Two Open Water Dives off Tower 17 with Matt Hatcher

Matt Hatcher needed to get certified.  He has been diving for some time with friends, but had never gone through a certification class.  He spent two days watching the various DVDs and going over the review questions, the quizzes and my table problems. We had spent an afternoon in the pool going over the various skills and this was our first open water session.  Matt met me on the beach after my dive.  Of course workers have blocked off all parking on the East side of A1A, making it difficult to find a place to park, but Matt found a spot only a few cars from the truck.

On our first dive, Matt wore a full 3:2 mm wet suit and carried 10 pounds of weight.  We swam on the surface to the blocks and descended, then chugged up the gun sight, to the cigar rock and the Gray Mid-way Rock, then headed North to the Knoll.  As we were swimming, I had him recover and clear his regulator, then clear and replace his mask.  He did fine.  We didn't see any turtles on the Knoll, but there were lots of fish.  We made one lap around the Knoll, then headed over to the Fish Camp Rocks and then back to the beach via the blocks. Matt was a little light and had to work to stay down.  

We put another 2 pounds on Matt for his second dive, which was a short dive just off the beach.  We stayed on the sand to went through the various course skills.  I even had him take off the gear, stow it on the bottom while we surfaced, then dive down to get back into it.  Matt did well.  Then we headed over to the blocks and toured the algae patch a little.  I still had 1400 psi in my tank after the first dive and I used that same tank for our second dive. I surfaced will over 650 psi left in the tank.  Dive Time was 34 minutes.  My RMV was 0.40 ft3/minute.