Losing Weight

2010-09-13T17:00:00+01:00

Today I had my second lagoon dive to run through the rest of the basic diving procedures. The simulated air failure (by turning off the tank) wasn't nearly as scary as I thought it would be on account of the relatively slow way the residual air between first and second stage gets used up. About the most distracting manoeuvre was full removal of the mask as while wearing contacts I had to close my eyes for the full minute. However re-attaching the mask went without any hitches.

I also did a number of buoyancy control exercises and worked on improving my breathing. Together with a smaller BCD, more comfortable fins and eventually less weights (about the only 2kg I can claim to have lost on the holiday) I proved to be a lot more adept at moving about in the sub-marine environment than yesterday. My instructor, apparently their most experienced, was certainly happy about my progress after our one-on-one session.

The only downside was that as we descended further I again experienced problems with re-equalising my ears. We only made it to about 1.5m before deciding to give up and head back to the pontoon. A follow-up to the on-site nurse confirmed my left ear has an inflamed section just outside the ear drum. Whether this is a pre-existing symptom or a result of the dives so far has yet to be determined. I shall see the doctor later on today. Either way the advice is to lay off the diving for a few days and re-check the ear before trying again. One advantage of the length of the trip is having that luxury.

UPDATE: Doctor says ear canals very inflamed and two have two days off and turn off the room A/C before coming back.

Unfamiliar Territory

2010-09-12T16:59:00+01:00

Today was the day of my first dive. Although Fliss is already a qualified diver she came with me to refresh her skills.

The morning was spent in the lagoon and went reasonably well. I do seem to have trouble equalising pressure, especially in my partially deaf ear. It was hard to follow the mantra of constant breathing while at the same time doing the nose pinching manoeuvre to equalise. However once we reached our depth of 5-6 meters it was seemed reasonably easy to control my depth with breathing. We circumnavigated a handy wreck before working our way back to the line and slowly returning to the surface.

The afternoon was the first open sea dive. We were only due to go to 12 meters depth though I didn't get that far. Again I had trouble with equalisation and the instructor had to hold me as I repeated a descend, pause, up a bit, pause, re-descend cycle. Once we reached the coral reef I was having trouble maintaining depth and my breathing started to get short and erratic. While I don't think I reached a full on panic moment I was uncomfortable with my ability to control breathing and buoyancy in the surging ocean. I erred on the side of caution and signalled my instructor my desire to surface. In all I was only in the water for about 10 minutes.

With my flying experience I'm certainly familiar with situations where inattention can lead to catastrophic failure, panic is never a useful state to achieve. However at least with flying the default state is for gravity to bring you down to ground (you just control how fast that happens). When my breathing got erratic I just continued to slowly sink down and being unfamiliar with diving I was worried about getting back up. I certainly felt out of my comfort zone.

I'm doing another 2 lagoon dives tomorrow and hopefully I can do enough practise of the basic techniques to not cock up quite so much on my next open water dive in the afternoon.

Alex's Adventures on the Infobahn - diving

Losing Weight

Unfamiliar Territory