Dives 3 & 4  –  The visibility is brilliant  today and and our first stop was ‘White Rock’

After overseeing the students set up their equipment, Laura did the briefing.  Tom, who was a bit freaked yesterday decided that he wanted to have another go and jumped in with Laura. I would have thought that with the visibility being so good that it would have helped with his feeling of claustrophobia  ..but as soon as he popped his head in the water to look down, he was sure he didnt want to continue.  I really take my hat off to him as he really tried but it just wasn’t to be.

Once in the water there was an abundance of fish, students seemed to have improved no end on their buoyancy and completed all the required skills without any problems at all. Everyone came up with massive smiles on their faces and said the dive was amazing.

Dive 4 – I briefed the students, only a couple of skills to complete, mask removal and a hover.
Conditions were good and the students kept in their buddy teams really well.   The rest of the dive was just a leisurely jaunt around ‘Twins’ which was most enjoyable.
Back on the boat,  we filled in log books and the students were really happy to have completed the course of which nearly all of them signed up for their advanced.

Later in the afternoon after I’d completed all the paper work for the students temporary cards, I met Alex, the chap who freaked in the confined session and spent an hour or so in the sea, just trying to get him comfortable breathing for long periods underwater.  Eventually he felt comfortable to do the confined skills session in pool which took me over an hour to do but at least he was feeling more confident within himself.   Hopefully he’ll join another group on the their dives 1 & 2.

That evening we popped back home for an hours sleep, showered and then went to Dirty Nellys for the students video which was really good.  After the video we hoped on the bike and headed to ‘Vibe’ for a bbq and  charity auction for one of the instructors who’d had a motorcyle accident.

We left around 11 as we were both pretty shattered…

With the Final exam completed and dive bags ready we all headed out for dive 1, ‘Mango Bay’.  With everyone in the water we did a short surface swim into the shallows where we made our descent.  One guy really didn’t feel comfortable and on our descent, kept on bolting to the surface after a short chat he slowly came down and joined the rest of the group which were in the shallow doing skills.

For the students first dive, they did pretty well, it’s really hard to find your buoyancy especially when you are used to immediate reactions. The chap who bolted on the first dive decided not to join us on the 2nd dive at ‘Japaneze Gardens’ and stayed on the boat.
The rest of the students had a really good dive and completed the necessary skills ..even from dive one you can see an improvement.

Back on the boat we filled in log books and discussed fish that we’d seen.

Tomorrow, we’re meeting at 7am for the early morning boat

Yesterday I started team teaching my 2nd Open Water Course with Laura.   Due to the influx of people from the Full Moon party on Koh Phangang its super busy with just under 40 new students starting their Open Water.  As Crystal have only 4 classrooms and students were bundled together for the acacdemics portion of the course and then split into groups of 8 for the confined/open water section of the course.

I was responsible for reviewing chapter 3 with the students after they’d watched the video.  I was pretty nervous as I’d not stood up infront of a large group for quite some time but it went pretty well considering it had been a long day and I could tell the students were tired.

Today the students met at 9am watched & completed the last 2 chapters of the Open Water Manual they were then split into small groups of 8, ready for the confined water in the afternoon.

After 5 equipment set ups we finally got in the pool.  Laura and I took it in turn to demonstrate skills and all was going well until one of the chaps decided that he couldn’t continue as he felt dizzy, couldnt get his head around breathing underwater and sat by the pool for the rest of the session just breathing through the regulator. 
Anyway, a few hours later, the remaining 7 students had completed their confined water section.
Tomorrow they got their final exam and Open water dives 1 & 2 which I could tell they were very excited about.

Jen
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