Certified Diver

I am now a certified diver! I should have my temporary certification paperwork tomorrow and the dive shop should have my permanent c-card in a week or two. We completed four dives over two days at Lake 16 in Allegan Michigan. Lake 16 is a relatively small lake but it has a nice dive platform at fifteen feet. When we first waded into the lake it was cool for just a minute as a bit of water made its way into my suit. The water quickly warmed up and, for the rest of the day, I was extremely comfortable. The surface temperature was about 60 degrees and it was about 45 degrees at 50 feet. For our first dive we swam out past a sandbar and then descended to the platform. Tom had told us that it was normal to be nervous about our first open water dive but, to be honest, I wasn't really concerned at all until we got down to the platform. Once down on the platform visibility was about ten feet and we were deeper than we ever had been. I had just a minute of mild nervousness when I considered clearing my regulator under these conditions. Once everyone was down, Tom had us each clear our regulator. It wasn't any big deal and wasn't any more difficult than it had been in the pool. From that point on I wasn't really worried. Tom had us descend down a chain from the platform to a sunken speedboat which was at about 52 feet. Although notably colder it was very cool to stand on the boat and swim around it. When we made it back to the surface one of the members of the class remarked that she hadn't seen the boat... she didn't realize that she had actually been standing on it. Fortunately on day two Tom took us back to the boat. He actually wrote the word boat in the algae on the boat... which caused the person who hadn't seen it to laugh and fill her mask with water. Oops. During our second dive we cruised around at a fairly shallow depth. Tom said that he saw some fairly large fish but unfortunately I missed them. I did see a large school of very small fish, about one inch long, that we were swimming through. It was cool because they didn't seem scared of us at all. Until I moved my hand towards them they didn't seem to even notice me. It was too bad that the visibility was only ten feet. From what Tom was saying it was at least triple that a couple weeks ago. Nonetheless, I was excited to see some actual marine life.

For our first day dives my buddy Marty was a bit over weighted. It turned out that he was actually carrying 40 pounds of lead. As a result he needed to put a huge amount of air in his BCD to stay neutral. This makes depth correction extremely difficult with the end result being that Marty shot up to the surface accidentally on two different occasions. Once Tom identified the weight problem buoyancy control was much easier. In fact, by the second day everyone was doing much better with buoyancy control.On day two we went back down to the boat below the fifty foot mark. Unfortunately, one of my classmates had trouble equalizing due to some congestion and had some serious ear pain. We all came back up to the surface and she ended up going back to shore. She looked to be in some fairly serious pain but fortunately seemed to be quite a bit better an hour, and some Sudafed, later. She was actually able to complete the fourth dive with us and, since the first dive was long and deep enough to count, was able to get certified. Day two was also the day we tried navigation. This shall henceforth be referred to as the navigation debacle. Marty and I were tasked to take turns swimming out on a specific heading and then returning on a reciprocal course. After some underwater miscommunication between Marty and I started out with me leading. Unfortunately my focus on the compass impaired my ability to find and read my dive computer resulting in a moderate change in depth. While we were supposed to be swimming at 15 feet we actually ended up at 32 feet. We noticed this because it became much cooler and the water became much clearer. After some minor issues we eventually found ourselves at the boat again and made it back to Tom. When it was Marty's turn to lead we headed out on heading at right angles from the rope we started at. I was tasked with counting his fin kicks and signaling him to stop and turn around at 25 kicks. Unfortunately Marty ended up a bit deeper and farther ahead than I was when he hit 25 kicks. I managed, barely, to grab his fin but he didn't notice and kept on going. I didn't catch up again until he hit 50 kicks. At about this point we managed to sink into the lake bottom, kicking up a huge amount of silt. Visibility became so poor in the immediate area that I couldn't see Marty when he was two feet away. We ended up holding on to each other's straps for a couple minutes to swim out of the silt before we could find our way again. Since we seemed to forget our reciprocal course we didn't end up back at the rope. In the end we had to surface to get our bearings and then go back down to get back. Overall it was a funny experience that made me realize I need some serious work on navigation.

It was a fun experience and I'm ready to go out again. There's some talk of some people going out this Wednesday which would be great fun. All of us in the class exchanged contact information so that we can get together and dive with people of comparable skill level. I'm definitely looking forward to my next dive!