Pro Dive

6th
Day one of our Pro Dive Cairns PADI Open Water course (mouthful) started off fairly early, and we spent the morning in the classroom watching dvd's and learning about the equipment and pressures and principles/theories of diving, with our instructor Dave, 'the most qualified instructor in the country' he told us. We have no reason to not believe him. He did rremind me a little of the dad from My Parent's are Aliens though. In the afternoon we got in the pool and had a go. After assembling and dis-assembling our equpiment a few times we headed in to swim 200m (though I didn't like the idea of finishing before everyone and did a couple more lengths - it wasn't a big pool) then had to treadwater for 10 minutes whilst introducing ourseleves again as a re-cap and learnign everyone else's names. Then, time to put on the SCUBA gear and get initiated. No matter how many times you are told, "if you start to panic, just take a big long deep breath in and then out" you never do, and I cocked up my breathing in a panic quite a few times to start with, which inevitably ended up in me resurfacing each time and feeling like a tool, knowing that all i had to do was breathe. But I still wasn't trusting the dive gear. I did have a few moments where i contemplated whether I'd ever be able to and to do the course, I also thought 'Mum, don't ever try and do this, not only will you get your hair wet, you'll panic about the breathing like me!' at the end of the first day we'd done a few skills, like flooding our masks underwater and clearing them with exhaled air, and breathing off of each other regulators whilst under water, and all that scary emergency stuff you need to do, just in case ;) I still didn't feel overly comfortable with it and had a bit of thinking to do of how I was gonna approach it the next day whilst feeling a bit nervy. We did our washing, ate and fell asleep, as the next day started even earlier.)

7th
Day 2 of the course (less of a mouthful) started with a session in the pool, after a quick chat from Christian from the shop about finding mask that fit and fins that work better etc etc. To point out, yesterday, we used the rental equipment, and my mask pushe dinto the bridge of my nose and came away at the bottom a bit and this did nothing to ease my mind. we spent the rest of the morning trying all the various pieces of equipment they had assembled for us to try and started off with some snorkeling, the first breath underwater was the hardest to get round, once the first cycle was done the rest we ok, this was going to be how it went with the regulator on the SCUBA gear too. By the end of the morning I felt much better about using the equipment and thought, well all I have to do is pas the exam and then deal with being in the sea, and depths down to 18m as opposed to a tiny 4m pool! We then headed off for lunch in town and then to shop. After using the rental mask and playing with proper ones, I ended up buying a mask/snorkel for my own peace fo mind, also, I figured it's not something that's too hard to get the use out of, I'll go to plenty of cool places over time. Then back to the classroom for more learing and the final exam, which was easy to pass, and a bit about the Adventure course which is the next step in the qualifications. So it was all back to the hostel (Calypso) for food and packing ready for out next 3 days on the boat, another early start the next day!

8th
Day 3 (or Day 1 on the boat) was yet another early start, after 3 hours travelling out to the reef we finally dropped anchor off of Milln Reef, and had our first briefing about what we were going to do for our first training dive. Minimal skills on this one, only some on the surface, then heading down to 12m, before going for a bit of a swim, then coming up with a safety stop at the decompression bar. THe sea at the Great Barrier Reef is very salty. I can vouch for this. I drank half of it! but as we started diving all my apprehension disappeared.it was awesome, it should also be moted that 12m down doesn't look that much further than 4m when you're at the bottom! We saw lots of col stuff on our first dive, including Chocolate Dipped Damsels, (everythign has a silly name out here) giant clams, a couple of sting rays, parrotfish and even a turtle! then back up for lunch and a breifing for dive 2. It should be pointed out here a few things about the boat. There were 39 people aboard, 16 on our course, plus some friends/family, plus people doing their advanced course, some already certified divers on a jolly and some more doing the same course as us. We already had kinda started getting on with the people we knew:
Anna from Bolton, a season ticket holder no less. (to the Reebok)
The Ozzie Family, from Victoria. A dad and his two daughters, one dropped out on day 1, for a full refund, but joined us on the boat with her mum to do snorkelling.
The newlyweds, Ness and Robdog. Ness who was bornin Scotland and lived in Perth, and Rob from NZ who went travelling and met Ness on the first stop and neve left!
Philip, the German who couldn't see without his glasses and didn't have contacts.
And the guy to be his diving buddy, Mile Steinbacher of New York, a traditional stereotypical New Yorker!
Anna-Kehala (known as Kiki to avoid confusion) Born in Melbourne, but lives in Germany.
and Team Denmark. Kristine and Kathryn, (who kinda came as a pair,) and Charlotte who was to be buddied up with Kiki.
These people were joined by some crazy moustachioed Americans, Anna from Bolton's friend Anna (yes, that's now 3 Annas.) A 3rd Rob from England, Blind Philip's girlfriend Patti, (the last 3 were all doing their Advanced course) and some other certified divers, Fitz and Rebecca (yes another Rebecca) from england, along with Berwyn (from Wales) and his pregnant missus. Berwyn had the joy of sharing a birthday with me and Rob. And there were a few other bit part players. Also on board were instructors, Daven(UK), Masa (Masao - Japan) and Jeff (Oz) our Dive supervisor Arek (Poland) The Skipper Dave (Oz) and the chef Khinda (Fra) Khinda made sure there was always something fresh and tasty ready for us between dives, made all the more impressive by the fact she was diving too. The chocolate cake was a particular highlight, along with lasagne and garlic topped bread. And there was always enough for seconds. Rob and I were in cabin 14, Becky shared a cabin with Charlotte, but spent most of the time feeling ill and sleeping upstairs in the saloon.
The second dive was there to be one of the worst on the course, just to get it over with and then we could enjoy the rest, it was more skills including mask floods and the like. It wasn't a bad dive though, just a bit more teaching like than fun. An early night was had by all due to the ridiculously early start the next day to get all 4 dives in.

