Advanced Course

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Started our advanced Course today

The advanced consists of 5 dives, our first dive was a compulsory dive which takes you down to a depth of 30M, we did this at a dive site called Ras Kati, Steve Hinton was our instructor and before we took our first deep dive he asked us on the surface to do a short test including some basic questions and some maths questions. this was timed on the surface and then again at 30m below. The objective was to show us how nitrogen narcosis affects the brain and slows your reactions down. I did the same test at 30m and it took me 25 seconds longer to answer the questions even though it felt like i had done it at warp speed!

Another thing when you at this depth is that it is very hard to distinguish colours, Steve took a tomato down with us and it looked like a mouldy green crab apple!

Second dive was Navigation which again is compulsory, using a compass you have to navigate a square under the water using fin kick cycles to measure the distances you are traveling ( I.E 20 fin kick cycles approx 20 meters ) One thing i learnt was to trust the compass as in my head i was convinced i needed to go in a different direction.

Third dive was a night dive, I wasnt too sure about this at first but i am glad that I did it, its very diferent in the water at night, lots of different marine life come out to play. In particular the Lion fish ( See Photo Credit to Adam Butler for this picture [e-mail]/b) this little critter is highly dangerous and in the day tends to hide away.. at night though there are bloody hundreds of them about. they tend to follow you around too as the light from the torch heps them find the small fish to eat. ( dont shine the torch on yourself for too long though as you will find one about 6 inches from you and thats not nice)


Day two was followed by a multi level dive which allows you to calculate your dive at different levels and basically allows you to maximise the allowed dive time

finishing off with the final dive which was a drift dive, drift dives basically mean you jump in the water at one point and the boat will come and pick you up at another point which is good because it mean you can dive over longer distances.

So that was that, Im now an advanced PADI Diver and pretty knackered to go with it. thanks to Steve Hinton for taking care of us all and making those 2 days good days and also for pointing out the thong fish and boobie fish 😊

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Photos

Ras Kati
Local Dive Site in Sharm

Boat Pic
me Neil and Duncan

Lion Fish
Pretty Fish but I wouldnt get too close! one of the oceans bad boys

Dive site
one of the many dive boats