MHMF Challenge Complete - PADI Open Water Diver

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  Phuket, Thailand
Wednesday, December 13, 2006

MHMF Challenge Achieved - PADI Open Water Diver Qualification
I am delighted to report that AD and I have achieved the PADI Open Water Diver qualification in the name of the Miriam Hyman Memorial Fund :D
On Thursday 7th December AD and I went to the Sea Bees Diving office in Chalong on the south east coast of Phuket, just a couple of km from where we're staying.  We saw for ourselves why they have the excellent reputation that goes before them - a German-owned company, their organisation and equipment were of a considerably higher standard than any of their (slightly cheaper) competitors.  We signed up for the four-day course there and then, and bought the accompanying book which we familiarised ourselves with that evening.
That night I had lots of dreams in which people were making me late for the course, including AD who had got horribly drunk with his friend Jonny and had no hope of getting up in time

01 In The Classroom

!
On Friday morning we were picked up from our YHA hostel at 8.45 by tuk-tuk which took us to Sea Bees.  There we met Stefan, our Swedish instructor, who took us to the equipment store and picked out our gear - mask, snorkel and fins, wetsuits, Boyancy Control Devices (BCD's), regulators (for breathing) and weight belts.  Then the three of us were driven to the nearby resort which has a purpose-built pool with an area three metres deep and a multi-media (air-con) classroom.  That morning we watched the first three chapters of the DVD and after each chapter we had to do a short multiple choice test to make sure we had grasped the essential points.  If we didn't get a high enough score we had to re-sit another version of the test.  AD passed them all but I had to re-sit two out of three!  There was a LOT of information to take in and by the end of the morning my brain was aching!
After lunch it was time for our first pool session.  Stefan showed us how to assemble our gear, we followed him, disassembled it all and started again.  Then we put the gear on for the first time - it felt very awkward and heavy and I wondered how it would be possible to swim.  We got into the pool and the first thing we needed to do was to establish how many weights we needed to achieve neutral boyancy and float in the water.  The weights are two pounds each and not surprisingly I needed more weights than AD

02 AD Watching PADI Video

.  Then it was time to breathe underwater for the first time.  It felt very strange, and I was surprised by how noisy the bubbles were.  You get the full Darth Vader heavy breathing effect!
That afternoon we practised the skills we had seen on the DVD, basic but essential skills, especially how to breathe from your diving buddy's air tank in the event that yours runs out or develops a fault.  We spent around four hours in the pool and by the end of it we were tired and ravenous.  But having eaten at The Anchor (the Sea Bees restaurant next to their office) we had homework to do - we had to write answers to the review questions at the end of each chapter which Stefan would check over the next day.
The structure of the course is flexible in that you must do two classroom/pool days and two days diving in open water but the order of those days is not fixed.  Because the boat was making a trip to the dive site on Saturday, Day 2 was our first open water diving day.  We were pretty excited at the prospect, although we knew that the dives would consist of demonstrating that we had mastered the skills we had practised in the pool the previous day.
Once again we were picked up at the hostel and taken to the Sea Bees office where all the divers assembled.  A tuk-tuk took us to the pier and from there another vehicle took us to the end of the pier where the larger of the Sea Bees boats, the Excalibur II, was waiting for us.  It is by far the best purpose-built diving boat in this area.  The bottom deck is used for storage, the next one is the one you dive from with an area to store and change into your gear as well as two showers.  A few steps up towards the front of the boat are shelves where you can store your bag and anything else you want to keep dry, as well as the kitchen and the toilets

03 Going Over the Reviews

.  A few more steps towards the back of the boat there is the buffet on the right and a bar on the left, with tables and benches lining the back of the deck.  Past the captain's cabin there's a sun deck for anyone who wants to catch a few rays on the journeys to and from the dive site.
After the boat orientation by one of the instructors we tucked into a breakfast of bacon, eggs, bread and cheese and you could also choose from cereals and yoghurts, and the tea and coffee were free-flowing.  After breakfast Stefan took us down to assemble our diving gear and then he gave us a dive orientation in which he outlined the dive site and the skills we would be demonstrating.
An hour and a half after we set off we arrived at the island of Koh Racha Yai which is ideal for beginners as the water is not too deep, there are sandy areas where you can perform skills and the currents are weak.  We put on our gear and entered the water by the giant stride method which we had learned the previous day, inflated our BCD's and we were floating in the deliciously warm water of the Andaman Sea :)
Even before we went below the surface I took a peak through my mask and saw that we were surrounded by an enormous variety and number of fish - I was in heaven!  But no time to just hang around enjoying the view - we had skills to perform!  We deflated our BCD's and for the first time descended into open water

04 Wetsuit!

.  It was a thrill to look up and see the surface of the water several metres overhead.  We descended to the bottom and began to go slowly, carefully and thoroughly over the skills until Stefan was satisfied that we had mastered them.  When we got back onto the boat we changed our air cylinders ready for the second dive.
Our first dive was to a depth of 9.4m and lasted 42 minutes - I know because Stefan's dive computer recorded the data and we transferred it later into the dive log book which every diver keeps.  This qualification allows us to dive to a depth of 18m which is plenty for the purposes of the recreational diver.
After the dive it was time for a delicious lunch of chicken schnitzel and french fries (it's a German company after all!) as well as a Thai vegetable dish and salad.  Then we had to show that we can tread water for ten minutes without the aid of any gear, followed by checking our homework.
Next was Open Water Dive 2, again for the purpose of demonstrating skills.  We did have a little time to look around at the end...  I hadn't quite sussed the buoyancy thing and at one point I got so engrossed in looking at something at the bottom that I didn't notice myself sinking rapidly towards the coral.  Rather than simply swimming upwards, my instinct was to inflate my BCD, a big no-no because you rise rapidly towards the surface.  AD and Stefan tried to hold me down but found themselves being pushed upwards with me.  Luckily the depth we were at was not sufficient to cause the bends, which is when you rise to the surface so rapidly that the nitrogen which has built up in your body under pressure does not have time to dissipate and forms bubbles in your blood stream and tissues with serious medical implications.  But you learn from your mistakes, right?  I won't do that again

