Category: Students

For those who are learning or considering learning to dive

The perfect diver

One of the first concerns many qualified divers have is buoyancy and their air consumption. As an Instructor, skipper and Divemaster I am often reminded of my own concerns when I started diving. Don’t envy the diver on the boat staying down the longest on the smallest cylinder. Dive often, enhance your training, hone your skills and soon you will be that diver,  first in and last out, with air to spare.

It makes no difference who your Instructor was, which certification agency you obtained your qualification from or where you are diving. All divers are taught the basics of diving during their initial training. However, the duration of your qualifying dives has a huge impact on your level of competency at the end of your training.

If you have done four, or five in some instances, short twenty minute dives (the minimum for PADI) and – let’ s presume – you spent two hours in the water during your confined water training then your total bottom time will be less than four hours. However if your qualifying dives were 50 minutes each it will be the case that your total bottom time when you’re newly qualified is a lot more.

Some people take to diving instantly and do not find any aspect of the training intimidating and within two hours of getting into the water they are relaxed, have good buoyancy and controlled breathing. For others it is a little harder coming to terms with the heavy gear, good buoyancy control seems to be a distant dream and managing to get 30 minutes on a 12 litre cylinder in shallow water is out of the question.

With bottom time comes perfection. This involves becoming comfortable with your gear so you instinctively find your pressure gauge, being correctly weighted (a huge factor in air consumption), being warm, and moving slowly with the correct profile. All of this improves air consumption dramatically.

Another important factor is confidence. Diving beyond your ability and training, doing a dive you feel you should rather not be doing are huge ”gas guzzling” factors so don’t do that deep dive to a wreck because you feel you can or think you should, do it when you know you can and really want to.

The learning curve for a diver is steep and for me the most rewarding aspect of teaching diving is to watch and be a part of a students initial flapping around in the water like a fish out of the water, to becoming relaxed, calm and confident, and watching them grow into a competent diver in such a short period of time.

Scuba gear: to buy, or not to buy?

Imagine this scenario

You are in the middle of your Open Water course. There is possibly some pressure from your instructor/dive centre to make a scuba gear purchase. It is time to stop and think.

This will not make me very popular in the dive industry…  But I do not recommend you buy your first set of dive gear without a fair amount of research. Sure, this can easily be done on the web or in one day by visiting a few dive centers, but the reality of the matter is you are new to the sport, you have yet to build a vast data bank in your head of the multitude of options available, you are impressed by your instructor’s opinion, and are swayed into buying the gear. A month later you decide diving is not for you, sky diving is the next option and you try and offload the gear with a ”hardly used dive gear” advert… You are going to lose money.

Wetsuit only worn once
Don't let this be you!

But let’s be positive and say that you have decided that diving is the best thing you can do clothed. Some time has passed. You are done with the Adventures in Diving, have at least 10 dives in your dive log and want to dive the world.

You have booked your flights to the Red Sea and are starting to pack, thrilled with the idea of arriving at the dive centre with all of your own gear looking like a hard core diver. You even have your own heavy duty dive bag with wheels,  handles and pockets galore.

You are now faced with a dilemma…

That fancy dive bag, the wheeled one with pockets, weighs 6 kgs empty. That won’t work, so you haul out the old lightweight bag you used on your previous travels.

The water temperature where you are going is 30 degrees, ouch, that 7mm two piece wetsuit won’t work there, so you decide to leave it at home and rent one.  You discover your fins weigh a ton and are so long they wont fit in the old travel bag you are now using for weight saving, your very expensive BCD with 6 pockets, a back plate and 8 D-rings is also far too heavy… and to top it all your top of the range regulator is way too expensive for check in luggage and way too heavy for hand luggage. You decide to leave the whole lot at home and rent the hard and soft gear at your destination.

Ah, that ”brightest dive light in the world” that you bought, weighing in at 3kgs, is a bit too heavy so you decide to leave it at home too, and rent a light.

Dive lights
You can get dive lights in a wide variety of strengths, shapes, weights and profiles. Do your research!

So you arrive at your destination, rent everything you need and have a wonderful trip. You cram as many dives possible into every day and head home feeling wonderful. On the way home you reminisce on the dives, replaying them in your mind over and over again (this always happens when you are a dive junkie, trust me).

  • ”That lightweight BCD I used with rear inflation is much more comfortable than my side inflation one… Hmm…”
  • ”The rental dive torch was small, light and compact, and fitted easily into the one tiny pocket on the BCD, I wonder why I thought I need a BCD with 6 pockets? Hmm…”
  • ”It was real easy getting into the rental wetsuit with a zip in front, why does my wetsuit not have that? Hmm…”
  • “Those short fins were so light and never made my legs tired – why do my fins feel so heavy?… Hmm!”
  • ”That tiny mask they gave me was a breeze to clear, but mine is so big it takes several breaths to empty. Hmm…”

When you arrive home you re-evaluate you dive gear. It’s not junk, by no means, but not quite what you have found to be the best option. So you embark on a long, slow, deliberate road to replace these items with items in the style you have found to be ”your comfort zone”.

What to do?

This point – of having well-formed preferences for different types of gear – is only reached once you have dived for a while, once you have done 10-20 dives. There is no way you are able to reach this point half way into your Open Water course.

