, regulator and buoyancy compensator(BC)/think flotation device) which i'll use the whole course was knocking my head last night. in one of those "you should have mentioned it" moments the co-instructor will fix it for me by shifting it farther down the BC jacket.
4)Buoyancy ....
and you wondered where this was going.

i'm now too buoyant.

in our pool time we were learning the basics, how to put your regulator back in if it fall out, finding you regulator, inflating and deflating the BC. nothing major, nothing that could hurt us. things were fine until we were told to sink to the bottom of the 2 meter pool so we could swim around the floor. Awesome! i thought. So the instructor heads down demoing the release of air, then the co-instructor, then my 3 swim mates head down. Ready to take the plunge i hit the release valve on my BC, the air goes shooting out, i go down, down, down and then sort of bounce back up. what the heck? i try letting more air out of the BC but its completely empty. i start doing a rather jerky air flailing, feet kicking thing trying to make myself sink. finally in disgust i just turn my head down and start kicking to the bottom. finally make it to the bottom, the instructor give a thumbs up to start swimming and while waiting for my turn i slowly float back up to the surface. NUTS!!! now we were told beginners tend to be more buoyant because we are inhaling more air than we need due to nervousness but come on!
the co-instructor met me on my second dive to the bottom and he grabbed my BC and started mauling my left side, a few seconds later the other instructor had me by my right side. cool i thought they're going to fix the stupid BC so i can sink. they ended up dumping weights into each side of it so i would stay on the bottom. i'm going to need an pretty hardcore weight belt i think. i wasn't even wearing the wetsuit yet and i'm floating this easily, the wetsuit just adds buoyancy.
and how much wetsuit am i going to be wearing in the ocean btw? 14mm, 1.4cm of neoprene, i'm going to bob around like a buoy.