Part III | Third and Fourth Days of Class: Open Water Certification
If you haven’t read my previous posts in this series, follow the links for part 1, Before I Started, or part 2, Pool Sessions.
It is not the depths we conquer, but ourselves.
― A Variation from Sir Edmund Hillary
Fast forward about 9 days and it was time to finally finish my open water certification! In my situation there were several options. I could have used the referral cert to go to a fancy vacation dive site and finish the open water cert, but I wanted to stay local. So, I could either choose to go North to Denver and do my dives in the Chatfield reservoir, this meant a depth of around 20 feet and visibility of about 5-10 feet. Or I could go South to New Mexico and do my dives in the Blue Hole, which is a depth of around 80 feet, and visibility of 80-100 feet. You can probably guess which dive site I chose!
Yes, the drive was long, ~5 hours, but Blue Hole was absolutely worth it.
At this point what was left to pay for was daily parking, a diving pass, the hotel, and of course the gas to get there.
Daily Parking: $10/day
Diving Pass: $25 for the weekend
Hotel: La Quinta Inn has deals for divers which came out to about $100/night
The plan on the first day was to do 3 dives out of the 4 on Saturday and then to the last dive on Sunday morning to make sure we were all certified and heading home before it got too late. Of course, plans never really go 100% do they. After our first dive, it seemed Zeus himself opened the skies. It stormed so bad that lightening riddled the clouds, and the other 2 dives got canceled. It rained for hours, well into the night.
So, the instructor had us agree to show up at 7:30am so we could get in the remaining 3 dives on Sunday. This for me was a blessing in disguise as my heart burn had flared up over lunch and caused my esophagus to squeeze tight due to inflammation and irritation. I had run out of my omeprazole and forgot to get more. Had the storms cleared I would have been extremely uncomfortable 25 feet under water. To be honest I would have told the instructor and asked to make up the remaining dives on Sunday. No need to risk my life.
I was nervous for these dives because I am an overthinker and so I was terrified that if I messed up on any of the skills, I would fail and must start over. Or that if I ascended too quickly, or held my breath too long, I was going to kill myself. I knew this was highly unlikely, but it did not stop my inner me from stressing. One of my flaws, which I am sure you’ve caught on by now is that I can be a nervous nelly about the unknown. Still, I pushed on. There are going to be things you want in life and the only way to obtain your goal is to push forward. One fin in front of the other!
Story time!
The instructor told us the reason why we do not want to hold our breath for too long while diving. This is kind of a gruesome story so if you would rather not read it, you can skip ahead to the next paragraph. Breath control is super important so you can fine tune your buoyancy. However, the story is that a man was free diving at Blue Hole and trying to show off by going incredibly deep. He was diving down to where the scuba divers were (around 40 feet) and wound-up needing air. This man, while at depth and with surface pressure air in his lungs, swam over to a newbie diver and asked for some fresh air. To a novice diver this may seem like a feasible request and so the diver acquiesced. The free diver then inhaled compressed nitrogen and oxygen and continued to hold his breath while he ascended to the surface. The story goes that the diver’s lungs had been inflated and then due to Boyle’s Law, they continued to expand as the water pressure decreased while ascending. When he reached the surface, pink mist spewed into the air as his lungs had inflated and burst. His fun weekend had quickly turned into an early grave. Moral of the story, never hold your breath as you’re ascending! Whether this was a true story or not, I made sure to blow small bubbles anytime my regulator was out of my mouth.
Back to the open water certification!
Let me just say this, during my open water certification the instructors were incredibly kind, patient, and did a great job at relieving stress. Before every single dive, we would go over a brief of what skills we were being tested on. There were PVC platforms about 25 feet deep that we would hold onto while performing the scuba skills. If we weren’t holding onto the platforms, the instructor was holding onto us. What I learned was that there was absolutely nothing to be afraid or worried about during this entire process. It was pure fun! The most frightening thing for me was the 30-foot celebratory jump from a high wall into the water once I graduated!
Doing this alone was a test of my ability to get out in the wild, learn a new skill, and meet new people. I will say however that it would have been just slightly better if I had a personal friend to go with me. Why? Because you never ever want to go diving without a buddy. My goal was to take some GoPro footage at around 50 feet deep after getting certified. Well, because everyone was cold and tired, no one wanted to go back down. So sadly, I couldn’t use my cert and go explore the rest of Blue Hole. I even did my celebratory jump by myself. This is another reason why I didn’t get 5 stars in my review because, I was told multiple times that I would be able to go dive again after getting certified. What I wasn’t told was that it was contingent on if the other students and/or instructors were ready to go home and didn’t feel like diving again.
I had a BLAST, and I cannot wait to go diving again. My girlfriend and I are planning a trip to go see a hammerhead migration early next year with our new friends from class, and some of our Pool league team members. We also want to go diving in Iceland, Florida, and possibly South Africa. (I may need some convincing of that one since it is a Great White dive), and many more!
I want to end this by making a call to action to you, reader. If you’re like me who over thinks and is afraid of the unknown, then listen to what I am saying. Not everything is as scary as it sounds. I thought Scuba diving was going to be a constant stress. I was so wrong! It is fun and can be cathartic! So, like with my class and like in the video of my graduation jump, sometimes you just need to take a leap and dive in headfirst!
Thank you so much for reading, let me know what I should try next!