Many people will advocate that in the interest of health and hygiene you purchase your own soft gear, wetsuit, booties, fins, mask and snorkel, and some dive centres will only conduct your training if you make this purchase.

In all fairness to the dive centre, sales person, or your instructor, they will give you sound advice, and no manufacturer makes ”junk” in this industry. But the advice will be based on their own style, based on what they have available in their store and they will seldom recommend you shop around. It would be foolish to do so, but before you rush out and buy, try different configurations, rent different gear and decide what works for you.

For some general advice about buying gear, you can visit my follow-up posts on hard (BCD, regulator, cylinder) and soft (wetsuit, mask, fins, booties) gear.

Learning to dive

I always try and learn as much as possible from potential divers when I first meet them. There are several reasons for people wanting to learn to dive.

People often start their dive course with a statement like ”I don’t think I want to do this.”

These are often spouses of qualified divers, under pressure to learn to dive. The spouse always wants to tag along and this just places unnecessary pressure on the student. If you dive and have a new boyfriend or girlfriend and want then to learn, help them find an instructor and then back off, support them from a distance and don’t try and justify their every weakness. Don’t tell then not to worry ”everyone struggles with that” and don’t hang around while they learn. Go home and do something else.

The same applies if one of your children wants to learn. If you are qualified don’t join the child on every step of the course. Again, find an instructor you are comfortable with and let him or her do their job. Having you peer over the instructor’s shoulder distracts the child and your presence places unnecessary pressure on them as they feel you are going to step in any moment and tell them off if they are slow or struggle with certain skills.

Diving in Sodwana
Diving in Sodwana

The most important aspect of learning to dive is finding an instructor who teaches for the love of the sport. Yes, they want to be paid for it, but the difference is the right instructor will have the patience, the time, the ability to calm you and the patience to wait for you while you deal with all of the wild thoughts running through your head. You can make it easier by being honest with the instructor and trusting their judgement, but trust doesn’t arrive with the signing up of a course. This comes slowly during the training and a good instructor will earn this trust from you quickly if they are good at what they do. They will allow you to voice your fears, will talk you through them one by one instead of saying ”no, that’s crazy,” and they will talk about each and every fear and wild thought you are having until you are ready. They will spend extra time in the pool with you if you need it and don’t be afraid to say you do. Don’t be afraid to admit you did not get something or do not feel comfortable with a skill. Do it again until you feel at ease with what you need to achieve underwater.

Being able to clear your mask of water whilst on the verge of panic is not the right way. Sure, to an observer you cleared your mask, but to a dedicated instructor you did not do it right, you need to be able to do this whilst swimming along enjoying the scenery and without hesitating or hyperventilating. This may seem intimidating, but with the right amount of effort on the part of your instructor, patience and understanding everyone can perform each and every skill as a diver with ease.

Remember, talk to your instructor if you are not comfortable with something, anything, and fix it before you wander off and explore the ocean.

PADI is in my opinion the best certification agency. The rest are doing the same as PADI: teaching people to dive. I don’t want to get into the different techniques as ultimately everyone ends up as a diver, free to explore and experience the wonders of the ocean. Every certification agency has minimum standards of achievement. If you feel you have just scraped through everything by the skin of your teeth, talk to your instructor, get some more bottom time and you too will soon look like a professional underwater and you will wonder why you even found something to be difficult.

After all all instructors want you to be as good a diver as possible and your exemplary dive skills make us proud of what we do, and motivated to do it again and again and again.

FAQ: Should I do a resort course, or learn to dive before I go on holiday?

Perhaps you’re going to Mozambique, Mauritius, the Seychelles, Thailand, the Red Sea (Egypt, Israel or Jordan for example), or some other equally exciting (and warm) destination.

Diving in Aqaba, Jordan
Diving in Aqaba, Jordan, where I worked for a few months in 2008.

I would suggest you qualify as a diver here at home, for several reasons:

  1. Diving courses contain a theory component, involving watching a dvd, self-study, classroom time with an instructor, and some quizzes and exams. Do you really want to be wasting your well-earned holiday hitting the books?
  2. Resort courses are usually way more expensive than a locally-run course, because you’re a captive market and can’t really shop around when you’re on holiday.
  3. You’ve paid a lot of money to book your holiday and you want to have the best possible experience. To do that, I suggest that you make sure you’re totally relaxed and at ease in the water. Some people take a few tries to get comfortable with the idea of breathing underwater, and I promise you’ll enjoy your holiday far more if you’ve already mastered diving, and you can concentrate on enjoying the sights while you’re away rather than taking the first nervous steps towards mastering a new skill.
  4. When you start diving, it takes a few dives before you are fully relaxed and able to turn your attention away from fidgeting with your kit to the underwater world around you. Rather let me help you fine tune your buoyancy and kit configuration while you’re here, so that when you go on holiday you can confidently tell the dive centre, “I need a large BC, 8kg weight belt and size 9 booties please!” No surprises.
  5. Conditions in the Cape are very different to what you’ll experience diving in warm tropical oceans. You might think this a reason not to learn to dive here, but experienced Cape Town divers will tell you that if you can dive here, you can dive anywhere. It only gets easier!

(This information also appears on my website, here.)