Divemaster Course - Fun Stuff!

[Omicron]

George, Al and I just got finished with our skills demonstration portion of our Divemaster class last night. It was pretty fun stuff overall. Most of it was pretty unremarkable except for a few things - demonstrating/practicing buddy breathing, and the gear swap portion of the tests.

I have never had the chance to buddy breathe before - never learned it in any of my classes or anything like that. It was pretty fun learning it and then demonstrating it for our instructor.

The really fun thing was the gear swap while buddy breathing. You have to trade everything except for your wetsuit. I had kind of heard about it, but it is certainly different doing it than hearing about it. Watching it was the absolute best! Al and George did it first - they got all their scuba switched over and then their fins. There were a few fumbles for the regulator but not too bad. The best part was when they got to their masks Hee hee...it's a lot harder than it looks!

When I had to do it, I did it with George and we had a better idea of how to go about it. I got rid of my mask first and then he stuck the reg into my mouth. Then, he got his mask off and mine on and then gave me his mask and took the reg from me. Once we got the masks switched we started in on the rest of the gear. It went pretty smooth except that I kinda pulled a dumb thing and unbuckled one of my straps on my bc so that when George went to put his arm through the strap he had to put it back together. Whoops The fins were a little tricky too because George still had Al's fins on - Al has a size Small and I have the biggest Quatro they make...lets just say I'm glad George had a long hose so that I could manuever while buddy breathing.

Overall, it was a pretty fun experience. Now on to the stamina tests....

[dfreeman]

I heard that the mask swapping was really special to watch. Sounds like fun in the water to me. ;D

Doug

[jasondbaker]

My buddy really freaked out the first time we did the equipment swap -- before we even got to the mask exchange. I wasn't sure he was going to try for a second attempt. But fortunately the exchange went smoothly the second time. You really need to have some faith in your buddy when you are sitting there without a mask and reg.

[Omicron]

Yeah...George is the guy that got me into diving, and he is my dive partner more often than not. We dive well together and he is a very good diver so I trust him. The second I took off my mask, as I was exhaling, I felt him stick the reg in my mouth. On my second breath, he took the reg out and handed me a mask and then on my exhale I cleared it. It went pretty smooth!