Friday, August 17, 2012

Surface swims and 800m Snorkels!



On our first day of the week we had a DSD (Discover Scuba Diving) customer, Nicola who was surprisingly calm and picked up the skills very quickly.The pool session was conducted by Aaron which allowed him to tick the last box in his PADI DSD leader qualification. 


We then went off to the ocean with Pete (Nicola’s husband)  and the first dive to Yellow Mountain. Nicola had a few problems equalizing but soon overcame these and started to relax. We then headed off towards Alien Rock where Nicola managed far better and really enjoyed herself.


The next day was spent doing our EFR course which we were not very good with the exams and needed some additional work on the theory. After resitting the exam all of the interns passed this time with Will by far the star pupil of the day with 100% in all three of the EFR exams (Bit too obvious who is writing this section of the blog?... thought so).


On Wednesday we had a two dives the most notable of which we noticed a Fangtooth Moray and an Octopus fighting over a spot within a rock. Pete (the customer) also joined us on these two dives and seemed to enjoy himself once again.  In the afternoon we started trying to come up with our interesting games for the Bubble maker course, we found it a lot harder than we thought it was going to be, the only inspirational idea that was made was a game named “Crappy Tappy” which by its name I am sure you can guess that it was appalling. 


It was Dive AWARE day and we headed to El Puertito with several bags to perform an underwater litter pick, some of the items that were found ranged from a glass, a full size table cloth, champagne bottles, huge water containers and even plenty of anchors without a chain which unfortunately would not fit in our bag. While picking up litter we did encounter the Turtles which occupy the site and got a pretty close look at them. Will was also certain that he had found something very rare or in hiding…but it turned it that it was a bit of coral which “looked as if it had eyes!”.


The sea had turned a bit choppy due to the high winds that we had on Friday, so much so that one of the interns had to stay on the boat for the second dive and hug the floor after an interesting dive to Poco Naufragio.  In the afternoon we found out how much harder the 800m snorkel is than it sounds and Pete heard a barrage of excuses as to why the times were so slow!


Jake managed to lose his SMB at the dive site nicknamed “Arise” because its Spanish name is too hard to spell for anyone who natively speaks English. This is perfect as it sets up a search and recovery dive of which we have been practicing (when Aaron doesn’t forget the lift bag and all of the other essential materials needed).

It was Jake and Will’s turn to lead dives on their own with no influence from Pete, Melissa or Alice. Abades was picked as the dive site because of how shallow it is which was perfect for a first dive lead as if anything happened an ascent would always be safe. Jake lead the first dive and it was fair to say that it was a right work out, Lewis Hamilton would have been jealous at the speed he navigated the dive site. After the dive Jake was slightly gutted that we had not managed to spot anything big such as an Octopus or a Moray. 


Will’s dive however was borderline perfect and the site was awash with interesting fish and finds (Still too obvious who is writing the blog?). We managed to spot two Octopuses on the second dive, one of which was a rare white spotted one. 

The most amusing part of the dive had to be the ascent, Will believed that we were reasonably close to shore, however we were probably closer to Dubai than the coast of Tenerife. This resulted in the world’s longest surface swim and Jamie almost drowning as her legs had given out, luckily the boys were on hand to tow her out.




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