It was a busy weekend! It was an open water weekend with great results!
Saturday was Stress & Rescue day with Bubba Alex being found all over the lake without his buddy. He seemed to find himself, stuck in the boat, laying on the bottom, panicking on the surface, running out of air numerous time. Throughout it all, Bill, John, Mike and Chris kept dragging him back to shore and helping him get ready for his next dive. I think they were ready to tie him up and leave him on the bottom by the time it was done. At one point Bill turned to John and asked, isn’t this the same fool we just rescued from the boat? Where is his buddy? I am thinking that his buddy knew what kind of diver he was and left for the day.
Congratulations guys for putting up with us and finishing your Rescue course.
After it was all said and done, Bill and Steve survived leading these wonderful divers around and in the process completed their Dive Guide and Dive Master programs. And, we would like to take this opportunity to welcome Bill Fuqua and Steve Soulen to the Oceanic Ventures staff as our newest Dive Masters! Welcome to the team!!!
Scuba Dive Training
Scuba Diving Practice – Local Lake Diving
Wow! We had a great time up at Blue Lagoon yesterday. Wade proved once again that he is a master at the smoker and grill. The wild boar and grass fed brisket were awesome and no one went away hungry. While the weather threatened and delivered on the ride up to Huntsville, the weather at the Lagoon was nice and we had clear skies in the afternoon.
Practice your buoyancy skills locally…
I am often asked “do you still enjoy diving at Blue Lagoon?” I think what they actually mean is, that since I have been all over the world what can I possible find to do at Blue Lagoon or any local diving venue for that matter. What they fail to understand is that local diving affords you the opportunity to practice and maintain your skills. There is also a social aspect to local diving which I have often described as a barbecue interrupted by diving.
In order to keep the dives interesting you have to go in with a plan or purpose. In my earlier diving days I used local diving as a way to improve my navigational skills. It was a challenge to find all of the objects in the lake and return to the beach without surfacing. These skills have served me well over the years. To keep these skills sharp, I still practice underwater navigation in the lakes.
You can use your time underwater at these local venues to improve your buoyancy. In an earlier article I talked about using the underwater boats as a fixed point of reference and forcing yourself to hover in place. Another drill is to swim like a slalom skier maintaining neutral buoyancy and proper trim while swimming in and around rocks, trees, stumps, etc.
Pick objects on the bottom and swim around them, maintaining your trim and placement in the water. Work on making the turns without using your hands for steering. As you improve, try making sharper turns and then introduce changes in depth to your drills. Remember the first rule of scuba, breath continuously. Some people start concentrating too much on the drills and maintaining neutral buoyancy that they start violating this rule. Keep breathing but use your breathing to help you achieve these depth changes (unless you are on a rebreather of course).
As you do these drills, work on not kicking up the bottom. The tighter your turns, the more you will need to be in a bent leg diving position using “helicopter turns” and small very specific kicks to move through your course. If you are unfamiliar with these turns or this style of diving, then you might find an Advanced Buoyancy Control class useful.
The group diving with me this weekend got to experience this type of diving first hand as we wove through the boulder fields around the lake. Of course they skipped a few turns because they thought I was just doubling back, lost. Little did they know we were heading back to our entry point 50 more minutes in the future.
Scuba Divers Win Prizes at the Annual Dive Around Texas Competition
It was unusually cold on Sunday morning, but that didn’t stop more than 100 Texas divers from coming out to the Annual Dive Around Texas barbecue and prize give away in San Marcos. Many local divers and dive shops we’re represented, including Oceanic Ventures, Inc. Also, representatives from some of the certification agencies and manufacturers were there as well; some of the atendees were Eric Peterson with SSI, Tom Kurras with Cressi, Greg Gephart with Tusa, SEA&SEA, and Light and Motion.
We had a fun time, won some prizes—two of Oceanic Ventures’ own Steve Soulen won two Ikelite LED flashlights, and John Davis won a wetsuit. The barbecue lunch was great and it allowed us to swap dive stories with people from all over Texas, folks from Austin, Grapevine, San Marcos, and even Corpus Christi we’re all represented at the Dive Around Texas event.
I’m glad I got enough dives in, because the prizes we’re really great! And, I can’t wait to get even more local dives in for 2013, hope you can join me underwater in Texas!
Need a reason to take that Trimix Course?
300ft down.. perfect reason for me to get hypoxic & expedition trimix certified. Such were the words of one of our clients, John Mittendorf. What was John talking about you ask? Well it seems a group of Swedish treasure hunters discovered a perfectly round object at the bottom of the Sea of Bethena off the coast of Sweden. According to the team, it is unusual because it is perfectly round and appears to have a “drag” clearing leading up to it.
Of course there are other reasons to take a Trimix course. Imagine being able to swim with huge sponges reaching out and up from the depths along the walls in Grand Cayman. Visit a turn of the century sailing ship in the Dry Tortugas or a WW II submarine from the United States and another from Germany; these await deep divers in the Dry Tortugas. There are some incredible sites waiting for Trimix divers around the world including, caves, wrecks and walls. Dave and I have been fortunate to have visited a number of them over the past few years and we are always looking for some other adventurous souls to join us.
