Last classes and the IDC just around the corner

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After 3 days of not having dived, it was time to get in the water again. I went diving Thursday and Friday and both days were spectacular, the best diving I've had so far in Sydney. Thursday I went to a place I hadn't been to before: Kurnell, specifically to the location which is part of the Botany Bay National Park.

Kurnell is where James Cook first set foot in Australia and is considered "the birthplace of modern Australia" and there's quite a few good diving spots there: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurnell,_New_South_Wales. I went withCraig, a person I had dived with before and a few more people from the dive shop I had also dived with previously. I did the first two dives with Craig and the conditions were excellent: not much water movement and about 15 meters of visibility. For the first one we jumped to the water at a place called "The Leap" (it's about a 1 1/2 - 2 meter jump) and we did the second dive from a place called "The Steps". During the dives we saw a couple of weedy sea dragons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weedy_sea_dragon), cuttle fish, gropers, a small octupus, etc. After the two dives, Craig had to leave because he had a headache, so I did the 3rd dive with one of the dive shop's instructors, a Turkish guy named Cem and two girls who just finished their Dive Master course, Lydia, British and Annie, South African. The 3rd dive was similar to the other two and we also started from "The Steps". I really enjoyed those three dives that day. When I got back to the dive shop, Rachel was waiting for me to go to a gym for a boxing workout. We got there early, at about 6pm and the class started at 6:30, so in the meantime we did some laps around the block (I jogged while Rachel walked). After two laps I was already tired, considering I haven't done much physical activity of that sort in a while. The workout was pretty intensive, mostly doing boxing techniques with boxing gloves and pads and combined with a few other exercises. By the end I was exhausted. After I got home, I took a shower, fixed myself something for dinner and went to sleep. I'll probably be going to those workouts every Thursday from now on.

Friday morning it was time to go diving again, that day I went diving with Ryan to Bare Island, also in Botany Bay, but right across from Kurnell. We did three dives there: the two first ones on the east side and the last one in the west side. On the east side the visibility was very good, almost 15 meters. I had dived there before, but it's very different with good visibility. There's a nice reef on that side with a lot of marine life. We saw a big octupus (big meaning about 40cm). That day, a lot more people went diving there with the dive shop, but they were all doing 2 dives and Ryan and I had to do 3 (to get to a 100 dives for the instrutor certification), so we did shorter dives in order to finish with the rest of the divers. When we were getting ready for the 3rd dive, we realized the tanks we had from the shop hadn't been filled properly and we only had about half the tanks' capacity. We went to dive anyway, for a shorter dive (in order for a dive to count as a valid one it has to be at least 20 minutes with a minimum depth of 5 meters). We managed to be in the water for 30 minutes before going out when we hit the tanks' reserves.

When I got back home, I prepared the presentations for the Instructor course next day, had something to eat and went to bed. That same night, Joal, the brazilian guy, arrived to stay at the Fallon's for the weekend.

Saturday morning we all headed to the dive shop. That day there was no diving; we had classroom sessions the whole day. We had a couple of workshops and had to do our knowledge development presentations. By now we've had to do a few of them and it's great to see how much everyone has improved since the first ones. We also had classes on how to teach a "Search and Recovery" course, which basically consists on teaching techniques to look for lost objects underwater using specific search patterns, learning how to plan a search and how to rig and take objects to the surface with the right tools and following the security procedures. That's what we were doing on Sunday - a whole workshop at sea, to learn how to teach and manage a course in the water. After the class, all of us had to take practice theory exams on 5 topics (we had 3 hours to complete them) and at the end we had a debrief with Carl on how we've done over the duration of the instructor course.

On Sunday we all headed to Bare Island to start the "Search and Recovery" course. The sea conditions weren't the best; it was very windy and there was a lot of swell and surge, so we went to a more protected spot, about 200 meters from there called Frenchman's Bay: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Perouse,_New_South_Wales. We got into the water, set a couple of bouys and started working in small groups, practicing different search patterns and working with a lift bag. After we got out of the water I encountered a very unpleasent surprise. I went to Martin's car to get lunch (I had left my bag there) and saw that someone had smashed the car's window and had stolen my bag, with my wallet and iphone inside it. So I was left with no money, no credit cards and no phone (not counting study material for the diving course and a few other things). More than pissed off, I was left with a general sensation of annoyance and disappointment. I lost my national ID card and my driver's licence, which I'm probably not going to be able to get until I go back to Chile. I managed to block both credit cards, but now I need to wait until I have new ones sent from Chile. Fortunately, my passport was at home. We called the police, but there wasn't much more to do, so I went for the second dive to finish the workshop we were doing. That second part of the workshop, we did a few different search patterns and finished working with the lift bag. After we were all done, we took some time to dive near the shore. There used to be a wharf there and soldiers that were on leave during WWII used to throw coins in the water for local aborigine kids to dive for. There's still a lot of coins, so we went there looking for them. I found one. After we spent 20 minutes doing that, we surfaced and did a quick practice of a rescue exercise that we have to do during the instructor exam. When we were all done, we headed back to the cars and Martin and I called the police phone line to file the report and then went back home. Whenever you're travelling, you're exposed to these things happening to you, "shit happens". As unpleasant as it was, it wasn't the end of the world.

That night I had to finish reading an Emergency First Response (EFR) manual and finish some questionnaires for next day, because on Monday I had class sessions the whole day to do an EFR instructor course, which is mandatory to get the diving instructor certification. I finished at around 11pm and then had a few beers with Joal and Carl.

On Monday, Joal and I went to the dive shop to do the EFR instructor course. This course was run by the dive shop's owner, Peter Letts, Rachel's father. We were 5 students: 4 dive instructor candidates: Adrian, Ryan, Joal and I and a teacher, Jackie who was sent from her school to teach EFR to the other teachers there. It was a very intensive day and we covered a lot. We all had 4 topics that we had to present to the others as though we were teaching them, so we took turns impersonating as instructors and students. I had to "teach" CPR, splinting fractures, how to assist a choking baby and how to do an injury assessment. Between the 5 of us, we covered all of the skills required. It was a very good remainder of the prerequisite course we all had to do at some point, which is the EFR primary and secondary care (which I did last year in Santiago). After the day was over, Joal dropped me off at Carl's house and he drove back to Newcastle. That night I had to read a manual called "Emergency Oxygen Provider" for next day, because on Tuesday I had a few courses on how to teach certain diving specialties and emergency oxygen provider was one of them.

Tuesday morning, I arrived at the dive shop at 9 to start the course. This time we were only 2 students: Ryan and I. This portion of the course is not mandatory for the instructor course, but by doing this, I get to be able to train "Master Scuba Divers", which are divers that require to have at least 5 specialties to get that rating. By the end of the week I'll be able to teach "Emergency Oxygen Provider", "Deep Diving", "Wreck Diving", "Search and Rescue" and Enriched Air Diving". The classroom sessions were done by Peter again, and the practical part of the course (the deep dives and wreck dives with enriched air) will be done by Carl on Wednesday and Thursday. Again, it was a very intensive day, in which we covered how to teach 4 specialties (all but "Search and Recovery" which we did on Sunday) and we had to do 3 knowledge development presentations which also served as practice for the instructor exam. We were done at around 4:30 and then I took a train and a bus back to the house. And now that I had some time off, I wrote this post. Stay tuned next week for the results of the instructor exam that I'll have Friday, Saturday and Sunday and about the deep and wreck dives I'm doing on Wednesday and Thursday.

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Comments

[maría cecilia]

Con todo lo q has hecho, lo más probable es q te vaya super en tus examenes!!!!!!! SUERTE!!!!!!!