9th.
Awake before 6 to go diving at 10 past! today we started going deeper, the first dive went down to 18m, my knees made it down, but I didn't get the dive computer down that far, as it didn't bother me too much. so that went to 17.8m we had a good time and did a few more skills and saw more fish. The second dive therre was a challenge. e all had to get our dive computers to 16.0m 15.9 was fine, 16.0 got you a free chocolate bar or soft drink, and if you went over you had to do a vegemite forfeit. As we got there we noticed a shark, so, we did the 16m depth challenge whilst keeping one eye on the white tipped reef shark about 1.5/2m below us! Just to make it a little more difficult! However, all of us that managed to descend without having equalization problems and having to cancel their dive hit 16.0 exactly. Apparently a first for Dave's groups, shown by the fact that Arek called out 16.1 at one point to wind him up, and Dave was instantly a bit defensive about it! Also, we finished this dive with a full face mask removal, replace and flush at depth, Rob and I went first, and after this got bored waiting for everyone else, as happens and so we arsed about a bit again, doing windmill hi-5s, making gestures (I need a wee! my eyes sting! and one finger out of the pockets etc) and pulling faces, Dave then showed everyone a slate saying we had passed our course and were now certified divers! Rob and i bumped regulators as if kissing, we found this highly amusing, so did Dave and we ascended to the surface. At this point we had a choice to make, there were 5 fun dives left, 2 today (1 at night) and 3 tomorrow, or we could choose to take the Adventure course, losing one dive tomorrow, but meaning we would be certified to dive down 30m as opposed to 18m, and therefore could pretty much do any dive we ever want to. it was going to cost $175AU (works out in the region of £80) which was a bargain compared to the $600 odd it will cost at any other time! So I had to go for it! We all got to do the first fun dive, where Rob and I proceeded to get a little mis-placed, but always came up looking at the boat. then the first dive of the adventure course was the night dive, and now i was buddied with Mike, and diving with Masa, diving at night was awesome, we saw loads and loads of stuff, bigger sharks, a massive turtle (called Brian) crayfish, and so on. It was brilliant. when we headed up, we had dinner and Charlotte and I chatted for a few hours about the course and denmark and england and jobs and travelling etc etc. Then time to sleep as we had 3 dives to do (as a boat,) before noon the next day!

10th
We woke up and did our first dive before breakfast again. this was the big one, down to 26+m where we saw how objects were affected, like a bottle of water, a can holder, how a green torch is drained of colour at depth, and how you can crack open an egg and it will remain intact until the bloody fish have at it. we also did a timekeeping count to 30 seconds in our head as a check for nitrogen narcosis, which essentially is you, pissed, underwater and clears as soon as you start to come to lesser depths. Robdog was most affected, taking 60 seconds to count out 30! I was more accurate underwater than on the boat. It was a very cool dive, but meant that we had passed off the limits on out dive planner (which is fine as we were using a dive computer which kept us under the no decompression limits) but meant we had to have a 3 hour break before diving again, this is why we only had the two dives on the last day, and we were warned this would happen.) The second dive was a speciality dive so Mike and I took a camera for the underwater photographer speciality, and took some pics to pass our course. We nearly got lost but managed to surface right next to our boat, just as we were low on air, with impeccable timing, mostly because we both had a fair grasp on the compasses and could navigate to a point!
We then got to the top, finished our papaerwork and came back to land. where we got ready to go out on the lash with the guys!
Sadly on good friday, you can't buy a beer without a meal, stupid bloody Ozzies, imposing religion on everyone! but as we had a wristband as we were a group booking, once we'd ordered would buy beer all night til we left at about 12, which meant it was a new day and the Woolshed (read meat market dive pub/club where people can dance on the long wooden bench type chairs and tables) beckoned. We'd spend most of our time on the boat talking with Big Rob and the Anna's and the night out was fairly similar expcept the anna's went home early and i spent more time chatting with a member of team denmark. Big Rob, Rob and I swayed home about 2:30am. :)