PADI Open Water
Fort Bovisand, near Plymouth, UK. The view of the harbour was taken from N50.33762 W4.12697.
We woke up today with sore heads and bodies but at least as PADI Open Water divers. There's lots of reasons to become divers but in our case it seems that several of the places we're going to demand to be looked at underwater, more so than snorkeling allows.
Our heroes at Diver
Training Services have done their bit to get us qualified with the
final stint being the Open Water dives in the harbour here
at Fort Bovisand. In the picture you
can see a pale quarter circle at the lower left which is where we
initially splashed into the water (subsequent dives started from some
steps just to the left of the RIB -- which is hiding on the left edge
of the picture above the blue crane and below the white mast) and
found that none of us could sink due to unnecessary breath holding.
Once even more heavily weighted, ascents and descents were normally
around the yellow buoy in the middle of the shot just beyond the far
wall (with rather hard work made of the surface swims to and from that
point). Finally, the reef (rocks!) in the middle right of the shot
was teeming with life which was quite surprising to us. The two rocks
are close but separate and you can merrily swim between them
underwater.
After much earnest teaching from DTS including the evils of drinking and smoking before diving it came as a pleasant surprise to find them all on the Thursday (pre-dive) evening getting completely pissed in the bar. Rumours spread about how drunk Cliff had got during the next day even though he was seen speeding across the Sound before we'd finished breakfast. The next evening revealed how a local diver's (Ray Ives) homebrew wine had kept him busy 'til a quarter to five in the morning followed by as much sleep as possible following course duties.
Being a bit too inquisitive about this apparent contradiction (and surely a poor example to the students) resulted in a solid lecture on how the key to it all is hydration, as we supped Guiness. I left them in the bar at half one in the morning...
Copyright 2002 Ian Fitchet. All rights reserved.