30th. December 2013 – 17:30: Rookie finds his sea-legs

The sun was setting, its golden light cradled the surface of the pool where it all started so tenuously three days ago. Only now, it trickled peacefully onto the faces of those that remained leisurely paddling their feet in their reflection.

More paperwork, a photograph and that was all there was to it; time to savour the moment and understand that you are now a member of that rare species; discontent to walk among the ranks on terra firma, we had returned to the sea as our ancestors did, to live, if for a brief moment, amongst creatures of the depths.

A cliché perhaps, but you hope that you will be fortunate enough to bask in the magnificence of the last remaining wilderness within the limits of what the technology will permit. You want to stay longer, go deeper, hone your skills to perfection and push farther into where few have dared, but you here that whisper over your shoulder from the past:

At Delphi it roars

“Know thyself” and “thy limit”

But I speak fish now

30th. December 2013 – 16:30: Ode to Question 42.

The ocean as your syllabus, three days of battle was to be settled by the pen as it now rolled like thunder across the pages of the final exam, vague, random, wet and devastating, enumerating your shipwrecked and sequestrated misfortune with every answer that emanated from a scattered and troubled brain, dripping with a fear that never dies, even with experience. Last night's cram was now a forgotten fugacity.

After two hours of trapped creativity, stripped of all imagination, you finally lean back in your seat, gnashing your teeth. You see your last answers jump out screaming at you, then exhaling in a sigh. You know that you've made a mistake in question 42. Will that be the question that you need to get across the line?

Your instructor marks your exam. At question 42 an eyebrow raises, terrorising your heart which leaps against your chest. Another eyebrow pointing skyward. "Hmm! you got question 45....right, nobody gets that one". Stay of execution eminent. He reaches for his calculator; this can't be good. What 88%? Why not 100%? That's what I got for the last test. Oh! Question 42. Now if I were sitting on the pavement at the side of the road at Candidasa instead of a chair beside the pool...

30th. December 2013 – 12:30: Roll over Archimedes.

It’s quite simple in theory. According to Archimedes:

“Any object, wholly or partially immersed in a fluid, is buoyed up

by a force equal to the weight of the fluid displaced by the object.”

But before we can say "Eureka" and go diving it gets a bit more complex. Neutral buoyancy is not just about Archimedes’ principle alone because his physics only applies once the “body” either sinks fully to the bottom or is on the surface; which is exactly not where a diver wants to be.

So in fact for the object (the diver) to be neutrally buoyant, it has to be expressed as:

Mass x the force of gravity =  mass density of the fluid x volume displaced by the body actually in contact with the fluid  x the force of gravity = 0

Now if that’s not an eyeful then imaging what it must be like to try to control it in 9 metres of sea-water, little to no visibility and in the face of a current .

Down we went none-the-less. The focus on this dive was to concentrate on the one skill that we needed to control but would take a lifetime to master – neutral buoyancy. It was here that we saw yet again the value not just an instructor but that of a true master. The difference is that instructors teach the science of diving; masters take it to a whole new level where it is no longer a science but an art form. Even though I had seen it before, I watched the demonstration mesmerised and somewhat envious of how easy it all seemed.

Then it was my turn. With the memory of what I had just witnessed fresh in my head, I knelt on the sea-bed. Because of the weights I was carrying, I was negatively buoyant. I filled my lungs to capacity – nothing happened. I pumped a tiny bit of air into my BCD – nothing; a bit more – nothing. A tiny bit more and there it was: my knee lifted off the sea-bed. I filled my lungs to capacity. Too much, I was rising too fast. I exhaled and sank back down. A tiny bit more air in the BCD and shallower breathing did the trick. I got it to a point where I could control my rising and falling just by the amount that I was filling and emptying my lungs with. Mastering how much air you breathed in and out for the given conditions in order to remain suspended in the water; neither rising and falling is what the complex formula is all about.

