Scuba Certification

The title says it all Yep, day 2 of the open water dive training went well despite the continued miserable weather. There was only one dive today, but the skills were the hardest of the 4 open water dives.

I'm back from the first of two days of the open water dive training. I'm doing these dive's at Dutch Springs, an old quarry turned into a scuba diver's mecca (well, close enough). The weather was pretty miserable -- rain, light winds, and initial air temperature of 45 degrees Fahrenheit. Still, much was learned and the dives were fun!

This weekend I'm heading out for my open water dive training. This follows my weekend confined water dive training which I did about 2 weeks ago. As I'm discovering with all things scuba, there's quite a bit of gear to get together beforehand.

Ahhhh... Sitting on the couch after the third and final day of the confined water portion of scuba training. We spent the morning going through the remaining discussion along with a 50 question final exam. The exam was pretty easy so I wouldn't worry about it if you haven't done it yet especially if you've scored well on the practice quizzes.

The second day of scuba training ended a few hours ago. This weekend course is certainly intense. A lot has to be packed into 3 days to make it equivalent to the 3 week and 6 week versions. The discussion portion of the training remains straightforward. Reading the instruction manual, watching the DVD, and doing all of the knowledge reviews beforehand has certainly helped and I do recommend that approach.

So last night was the first day of scuba glass. We started off filling in some forms and then moved on to some discussion of key points from the instruction manual. Before getting into the pool, we did a quiz which asked very similar questions to what was asked in the instruction manual. Yours truly got a perfect score

So I've watched the scuba DVD from PADI now. It's a little repetitive, but otherwise not too hard to watch. It's good to have the visual aid of actually watching people do what is being described. And I've also gone through the instruction manual -- all 5 chapters. Like the DVD, it's also a little repetitive, but I suppose that's how they're getting you to memorize the details. Chapter 5 was mostly an upsell to other diving courses. I guess PADI's got to do it, but it was annoying nonetheless.

My girlfriend and I finally took the plunge today and signed up for scuba diving training. We're going for the full open water diver certification. The impetus? A trip to Belize near the end of the year. Can't go to Belize and not dive, right!?