John, may be right. This might just be the reason to continue his rebreather training to include Hypoxic and Expedition Trimix. Of course you will also need some practice in a dry suit.
Here is what CNN reported about the find:
100 Scuba Dives…Dive Mom Needs Help!
- Dive Mom Ready to Go!
“For the first time I can remember, I don’t have my 100 dives by November 1; I need your help to get there before December 1!”
Ann Keibler will be venturing up to the DUI Dog Rally and Demo Days in Terrell Texas on November 19-20 and she would like for you to join her. So that you both have something to do while swimming around the lake, she will be doing dry suit open water dives and dry suit demos. To give you some incentive to show up, she has come up with the following specials:
- Take a Dry Suit course, reg $225, for only $125 and she will pay for your DUI entry ticket for Saturday and Sunday. By doing your open water here, you also save the dry suit rental charge ($100 for the weekend).
- Take your Nitrox course, reg $225, for only $125 and she will pay for your DUI entry ticket for the day and include the Nitrox for your dives!
Both courses include the educational materials and the classroom portion is a home study program. You should turn in your homework and take the test before you leave. She will be staying late Wednesday November 9, so you can get the test over with early. You can take the test at the lake, but who wants to skip the fun and take a test so doing it early is really better.
Of course if you are already certified as a dry suit diver, you can still come up and go diving. Remember, she needs a lot of dives and she doesn’t think any one person will want to do that many in a day. As such, she needs multiple buddies and lots of moral support.
DUI’s Dog Rally and Demo Days is a really cool event where you can try almost every suit DUI makes, almost every style of undergarment, get lunch and a hat all for $10.00 (when purchased from Oceanic Ventures, in advance). And, if you are already a DOG (DUI Owners Group) and you bring a friend to the event, you will get a special gift.
Please send Dive Mom and email and tell her you will help her reach her goal.
She would like to know who is going to attend by Friday.
Why should you take an Advanced Open Water Scuba Course?
New divers often wonder how they can start an Advanced Open Water Course so close to completing their Open Water Course; they simply do not feel like advanced divers. While it is true they are new to the world of diving, and they need to go out diving, it is also true that having a few more underwater skills under their belts would make diving more enjoyable. This is really what an Advanced Open Water Course is all about; it is a combination of diving specialty courses designed to give new divers a few more underwater tools.
There is no substitute for simply going out and diving. After you complete your open water class, you and your diving buddies should plan on going diving as much as possible so you can gain some confidence and put your newly learned diving skills to work. At our facility, we try to promote this by offering dive local weekends at other times during the month. We also encourage new divers to return with us on the next month’s Open Water Weekend. By participating in these other events, there is a professional dive leader on hand to give you advice and to answer your questions while learning to dive outside of the classroom setting.
But, like I said earlier, one way to make an improvement in your diving is by learning some basic underwater skills. An Advanced Open Water Course combines the following specialty classes into one package:
- Underwater Navigation
- Deep Diving (over 60 feet)
- Night and Limited Visibility Diving
- Search and Relocation
These specialties are designed to introduce you, the new diver, to new environments and equip you with come new skills that you will use throughout your diving career. They are also tailored to give you more confidence and help you to relax more underwater. Why these specialties you ask? Well, let’s look at each of them in more detail.
Underwater Navigation – You probably noticed in your Open Water Class that you had no real idea where you were. You just followed your Instructor or a Dive Control Specialist with your Instructor following behind. You were mostly concerned with trying to maintain buoyancy and look around at things as you glided past. However, when you are diving without your instructor, you will have to find your way around the lake on your own. This course introduces you to the skills needed to navigate underwater and the ability to get lost creatively.
Deep Diving – While many people do not consider diving deeper than 60 feet deep diving, you were trained and certified in 20 to 40 feet of water so 60 feet is deeper than you have been. Assuming you do not want to repeat those out-of-air skills you were forced to endure as part of your Open Water Program, there are some things you need to consider when diving deeper, like when to start back to the surface. So here you will learn what to do to scale the equivalent of a 6 story building and return to the surface safely and proudly.
Night & Limited Visibility Diving – Here you get more toys! You need lights to complete this specialty so, boys get toys! Ok, it is not all about the toys but rather how to use them as tools to safely execute a night dive. And remember, if you are ever planning on sneaking into the cocktail party from the water, you will need this skill-set.
Search & Relocation – With the introduction of more toys comes the need to find them when you loose them. Here we introduce you to the fine art of finding the things you lost underwater. As part of the class you also get to use a lift bag to lift up a heavy object. This is a useful skill if you run across an canon underwater that you think will look smashing in your front yard!
While you are learning these skills, you will be getting more comfortable underwater and may even find you do not need as much weight to sink below the surface. You even get the opportunity to purchase some necessary toys to safely execute your dives – cool, more toys!
Taking an Advanced Open Water Course is a good way to prepare yourself for the dives that you want to do on your next vacation. The comfort you gain in the water will make those vacation dives more enjoyable and just plain fun. Don’t miss this opportunity to improve your diving while having fun diving in a structured program.
