More of the PADI
Trip Start
Jan 2003
1
103
200
Trip End
Dec 2003
Airlie Beach (PADI),
Australia
Friday, July 4, 2003
The first two dives of my scuba 'career' and everything went swimmingly (excuse the pun). The first was hugely frustrating due to another student's inability to recall anything he had learned in the previous two days. Managing your buoyancy is obviously essential to diving and for the first 25 minutes or so this guy was occasionally crawling along the ocean's floor but mainly just floating on the surface. When the instructor tired of diverting all his attention to this thing 12 metres above the rest of us, he signalled for us all to ascend. Predictably as we all rose, something large and flailing uncontrollably plummetted past us depositing itself amidst the coral that had been there for thousands of years. Unfortunately, after Jim's visit, it's going to take another millennium to restore itself to its former glory.
The second dive was a bit more prodcutive (Jim dropped out citing imaginary visual poblems - the rest of us were just grateful that he had done what we considered to be the decent thing) although we did have to perform some of the skills we'd learned in the pool. There is however something much more agreeable about 'fin-pivoting' or 'mask-partial-flooding' in the middle of thousands of fish rather than with nothing to look at. Annoyingly due to high winds and cloud cover the visibiliy wasn't great and the site was where we had done our try dive but it was still thoroughly enjoyable. More than halfway through and I can't believe we've taken as long as this to do our course.
Day 152 - Airlie Beach
One of the most frustrating days of my life. Up early to get picked up for what would hopefully have been 'Graduation Day' and we found driving rain and gale-force winds. Everything was soaked in the campsite but to top it all off, the boat was cancelled. The forecast fro tomorrow isn't for much better either. It feels like we're destined never to complete the course.