The next step was to do the same thing but in the horizontal position. Enter, stage left, the fin pivot. Again a master stroke: my instructor noticed that with so much weight tied to my waist, it was almost impossible to remain horizontal as the weight was distributed unevenly. He instructed me to move the weights higher up to just below my rib-cage. Problem solved.

For a stroke of pure genius:  our instructor wanted to reinforce the fact that we did not need to keep fiddling with pumping air into or letting air out of the BCD to manage neutral buoyancy. You could achieve the same thing by breathing alone. After all, he told us on the surface, the lungs had a capacity of seven litres of air whereas the BCD, for the purposes of neutral buoyancy has just one.

To demonstrate the point, he exhaled, removed a weight that he had stored in his BCD and placed it on the sea-bed. Normally that would automatically result in positive buoyancy as soon as he breathed in. Quite the contrary; purely by controlling his breathing he remained perfectly neutrally buoyant. He then got us to do the same.  Initially, the moment I removed a weight, I started to rise. Soon however, I got the point. With shallower breathing I was able to not only maintain neutral buoyancy but also to rise and fall at will purely by controlling the amount of air that was going in and out of my lungs. The “secret” was that you should never have to fill your lungs to capacity just to get positively buoyant. Nor should you have to totally empty your lungs to go the other way. It is in shallower breathing that you ride the fine line that we know is neutrality.

What a moment that was and what was more, it was a very liberating experience. The dive became more enjoyable and closer to what the sport is all about when you did not have to concern yourself with the technology.

Once we were back on the surface, we practiced removal and replacement of the BCD and everything attached to it and then it was back on the boat for the last time in the course.

Here’s the Dive profile for the day:

29th. December 2013 – 16:30: Shark?

At about 9 meters into our slow ascent towards the surface, I was, as usual, preoccupied with buoyancy. Our instructor had gone on ahead, leading the way out. My buddy was about 2 meters above me and to my left. I looked up and signaled to him to come back down as he was too high, when I could see a shadow cover him.

I looked for the source of the shadow as it moved forward and saw the bottom of a broad mouth of what I first though was a Manta-ray. As the shadow lengthened so did the image. It became clear from the size of the image and that distinctive dorsal fin, that it was a shark and a large one at that. My signal to my buddy became more urgent and included pointing to the shark above his head. He looked up, saw what it was.

Before he had time to react, the shark turned its head and I could have sworn that I caught its eye. When it turned I could see its side. More importantly, I could not see a clearly defined mechanosensory lateral line system, so distinct on more aggressive species of shark. Instead I noticed the dot pattern that identified this creature as a Whale Shark (Rhinocodon typus):

The fact that it was only around 4 meters in length concerned me. I thought for a moment that if this was the baby, then where was its mother? I learned later that Whale Sharks are solitary creatures and leave their mothers at quite an early age. Its curiosity satisfied and as quickly as we had seen it, the Whale Shark drifted effortlessly out of sight.

At the time, we were the only ones left underwater. Everybody else was on the shore. All they saw was the dorsal fin on the surface. When we reached the shore, they told us that they knew that four of had gone down and were wondering how many of us would surface.

Later, we learned that Whale Shark sightings were extremely rare. No recreational diver at the site that day had ever seen one in its natural habitat. Our instructor said that he had only seen one after about 1000 dives. Our assistant instructor said that it was high on her must see list and she could now tick it off.

The day was not, after-all, a total failure. We had seen the worlds largest fish, as up-close and as personal as one could ever get. Dewa Baruna had indeed smiled upon us.

After the drama of the day, the dive profile seemed rather uninspired; but here it is anyway:

30th. December 2013 – 10:00: Go West young man.

We were back at Dog’s Point for our final day and assessment. Getting there and down to 8 meters was routine and textbook. Then it was straight to business. The focus was on navigation. Visibility was poor, so conditions were ideal for the task.

Our instructor pointed to our heading. Mine was 5 degrees off West. I set my compass, aligned the lubber and headed out from the anchor point. When I reached 50 metres out from where I started, there was a tap on my shoulder to turn around.

