Today we started the Advanced Open Water with 4 of our Open Water Students and a Canadian chap that joined our us. So after meeting at Crystal we through their Knowledge reviews and briefed them on the afternoon dives which were
'Peak Performance Buoyancy' where we try and instill how they can use their breathing effectively, their use of effective approach and to practice this, get them to dive through swim throughs, pick up or draw circles around a weight in the sand and then write their names whilst being upside down.
'Navigation' dive, we practice this on land first on how to navigate a square in thier buddy teams. They found this pretty confusing at first, turning the compass bezel one way and then turning their body another. Counting kick cycles and getting them to use natural elements then after a short fun dive, we asked them where the boat was. Most of them got it spot on, I suppose it must have been our brilliant instruction ;-D
Todays dive sites were Twins and Japanese Gardens. The visibility wasn't great but much better than their Open Water dives. The students seemed to be enjoying themselves, at least they saw Buoyancy World at Twins and some beautiful coral at Japanese Gardens
Back at the pier, we moved our dive kits to Crystal's smaller boat as we were the only group doing a night dive. Si and I were conducting this as Nathan had to stay on the boat as surface cover but had his wife Tracey to keep him company. So with just an hour to grab a drink and food, we walked along the beach back to Crystal and Nath, Si and I waited in the restaurant. The students turned up early so Si did a dive briefing and we headed to the boat. We chose to go to 'Twins' the journey out was pretty choppy and all the students were feeling sick and setting up wasn't the easiest of things to do.
Torches on and kitted up, one by one we jumped in the water and made our way to the buoy line and decended. As the shallow pinnacle at Twins is only 10/12 meters we made our descent, swam out into a sand area and then knelt on the sand. Si then sent the students in thier buddy teams to do navigation on a rescipricle heading, the only skill which they had to perform, which they did beautifully and then we went for a 40 minute fun dive spotting numerous sting rays, puffa's, feather coral, trevally hunting which the students loved. I must say that the students did very well, they managed their buoyancy really well for a night dive.
The return journey wasn't that pleasant, we had a great dive but the students we feeling pretty sea sick. One girl threw up but most of it came back in her face and the rest of them just sat, looking very pale while Si, Nath and I disassembled their kit and packed it away in their bags ..what a spoilt lot!!
It didnt take too long to get back to the pier, maybe 20 mins or so and then Tracey appeared, she was feeling rough and was lying down on the upper deck unable to move,I dont think she'll be coming out to keep Nathan company in the near future when it's this choppy.
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