A couple of posts ago (which equates to several weeks — tut) I mentioned that Debbie and I had been taking scuba diving lessons. Debbie has warned me about the risk of becoming a dive bore. I reason that if I write it all here, everyone has the option to not read it.
The chain of events went like this - we booked a holiday in Mexico with Tom and Abbi, with kite surfing the primary purpose of the trip. Once it was booked, we read up on the place, and like our previous kite surfing trip (Egypt) it’s a well known diving hotspot. On the many windless days in Egypt, we took pleasure in snorkeling, and were a little envious of the divers who got to see more stuff and didn’t have to surface all the time.
Debbie called ScoobaBoosta in Warwick. We’d been there before to buy snorkels, masks and fins, and we’d both been very impressed by Sarah’s friendly service, and the way she recommended the cheapest gear in the shop. That’s good business sense, in as much as it earned her our repeat custom.
The use of CamelCase in the shop’s name was not a factor — I didn’t notice it until I started typing this, and looked up the official spacing and capitalisation on their web site. I assume the name was not borne of any computer geekery, since when they took delivery of a new POS system a couple of weeks ago, nobody there was revelling in the technology. But I digress…
ScoobaBoosta run weekly sessions in the swimming pool at Warwick School (a fancy posh boarding school), so we went for a “try dive”. That’s a chance to see whether you enjoy it, but it doubles as the first of five pool-based lessons if you choose to continue towards open water certification.
PADI, the qualification agency, goes for this approach in a big way — your taster is also the first chunk of a larger course. They use the same marketing strategy at many more levels. Crafty - not that I begrudge it.
We enjoyed the try dive, and signed up for the rest of the course the following day.
Now we had two choices. The first option, and a popular choice, was to do our five pool sessions in Warwick, then take proof that we’d done it to Mexico, to do our four proper open water qualification dives in the warm Carribean Sea. The second option was to reach Mexico already qualified. This would entail doing our qualifying dives in Stoney Cove, a very well regarded dive site in a flooded quarry in Leicestershire. The way the timing worked out, we would be doing this in mid December. Traditionally, you may be aware, December is a cold month.
Boldly, we chose the second option.
The pool sessions all went very smoothly. Although I have nothing to compare it against, I thought the instruction was excellent. I feel that the PADI teaching materials are very well structured. I’ve seen mutterings on the Web that the course should teach you more before declaring you fit to dive independently. I’m not experienced to agree or disagree with this, but I do think that what it does teach is taught well, and I believe it’s clear to the learner that at the end of the course there are plenty of limits to your knowledge, that you shouldn’t push.
The pool sessions are mostly about skills you need to deal with mishaps underwater - so that you can deal with them calmly if they occur in a real dive. There’s a lot of swapping mouthpieces, removing and replacing masks, breathing without the mask, and so on. Some of these are somewhat unpleasant experiences - it’s a wrench to deliberately remove the only thing that’s delivering air to your body, or the only thing that allows you to see. You just have to grit your teeth and get on with it, something I’m glad to say we were both able to do.
All the while you have to remember to never hold your breath. If there’s nothing to inhale, make sure you’re exhaling slowly. Changing depth while holding your breath can do you a lot of damage.
The real shock came when we learned we’d have to leave the house at 7am on a Saturday morning to get to Stoney Cove on time. I didn’t know mornings had a seven.
When we got there is was cold, windy, and raining hard. We arrived before the ScoobaBoosta mob, and wandered around a bit to see what was what. The car park was full of eager divers, undeterred by the weather. The site is as you’d imagine a flooded quarry to be, but one side is developed, with a waterside pub, a dive shop, changing rooms, and a number of features designed to simulate various entry situations.
After our explore, we spotted some people erecting a gazebo alongside their van. “Dammit,” I said, “I wish our school had a gazebo.” Joy of joys, it was our school. Not only did they have shelter organised, but they had flasks of hot water to make coffee and hot chocolate, and complimentary croissants and pain chocolat. Not just croissants. M&S croissants.
With us were Richard, who had been with us in the pool, and Andrew, who we’d not met before.
We changed into dry suits. Dry suits are the reason we accepted the December dive challenge. You can wear thermal underwear beneath a dry suit. A snug padded undersuit is provided. Hypothermia is a big no-no when diving, and I had confidence that the technology would keep us warm. I hadn’t reckoned with Debbie’s freakishly tiny neck.