When I did, I could see absolutely nothing ahead of me but my compass strapped to my wrist. With visibility so poor and trusting nothing but the theory, I set a reciprocal bearing and headed back. I felt as though I was alone but knew that my instructor was there as always. The theory turned out to be right. Now why did that not surprise me? The anchor rope loomed out of the fog and I touched the exact point that I had left on the journey outward. 

As always there was that familiar hand-shake from my instructor; another task assessed; navigation passed. Time to surface.

29th. December 2013 – 13:30: The agony of failure.

There are some who go through their training with the effortlessness of gods. I think we call these rare specimens of humanity: “naturals”. Others, no less rare, read a book, sometimes only once and it all makes sense so they don’t have to even try. I think we call them nerds. For the more common omega types like me, learning is just hard work.

The physics of buoyancy is common knowledge. The instructors have patiently explained and demonstrated it so many times and it looks so easy when they do. Yet, it all falls apart when it’s your turn to demonstrate that you have acquired the skill. You start to blame everything from the weights locked onto your weight-belt, to the capacity of your lungs to your BCD.

When you breathe in you rise too high and when you breathe out you find yourself flat on your face at the bottom of the sea before you recall that you have to breathe in again. You try to remember your confined water training but only this time there is the current to contend with, which rolls you around, carelessly tossing you like a sponge.  You notice your instructor with envy: calm before you, neither rising nor falling, as though sitting in an armchair, watching you as though you were in a fish-tank struggling to control that elusive neutral buoyancy. Times up, time to surface; even STELLA has abandoned you.

At the heart of all agony that has to be endured, the de-brief exposed a painful but essential truth that needed to be acknowledged especially when the critique came from a person in a far more objective position to assess that the final practical assessments were not going to happen at Tulamben that day and that we would have to burn our L plate engines for a little longer than planned.

Thus decided, the consensus was that we just enjoy ourselves on the second and last dive for the day. It was at that point I understood how good our instructor was. This was not the first time that he had noticed that we were just not getting it. On previous occasions I had noticed that he would take us on a little tour to appreciate why it was that we took up diving in the first place. We would then return to the task with a fresher approach and pass the assessment with flying colours. It was a mark of a true teacher.

This being such an occasion, we followed our instructor in a slow arc down towards the stern of the USAT Liberty.

On the way we chanced upon a Surgeonfish (Acanthuridae):

the perennial Clownfish (Anemonefish):

and of course, what dive would be complete without a school of Blue Chromis (Chromis cyanea):

Soon, the rudder of the wreck loomed ahead of us, like a large, flat reverse D shaped sculpture, fresh out of Picasso’s studio, sticking out of the stern of the now quiet ship. As we went past the rudder, the bottom of the sea disappeared beneath us, giving way to a darker blue that faded into nothingness. Commander Longbottom would have been proud of where we stood. My depth gauge said 18.5 meters. For a nanosecond it dawned on me that I had subconsciously attained neutral buoyancy. The feeling was quite euphoric because weightlessness feels as though all there is to you as a person was a sort of mindlessness because the subconscious has subordinated the mundane tasks necessary to sustain your physical self. Breathing under water was no less natural than breathing on land. It was too late to savour the moment as it was time to return to the surface. Without knowing it we had passed another assessment of going down to the maximum allowable depth for the course. Therein lies the true value of a great instructor; running the practical components of a course without you even knowing that that was what you were in fact doing.

29th. December 2013 – 11:00: Cross Legged on the side of the road.

The day started in quite the same way as the previous two; ground-hog like and uneventful. What was different was that we were on the way to a dive at the USS Liberty in Tulamben on the East coast of Bali.

Our instructor had advised that our assessment on the theory based on Chapter 4 was going to need to be conducted either on the way to the dive site or as soon as we got there  because without successfully completing the assessment, we could not start the dive. This in turn was because Chapter 4 was all about dive planning; in particular the RDP. The van pulled over into a service station and we elected to do the assessment right there and then.