05 Diving Gear

!
Once again the dive was to a depth of 9.4m and lasted 44 minutes which was difficult to believe, it had flown by!  On the journey back we ate fruit and reviewed the day's events with Stefan.  We arrived back at the hostel tired but once again we had homework to do and procedures to memorise. 
Day 3 was our final classroom/pool day, only this time we did the pool work in the morning and the classroom work in the afternoon.  I would have preferred it the other way round as the pool work was fairly strenuous and we had a fifty-question multiple choice exam at the end of the classroom session.  We had to pass with a minimum of 75% and I was hoping against hope that I would achieve it as the thought of repeating the exam was unbearable!  I passed with 88% and AD (the swot) got 92% :)
The most difficult element to grasp was the use of the Recreational Dive Planner (RDP) which is a table used to calculate how much surface time is necessary between dives for the nitrogen in the body to dissipate, as well as the maximum allowable dive time at any given depth.  It's a complicated table, the use of which has been superceded by dive computers.  However, a beginner must master the use of the table because of the possibility of not owning a computer or in the event of a computer failure.  That really did make my brain ache but we got the hang of it eventually

06 The Training Pool

!
On the fourth and final day of the course we were picked up at 7.45am and once again taken to the Sea Bees office and then on to the Aragon, the Sea Bees second dive boat which is slightly smaller than the Excalibur and is almost brand new.  Again we had a boat orientation followed by breakfast and gear preparation, and again we went to Koh Racha Yai, although to a different bay this time.  Stefan gave us our dive orientation and we donned our gear just before arriving at the dive site.  That day the sea was much rougher and, as we had several surface skills to perform, the waves were quite something to contend with.  But as Stefan said, it was satisfying to know that we could perform the skills under those conditions.
Stefan planned the two dives so that we would perform as many of the skills as possible during Dive 3 in order to leave as much free time for Dive 4 as possible.  By this time we had much better control of our buoyancy and had mastered the important skill of staying close to your buddy.  At the end of Dive 4 we had twenty full minutes of pure pleasure exploring the reef and absorbing the sights.  Here is an (incomplete) list of the fish we saw - there were so many that it's difficult to remember them all, identified with the use of an identification book on the boat:
-Titan Trigger Fish
-Blue Streak Goby
-Great Barracuda
-Sea Goldie
-Yellowtailed Fusilier
-Yellowtail Clown Fish
-Emperor Angel Fish
-Schooling Banner Fish
-Threadfin Butterfly Fish
-Bicolour Parrot Fish
-Bridlet Parrot Fish
-Longfin Bat Fish
-Trumpet Fish (three types)
-Moorish Idol
-Checkerboard Wrasse
-Bicolour Cleaner Wrasse
-Napoleon Wrasse
-Porcupine Fish
-Sealfaced Puffer Fish
-Sixbar Wrasse
-Clown Surgeon Fish
-Powder Blue Surgeon Fish
-Redbreast Wrasse
-Bignose Unicorn Fish
-Giant Moray Eel (which we saw swimming around, which is unusual - you usually see them peeking out from the coral - a sight which Stefan told us he had only seen once or twice in his five-year diving career)
(At lunch time we heard a knock on the window of the sun deck where we were having a rest, and thought that it was time to prepare for the next dive, but in fact it was Stefan drawing our attention to the dolphins which were swimming very close to the boat - what a thrill!)
Dive 3 lasted 30 minutes to a depth of 8.5m and Dive 4 was 36 minutes to a depth of 14.6m

07 The Excalibur II

.  Unfortunately AD ran low on air before I did, we could have stayed under for another twenty minutes according to the maximum time allowed for the dive.
On the journey back we went over the final paperwork with Stefan, he congratulated us on achieving the PADI Open Water Diver qualification and gave us our temporary PADI cards (the permanent cards will come later in the post).  It was a great sense of achievement and we would not have undertaken the course if it hadn't been for the MHMF.
We plan to use the qualification as much as possible during this world tour.  We need to consolidate our skills and build up our diving profiles.  Sea Bees organise recreational dives and we now have lifetime free usage of their equipment.  This Sunday we are hoping to go on their trip to the nearby island of Koh Phi Phi (where the film The Beach was shot).  We are told that the diving is spectacular there, you do four dives with a guide and that includes one night dive which should be a very different experience with nocturnal wildlife and the coral extending its polyps to feed.
If you are impressed with our achievement please do sponsor us - you can do that by following the link on the home page of www.miriam-hyman.com to our sponsorship page on the ORBIS website - thank you :)
I am going to try to post some photos to accompany this report but if it doesn't work I'll do it when I get to Australia.  I took my (very cheap) underwater camera on the last dive but it leaked.  I will still have the film developed in case any photos do come out but I suspect they won't...
As always, it's great to hear from you and thanks for your sponsorship
xesther & AD

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08 Boat Orientation

09 First Open Water Dive

10 Receiving Our PADI Cards

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