Only one of the available dry suits had a small enough neck seal for Debbie. It was slightly undersized for the rest of her body, which affected her mobility. We were also decked out in wetsuit hoods and gloves.
The first dive was mostly a swim around, our first experience of diving outside a swimming pool. Because of the cold, the water was very clear and we could see fish swimming at the bottom. Our route took us past the Nautilus, a steel sculpture resembling a Verne-esque submarine. We followed the shelf beyond which the deepest part of the site lay (off limits to us) towards the sunken cockpit of an aeroplane. We tried not to allow that reminder of a forthcoming new series of Lost to distract us, lest we forget to breathe.
In fact, at least while on the move, it was more pleasant in the water then in the rain on the surface. The cold made itself known though, when we knelt on the bottom, inactive, as someone was tested on a skill.
There were a few skills to be tested - it turns out that removing your mask in cold water is quite a shock to the system, but we both managed fine.
When we emerged, my undersuit was still bone dry, and I was not particularly cold. Debbie and Andy both had dry suits full of water, and were feeling the cold. Instructor Dave wisely decided to press on with the second dive of the day as quickly as possible. The activity of changing tanks and getting the equipment on again kept the cold at bay to an extent.
The second dive was more loaded with skills. During this, we had an incident. The test was for Debbie to pretend her air had run out, take my spare mouthpiece, and breathe from it while pretending to ascend together. She did everything perfectly, put my mouthpiece in her mouth, then shook her head urgently. Immediately Dave’s mouthpiece was handed to her, she put that in then shook her head again, and made for the surface, followed by Dave. She had, in fact, performed a very good Controlled Emergency Swimming Ascent (the notorious CESA) - a last resort, but the right choice. To me, it seemed a very long wait, not knowing whether she was OK, but Dave checked she was OK, brought her back down, and we repeated the test successfully. We’re not sure what went wrong the first time around. The equipment was fine.
In fact, a CESA was intended as part of that dive, but due to the cold, and our extended time in the water, Sarah cut the test short. We packed up, and drove home, exhausted, to flop in front of The X Factor final with a kebab.
On Sunday, it was more of the same, but at least it wasn’t raining this time. Our third dive of the weekend took us to 16 metres’ depth - 2 metres short of the maximum depth we’re allowed with our training. Our reward for this trip down the quarry’s old train line was to swim through the plane cockpit. Apparently there was an enormous perch settled inside, but I was concentrating too hard on keeping the right buoyancy, and not getting kicked in the face by whoever was in front.
Once again, Debbie’s clothes inside the supposed dry suit were soaked through. I can’t imagine what it can have felt like - except that it was cold. Again, I was dry and hence reasonably warm.
Dive four was planned as a no-nonsense box-ticking exercise. We would descend, perform all the necessary tests, and ascend, all as quickly as possible to minimise our exposure to the cold. This we did. It included the CESA test. The trick with this is to continuously exhale as you swim upwards. As the ambient pressure decreases, the air in your lungs expands, so you can continue to exhale for longer than you’d imagine. Debbie’s unplanned CESA had been begun with nearly empty lungs, so she was able to experience the phenomenon to its fullest. I started with plenty of air, so I didn’t get that experience.
Andrew lost control of his buoyancy during a ‘hover’ exercise, and floated to the surface. When asked whether he wanted to go back down to carry on, he considered his coldness, and decided he’d prefer not to, so unfortunately he needs to try the fourth dive again. He plans to do so in warmer climes.
When we surfaced, I bolted for the shore, only to be called back - we had a final test, of removing our equipment on the surface, then putting it back on again. If you watched Dead Set, you might recall the scene of a frantic zombie flailing around in the Big Brother jacuzzi. The three of us must have looked very similar, struggling on the surface. At least the exercise warmed us up. Eventually we all managed it, and crawled ashore up the slipway, panting.
In the warmth of the pub, over a drink, we logged our dives, and Sarah signed our certificates. We are Open Water Divers, at the very bottom rung of the ladder (where many recreational divers are content to remain), which means PADI guides are willing to take us to depths of 18 metres in settings where breathable air is available directly above. In theory we can dive unsupervised, but I don’t think I’ll be doing that until we’ve got a bit more experience.
Somehow, in the evening, we summoned up the energy to go to Warwick Arts Centre to see John Shuttleworth perform.