Wet and Rainy Weekend Diving on 4/21/12 part 1

Well this is the first of many updates about our weekend of dives. Saturday the weather was far from perfect. It was rainy, windy, and cold outside, but the dedicated few (JoLeen, Jen, Drew, Francois, and I) toughed it out. It started out with us meeting at the dive centre and loading the gear into the van. We started out, and when we got there we this is what we found. The conditions were less that good, but we decided to see what would happen when we got into the water. We got our gear out and got it on and went into the water.  To my surprise and to the surprise of the others the conditions were actually pretty good for the weather. On our first tank we made two dives the first of the two, we went down around 8m (26ft). The water temp was around 15C (59F), and we were down there for around 23 mins. The visibility varied on where you were in the water. On the left side the visibility was around 2m (6.5ft) and on the right side it was around 1m (~3ft). We came up and chatted for a bit, then went right back down. This time we we went a little bit deeper 9m ~ 10m (29 ~ 33ft). We swam around and on the second dive JoLeen worked on sending her SMBto the surface. Once we got out of the water, we met up with Francois. He was there to work on more of his Advanced Open Water Course. Once we got off the beach we went into the dive centre at the beach and talked about what we were going to do on the dives. We decided Jen and JoLeen would go on to do their own dives and to work on their navigation skills underwater. Once all that was said and done we went got our gear back on and headed back in to the drink. We swam out to the buoys and talked a little more about what we were going to do. Francois had a little trouble getting down the first go, but once he was under about a meter (about 3 feet) he started to sink like a rock and it was all good from there. Once we got down on the bottom Drew and Francois worked on his underwater skills and buoyancy. My main purpose on these dives were to help out and make sure Francois's dive went smoothly, also Drew wanted me to get use to following and making sure the students were doing everything safely and in the proper way. Francois worked on his skills for about 43 mins and then we came up.

Well since that we were down for about an hour, the weather had progressively gotten worse. The wave size had kicked up and the rain seemed to have gotten stronger. Well that made for a very interesting time trying to make it out of the surf zone and onto the stone beach. In normal to ideal conditions you can walk out of the water somewhat easily, but in these conditions it takes a certain finesse. The only good way to describe how it get out of the water is just plant your feet and just take baby steps until you are out of the water. Once Drew, Francois, and I were out of the water. We saw another Korean instructor and her male student getting out of the water. Well the instructor made it out of the water just fine, but she sort of left her student to fend for himself. It was a sight to see. He was on his hands and knees trying to crawl out of the water with his fins still on his feet. So, Drew and I went over to help him. When we got there, his regulator hit the rocks and started to free flow. Well I don't know what it was, maybe it was the sound, but he started scream like a little girl. His instructor seemed to be more worried about getting the regulator to stop flowing than getting her student calmed down and out of the water.

After that Francois went to the centre to warm up, Drew and I waited on Jen and JoLeen to help them get out of the water. We waited with Francois's wife and she took some interesting pictures. Once the girls surfaced we helped them out of the water and we all went back to the centre and got some lunch. After the lunch Drew and Francois went outside to work on his navigation. While they worked on that we got set up and ready to go back into the water. The weather got worse and worse by the moment. The rain was coming down harder and the waves were getting bigger as well. We got in the water, and this time there were no minor hang ups this time. We went straight into the drink.