my PADI Advanced Open Water Scuba Certification 1
by Mrs Hirschfield
(Melbourne)
Moray Eel
eagle ray on ocean floor surrounded by urchins
5ft Port Jackson shark
Me and Abe hanging out at a safety stop
We arrived in Narooma, on the South Coast of NSW after our annual ten hour car trip from Melbourne, with boat and dive gear in tow for the first time. As if by instinct, we headed immediately for the local Ocean Hut where we were advised to make contact with ?Underwater Safaris?. By next morning, my husband Abe and I had decided that this vacation would be the perfect time to do our PADI Advanced Open Water (A/OW) Dive certification, and to acquaint ourselves properly with the enticing waters of our favorite Australian holiday destination.
My dive buddy Abe checks out a new site before starting our advanced course on Wednesday, we took our boat for a short cruise down the picturesque Wagonga Inlet with friends, then braved a crossing of the infamous Narooma bar for a seal dive at Montague Island. Dive 26 was the most spectacular dive I had done to date, starting with a moderately terrifying but exhilarating descent through squillions of jellies. To my devastation, the memory card in my camera failed, leaving me with no visual souvenirs of the seals, turtle, Port Jackson sharks, stingrays and tropical fish schools we encountered, or the inquisitive blue groper that accompanied us for much of the dive. (Thankfully, we saw several other Port Jacksons later in the week.)
After beginning the intensive study needed to complete the five ?Adventures in Diving? theory units and combating my usual issues with violent seasickness, we launched our three day A/OW on Wednesday with outstanding South African instructor Francois (Frank) Van Zyl. I made the decision to leave my camera on the boat so as not to compromise my focus on the lessons I needed to learn during my first deep water experience. Our first ever Deep Dive (Dive 27) was off the north tip of Montague Island to a depth 30.4 metres. Descent down the anchor rope into low visibility took approximately four minutes, and the intensified underwater pressure was evident when Frank gave Abe, fellow advanced student Steve and I some eggs to crack at depth. After several attempts, I could only break my egg with a dive knife, and it was fascinating to watch the yolk float away intact.
Our second dive of the day (Dive 28) was the Naturalist dive, which involved spotting as many vertebrates and invertebrates as possible. I was thrilled to encounter my first eagle ray, and also managed to photograph some red rock cod, moray eels and a Sergeant Baker. I realised that I am most relaxed and much kinder on my air consumption when I focus on taking photos, which I can then go away and research to become better educated about the amazing critters that are so tolerant of my curious intrusions into their wonderous underwater world. Our dives to focus on Peak Performance Buoyancy (Dive 29) and Navigation (Dive 30) were scheduled for the next day off the rocks at Broulee South beach.
During the Peak Performance Buoyancy lesson, I struggled with the fin pivots due to my neoprene booties that constantly made my feet float, and it took me quite a while to accept that the only way I could hover above the ocean floor for a full minute as required was on my back with my legs in the air, staring up towards the sun. Surrendering myself to this position of neutral buoyancy finally yielded a Zen-like state that seemed to mesmerise the big blue groper and medium Port Jackson shark that came quietly closer to observe our strange hovering antics. Abe said I was a different diver altogether from that point onwards, exhibiting far greater control and fluency. My neutral buoyancy confidence has skyrocketed, and I am so grateful to have chosen this elective in the Advanced Open Water certification.
I anticipated that my inability to read any sort of map on land would impact my ability to perform well with a compass underwater for the Navigation dive, and I surprised myself when I was able to work with the compass to successfully navigate a square in the Broulee South car park. Underwater, Abe and I were able to navigate straight and reciprocal lines using compass and natural navigation techniques. However, we missed our target by a mere two feet due to poor visibility and failure to look carefully in all directions for Frank and the marker buoy, swimming straight past them after successfully navigating our squares both times (lesson learned!)
The highlight of our entire vacation followed our navigational exercises, when we found a submerged cave that Frank had been through several times previously. Resting near the entrance were a seven-foot wobbegong shark (that I originally mistook for a large rock) and several five-foot Port Jackson sharks. I somehow managed to suppress my lifelong fear of above-water caves and followed my fearless leader Frank into my first underwater cave. Areas of virtual pitch-blackness gave way to sections where the sun streamed through spectacularly from multiple angles. At 69 minutes bottom time, this has been my longest and most exhilarating dive to date.
If you are looking for an instructor on the Eurobodalla Coast for a PADI course or adventure dive, I cannot recommend Frank from Underwater Safaris highly enough. We felt very comfortable with him from the first moment he delivered our dive manual to our door. We were so impressed by his wealth of knowledge as a professional Search and Recovery diver and PADI instructor, and by his passion for recreational diving. Frank is a highly relational teacher and an outstanding communicator who stretches, supports, respects and enjoys his students. Above all, his generosity in sharing practical stories and lessons from his own diving experience and his kindness in ensuring that we were always snacked-up and well hydrated before and after dives make him a truly outstanding person to dive with and learn from. We will definitely dive with Frank again on our next Narooma vacation.
We completed our final dive of the course " Search and Recovery (Dive 31)" on Friday inside the shark net at Bar Beach, Narooma. Frank had complimented us frequently throughout the course on our competence as divers, so of course, it took the final dive of our advanced certification to reveal what absolute rookies we actually are. By this stage, we were genuinely over-tired and took the opportunity to learn a bunch of valuable lessons about diving the good old-fashioned hard way. My impromptu ?beached whale? impersonation for unsuspecting onlookers while trying to don my fins upon entry should have been indication enough of what was to come with this dive.
Let?s just say that lessons learned included: a) make sure you overweight in shallow water; b) plan your dive and dive your plan; c) don?t let go of the flippin? rope and marker buoy in the water or your over-tired husband will get super-mad at you which will adversely impact your team work underwater, and d) don?t forget to put your mask back on before descent following any at-surface briefings. Miraculously, we somehow managed to recover the ?lost? half cylinder and two weight belts and get them back to shore in 29 minutes that felt like several cold, most unpleasant hours.
All in all, this was a very different week-long vacation to the one we had planned. We didn?t have time to visit boat-heaven Bermagui, and failing to factor tide changes into our planned cruise with friends down the Clyde River at Bateman?s Bay resulted in our being stranded at a poorly chosen picnic spot for five insect-ravaged hours (but obviously that?s another story ?) Nor did we get to dive at Mystery Bay, Potato Point or Dalmeny, as we focused instead on completing all the required theory and adventure dives for our PADI Advanced Open Water course. But ? we skilled up to our Advanced certification, built up our confidence through a diverse range of adventure dives and confirmed our unequivocal passion for all things scuba.
And now that I have chronicled all that was remotely interesting about this week during the ten hour car trip home, I might just shut my eyes for a short recovery nap, reliving all my latest scuba adventures in my dreams before returning to my other life as a book reading, student teaching, PoLT coordinating land-dweller, storing my regs and dive slate until the next time the beautiful ocean beckons and I am able to answer her call.
Total Bottom Time to date: 21 hours, 9 minutes
The Article Was Kindly Submitted By Mrs Hirschfield
You can read more mrshirschfield blogs and see more pictures relating to this article at https://www.welcometomyocean.wordpress.com
