Back to Teaching

The school year has started and our Friday night pool has followed suit and we have got off to a busy start with a new SEAL team getting underway and a brand new Open Water course starting. It seems like ages since I actually taught an Open Water course and I have to confess to a certain level of excitement at the prospect of taking brand new students through the process and creating some really competent divers at the end of it.

There are three students involved with a fourth that has done most of the work previously and will be dipping in to finish off and refine skills. They include a complete novice who first experienced a try dive at the Essex International Scout Jamboree this summer and one of the graduates from our very own SEAL team. From a teaching perspective that is tremendous because it provides a real mixture and I know that our SEALs have been able to race through the course having picked up most of the skills already.

At the time of writing I must confess we are already two sessions into the course. The first session went really well and it was evident that the students had done their homework on chapter one in their manual. A slight challenge was that Knowledge reviews had been done but the answers had not been written in the manual so we had to go through these before getting in the water.

Partial mask clear is the skill to watch out for in session one and as always I got the students practicing this on dry land before putting them in the water. It is such an easy skill when you get it but there is something about putting your face in the water and then having to blow through your nose with a regulator in the mouth that seems to confuse even the most rational persons brains at times. I am pleased to say everyone got this skill perfectly before we finished.

Session two was equally successful and this time the Knowledge Reviews were completed and good marks were achieved in the tests. This is great for me because it always gives us more time to brief the skills to be covered in the water. Session two has a lot in it but again everyone coped really well and especially with the experience of the out of air scenario.

My challenge was that following our second session I had to get on my way to the Farne Islands for a diving weekend so I had to get out and on the road very quickly in order to get the six hour journey underway. You might think that setting off at 8:30 pm to go to Northumbria is sheer madness and you would probably be right but you will need to make that conclusion only after reading the next blog entry on my weekend in the Farnes.

Another Equipment Course and a brand new Master Scuba Diver

Another busy day at Orca with yet more practice at cleaning and repairing kit. This time we managed to see first hand the problems associated with trying to glue neoprene together. Still all worked out well in the end with Harvey and Jane doing well to take in all the information on offer. Once again I here myself recommending the Encyclopedia of Recreational Diving and realising this is not just because it is a PADI book but more importantly because it remains my first call for gathering a host of information.

Discussing some of the contents with Gary in the centre after the course had finished we devised a plan to offer something more for our customers. As a result two things to watch for in coming weeks will be a modular course covering diving physics and physiology which should prove especially interesting to anyone considering doing their Divemaster or Instructor qualifications and to those that just want to remind themselves of what they already know. Keep an eye on the website as details will be published soon.

In addition we both realised that we now have a number of qualified rescue divers who have not reviewed or thankful had call to practice their skills for quite some time. So I happily spent some time putting together a refresher programme that hopefully will go live in late September.

My highlight of the day was the visit of Sasha and her family to the centre which gave us a chance to present her with her well earned Master Scuba Diver certificate. We have had a good run of qualifying Master Scuba Divers this year and Sasha has the distinction of being our first Junior. I know that Sasha certainly won't be our last Junior to qualify this year as others are well on the way.

It is always a tremendous achievement to be first and Sasha has done it in style despite the fact that she has a positive aversion to the cold and much prefers warm water diving.