Adventure dive: wreck

Now we're qualified the group all elect to go on an adventure dive – the first dive towards our advanced course. We stick in our buddy pairs with the same instructor, but all get into the water together. Which is great until Bob pushes my head underwater in an attempt to drown me (not sure PADI would approve! LOL). What a wag eh!

The surface swim seems quite long and the descent is pretty uncomfortable. Not scary but it seems to take ages before we get down the line to the the wreck at 18m. It's a lot colder down here and darker (obviously) but it's so amazing to get buoyant and swim round, into and over the sunken tug boat. We see large perch in the wheelhouse and the other guys from the course and all too soon I'm below 100 bar and we are heading back to the line.

The ascent goes ok until the others ascend behind us, and their air bubbles make going up the line totally discombobulating (love that word. Think giant washing machine. Or jacuzzi). It's the strangest feeling and I definitely don't like it. At the 5m safety stop I somehow lose buoyancy control and I'm on a one way ticket to the surface :-(

Not the way I wanted to end my first adventure dive, but I forgot to dump air using the valve so can't slow myself down. No physical harm done... just a little dented pride! Bobbing about at the surface trying to look nonchalant and in control while waiting for the rest of the group to ascend is not a good look... the last think I need is for anyone to send out the boat to a lone diver surfacing on their own, I'd never live it down. So I put my snorkel in and get closer the the buoy and watch the others ascend and pretend that was my ascent plan all along!

And that's it! The end of the most physically and mentally challenging thing I've done in years (since my mining geology days in the 1990s as a fresh-faced student probably), but I've had the best time. Met heaps of brilliant new people and hopefully hooked up with a club which I can look forward to many more exciting dives with in the future.

Thanks to Vinnie, Bob, Mark and James, Ian and Phil.... Duncan and Chrissie, Claire, Cheryl, Sue and everyone else who made this whole course and weekend such great fun and reassured me along the way that it was all possible......... and that's my Gwyneth Paltrow moment over and done with :-)

Finally, big love to Dan and Lynne (see pic above)........ roll on Costa Rica!!!!!!!! xxxxxx