Getting the certification numbers up

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Last Saturday I helped teach an Advanced Open Water course which was a lot of fun, I really enjoyed it. There were 5 students; Karly (Australian nurse), Dijon (South African pilot), Ludvig (Peruvian – Australian who works in construction), George (Australian, TI) and Brendan (Australia, RAN). Again, I was helping Cem (instructor at Abyss) with this course, which lasted 2 days. The first day consisted on three dives, each with a different goal; the first one was to familiarize the students with the underwater naturalist specialty, which mainly focuses on identifying the aquatic life. The second dive focused on good buoyancy performance and the third dive was an introduction to underwater navigation (that is, swimming with a compass). We did all dives at Bare Island and the visibility wasn’t really good, but good enough for the course. Most of them did quite well and we didn’t have many delays.Besides this course, one of the students, Ludvig, was also doing the enriched air specialty (nitrox), so after we got back to the dive shop, I showed him how to analyze an enriched air tank and how to write the data correctly on the tanks he was going to use the next day. That night I was invited to Daniel Anderson’s house to a barbeque, along with a few of the people from the dive shop. It was a lot of fun, but I was dead tired after the three dives that day.

Sunday was definitely the best day of the course; two deep dives at the HMAS Adelaide. I had been here the previous weekend (check the links on the previous post) and I was looking forwards to diving here again. I was picked up by Karly at 5:30am to get to Terrigal at around 7am. She was a good talker, so the ride to the beach went by fast. We got there and left on the boat to the dive site at around 8am. During the first dive we went to the top deck at around 20 meters and then made our way to the forecastle, down the missile silo and then went out from one of the sides (depth of 30 meters) onto the bow and then back to the top deck. This was the first deep dive for most of them and a few consumed their air really fast, so the bottom time wasn’t very long. We got in the boat again to head back to the beach. There was a lot of surge and pretty big waves at the surface, which made the boat ride interesting. We had a two hour break before the other dive, so we had plenty of time to talk and eat something before heading back to the wreck again.

On the second dive, we got to the top deck and went to the bridge, where most of the students had photos taken sitting in the captain’s chair. From the bridge we did the rest of the dive looking at the wreck from outside and then surfaced again. After both dives were completed, we all went to get something to eat at a restaurant nearby. I had a chicken burger with fries, which was really good. Ludvig also bought beers for everyone; perfect way to end the day. It was Easter Sunday as well, so we also had chocolate eggs. After that we all headed back to Sydney to the dive shop to give the students their certifications.

That night I went with Daniel Anderson to Newcastle to stay at Joao’s house (I did the instructor course with him as well). Joao had invited us to do two dives on Monday and then invited us to a barbeque because he was celebrating having become a PADI instructor. All this was organized by him, his girlfriend, Camila and his boss (Joao is working as an instructor in a dive shop in Newcastle). That night we arrived at Newcastle at around 11pm and after a few beers, we all went to sleep because we had an early rise the next morning.



Monday morning started at around 5:30am and we left the house 1 hour later, after loading the cars with the diving gear and everything needed for the barbeque. We went to a dive site called Halifax which is about an hour from New Castle and did the first dive there. It was very windy and it was also very early and we were all a bit cold, but after gearing up, it was all good. Halifax has sand bottom and plenty of marine life. The beach is really nice as well. It was a really good dive and the day looked promising. After we got out of the water, we went to another dive site nearby which is called Fly Point. I really enjoyed the dive there; the amount of aquatic life was amazing; lots of fish, sea turtles, cuttlefishes, small sharks, etc. The barbeque was held at that same spot, so we didn’t really have to move anywhere. There were about 20 – 25 people there, most of them customers of the dive shop and also a few friends of Joao and Camila. We stayed there until about 3pm and by then we had to leave to try to avoid the traffic going into Sydney after the long weekend. On the way back to Sydney we took with us a Brazilian girl, Flavia. The 4 hour ride back went by pretty fast, talking and fooling around, playing road games, etc., we had a good laugh.

Tuesday, I had another day off. I had to go to St Leonards to pick up a parcel (sunglasses I bought). After that, I went to Central Station and got off there looking for a place to get a haircut (that’s right, I’m still cutting my hair). I finally found a place cheap enough to get a haircut near Town Hall Station. At first, I got a normal haircut, but after I was done, I asked the hairdresser (an Italian immigrant) to cut me “military style” in the back of the head. There was a misunderstanding at some point and I ended up with a marine style haircut all over. I haven’t had my hair this short since I was a recruit 14 years ago, but there wasn’t much to do; at least it’ll last me for a while. After that, I went back to the intern house in Ramsgate.

On Wednesday, I had to help teach an Open Water course with Cem again. This time there were 6 students. As usual, we went to the swimming pool to do all the pool sessions on the first day. It was very windy and we were all pretty cold outside. When we finished all the skills that we had to do on the outdoor pool, we went inside to the heated pool which was a very welcome change. After all the swimming pool sessions were completed, we had lunch and then went to a place called Lilli Pilli for the first ocean dive of the course. This is in a river which can go down to a depth of about 20 meters, but we stayed above 10. There was an unusual amount of rays, I must’ve seen about 10 of them, all pretty small.

In the evening, I really wanted to have a barbeque, so I went to a shop, bought beer and had meat I had bought a few days before, enough to feed the people in the house, so I invited the others to join in, my treat. It went very well, I haven’t lost my touch to cook a good Chilean style barbeque and we all enjoyed it; you can never go wrong with beer and meat. At this moment, the people staying in the house are Andriana (South Africa), Lydia, Jonny and Ben (all English) and two Chileans (Juan and myself). We usually hang around in the patio in the evenings, which is always really pleasant.

The next day, it was time for the second half of the Open Water course; the 3 ocean dives. We did all of them at Camp Cove, a small beach with shallow water which is very good for teaching courses, but with the only problem that has too much silt which makes it difficult to see. This day, I did most of the briefings and was in charge of directing the exercises, with Cem supervising. Overall I think I did well, but of course could’ve done much better. It’s all about the experience. There’s not much to tell about the dives, really, pretty standard. We went back to the shop and finished the certifications for the students.

In the evening, as usual, we hanged out in the intern house having a few beers, each having our own dinners and just chilling.

Friday I had the day off and I went to the dive shop to work on my diving resume with Carl, to start sending it to dive shops to apply for jobs. At lunch time I went with Lydia and Carl to a Thai restaurant which is good and cheap. After that I continued working on the resume and at around 4pm I went back home. I spent most of the day on front of the computer, looking at dive shops and also took some time to update the blog. Again, finished in the patio hanging with my housemates.

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