First session

Had the first session at Scube Scene with Ian  a few evenings ago and met two other new divemasters in training (DITs).  Tim I've dived with before but I hadn't met Laura until now. Ian says there are three more DITs at the moment who I am yet to meet. 

I joined the group at short notice so I hadn't done any preparation - it was going through the first review from the manual and getting an oversight of the programme - even though I hadn't prepared it was straightforward stuff on the role of the divemaster. It seems that we'll be doing the internship but with elements of the shorter programme as well.  

A few days later Santa brought the course materials and sad beggar the I am I actually spent part of Boxing Day working through the manual and getting my head around the materials.  I can't fault the PADI system of training but I personally don't find it that easy.  I like to learn visually and hands on, so reading books, even if I do make notes and conscientiously fill out the tests, reviews and quizzes, doesn't fix things in my head. However, from what Ian says, it will be a very practical, hands on experience so I reckon I'll get there OK in the end.

Anyway, off to Plymouth for an ordinary social dive or two tomorrow - could be the last for a while!

So why divemaster?

Looking back I've spent a lot of time learning stuff and diving is the focus for most of my recent learning so part of it is simply "because it's there". I don't see myself dressed in all black kit hauling a twinset and side mounts down to dodgy depths whilst breathing squeaky voice gas, so the tek route doesn't appeal (yet). I doubt I'll ever want to be an instructor but I am hoping the divemaster experience will help me to be a better dive leader and really get the skills I admit I haven't practiced that much into shape.

Divemaster isn't a cheap programme so I'm hoping Santa will be bringing a pack of materials down the chimney in a few days. Actually, he'd better do so because I've already attended the first session and been handed the honorary team T-shirt by Ian at Scuba Scene!

Why, oh why oh why!

In my youth scuba diving was my passion. Those were the days before drysuits, nitrox and BCDs; when a Fenzy ABLJ was cutting edge technology, you made your own wetsuit using sheets of neoprene and miles of seam tape in a contrasting colour and your dive knife was big enough to affect your buoyancy! Diving influenced my life to the extent that I read Marine Zoology at university although I never did much work in that field afterwards.

After a number of years more diving, in North Wales, the Lake District, Stoney Cove, Cornwall, Devon and even Victorian bottle collecting in the Ouse, clocking up  several hundred dives and a lot of stories, life, jobs, family intervened and I slowly became an ex diver. Until a couple of years ago that is, when the chance to spend a month in Hawaii came up and the idea of re-training entered my head so I could experience the tropical seas around the idyllic Hawaiian island of Kauai.

In the many years since I'd dived before, an upstart organisation called PADI invaded the country. They had existed as a training organisation in my early years of diving but only for the folks across the pond. Here in the UK, apart from a few independent clubs, it was BSAC or nothing. I originally trained to BSAC 2nd Class - no idea what that translates into nowadays, but never having been a "clubby" person and, having dropped out from BSAC as soon as I could find buddies outside the club, I welcomed the chance to follow the PADI route to help me into my second incarnation as a diver.

After doing OW with PADI in the chilly waters at Vobster I spent my month in Kauai and did the advanced OW over there, amongst lots of other diving. Sadly I was hooked again so various specialties and rescue diver followed over the next couple of years culminating in the acquisition of Master Scuba Diver status and a rapidly filling log book.

Apart from Kauai my diving has included trips to Lanzarote and others around the south west coast of the UK; a good range of training, wrecks, reefs, deep and shallow (under Swanage Pier and Babbacombe Bay). So on to the next challenge.