Teaching Swimming

A friend and former student recently contacted Dianne and wanted to know if Dianne would teach her friend to swim so that the friend could later take the diving class with me.  Dianne asked me and we decided to give it a try.

 Dianne has been swimming forever and taught swimming for several years to children.  Children, however, are fearless.  Teaching adults is another matter.

 She spent some time working on buoyancy and breathing.

 Breathing out of the nose at the appropriate time is a lot more difficult than it looks.  This becomes more challenging when you cannot breath in through your nose.

Leonardo Paez Completes the Deep Diver Specialty Course

 I took a group of five students out on ScubaTyme Sunday afternoon.  The plan was to dive a shallow wreck, then we would make a deep dive on the back side of the 3rd Reef Line.  The current was ripping though the Sea Emperor dive site, however, so the boat changed the plan to two drift dives.  We went deep, instead.

 Although I took the Intova, I never took any pictures on the deep dive.  What you see here are from our second drift dive on Turtle Ledge.  The boat dropped us in the water, we grouped up and descended together.  Trisha had some difficulty, but we straightened that out and next thing you know, we are at 135 feet.

Victor Heras did not quite believe it.  There was still light and the pressure felt the same.  There was a current, however, and the flag pulled me.  Nick Holtzhausen took the flag while I times Leo and Victor.  They each opened their combination locks in about the same time it took at the surface, suggesting that neither of them suffered from nitrogen narcosis.

 We began our ascent when Victor reached 1200 psi.  We made 1 minute Pyle stops at 65 and 32 feet, then a 3 minute safety stop at 15 feet.  Then we surfaced.  The boat was away picking up other divers, but we were picked up within 15 minutes of surfacing.

 We made a 55 minute surface interval before our second dive.  The second dive was a drift dive over Turtle Ledge, which is a North/South running reef at 45 feet that falls off to 60 feet to the West and the deep Atlantic to the East.  We saw a lot of Initial Phase and some Terminal Phase Creole Wrasse.

 Leo took pictures on both dives.

 We also saw Blue Chromis like the one pictured here.

 Guillermo was not feeling well and missed the first dive, but joined us for this second dive.

 We also spotted an Orange Spotted Filefish.

 and some White Spotted Filefish.