Never in a million years and all the exams I have taken, did I ever imagine that I would find myself sitting cross-legged on the side of the road doing what I considered, at the time to be the most important theory test I have ever undertaken. Yet there I was. Note to self and readers: The next time you want to get a hundred percent on an assessment, insist on taking the test cross-legged on the pavement on the side of the road.

28th. December 2013 - 10:00: Baruna introduces Master Basho Matsuo to the Book of Kings.

And it came to pass at the seventh time,

that he said, Behold,

there ariseth a little cloud out of the sea,

like a man's hand.

And he said, Go up, say unto Ahab,

Prepare thy chariot,

and get thee down, that the rain stop thee not.

[1 Kings 18:44]

Without much fanfare, we were on the boat and sailed out to the buoy at Dog's Point, Sanur, Bali, Indonesia:

Dog's Point, Sanur, Bali, Indonesia

As at the pool yesterday, we were briefed, kitted up and completed our pre-dive checks just as the boat anchored over Dog's Point in Sanur Harbour. In the moments of silence that followed, I could hear the the distant roar of the sea as it broke across a reef about two kilometres away towards the east on either side of the shipping channel in which the boat was anchored.

Unlike the giant stride entry at the pool, our entry was a classic backward roll off the boat, followed by a textbook five point descent into Dog’s Point:

An old silent pond...

A frog jumps into the pond,

splash! silent again.

[Master Basho Matsuo (1600)]

For our first dive, our instructor had taken care of the Dive Profile, which left us free to concentrate on our first open water dives and the skills we needed to acquire and be assessed on.

The five point descent SORTED, with the aid of an anchor rope I descended after my buddy in a storm of his bubbles roaring past me, going the other way. At around 5 meters, we levelled off, left our tether on a slow descent towards the bottom. We had reached a point of no return from our now inevitable destiny.

On the way down we drifted past a preoccupied Lionfish (Pterois):

Lionfish (Pterois)

 , complete with acetylcholine safely tucked away in those conspicuous but thankfully relaxed pectoral fins. Soon, a school of Spadefish (Chaetodipterus):

Spadefish (Chaetodipterus)

muscled in on the act and moved as one darting here and there. Like a floating stick a horizontally challenged but curious Trumpetfish (Aulostomus maculatus):

Trumpetfish (Aulostomus maculatus)

took an interest in my mask. The last fish we saw before we got down to business on the sea-bed was a Spotted Sweetlips (Plectorhinchus_chaetodonoides):

Spadefish (Chaetodipterus)

I could have sworn that it had a smirk on those sweet lips because it had seen what was to happen next all too often.

One on the bottom, with a sea-snake for company we commenced what we came here to do. No different to the exercises in the pool, we practised and were assessed in mask and regulator fumbling. Only this time it was in salt water and against a slight current. Then STELLA called and we went top-side.

On the surface we practised and were assessed in addressing diver cramp and diver towing which is really harder to do than first meets the eye. Then it was removal of weight belt and BCD in the water and before we knew it we were back on the boat.

Our second dive took us straight down to business. Buoyancy control, secondary regulator breathing and CESA and we were done for the day.

For those interested in our numbers, here’s the dive profile:

Dive Profile: 28/12/2013

28th. December 2013 - 06:30: Rain, sun, sand, sea and everything in between.

Rain

Rain - cancelled lesson?

If we do go diving now

We will all get wet

I have always been fascinated by Haiku. It seems to be the perfect medium of expression for a diver. Technically succinct on one level but at a deeper level it conveys so much more. It particularly Haiku speaks to one’s response to nature, which, in the sea, you cannot help but encounter.

I waited at the nominated bus-stop. The bus arrived as usual, only this time there was another passenger already in the front seat. Noor was from Malaysia, and had completed his dive-masters. Although he could easily have done so, he had no desire to take up diving professionally; a facet about divers that seemed quite common. He was purely interested in pushing the boundaries of his limitations with both feet planted firmly in mid-air. It seemed to me the limitations that he was testing were physical. I’m not sure whether he intended to reveal as much but his motives began to emerge from our conversation. Tragically his partner was afflicted by what seemed to be a terminal illness. They had both agreed that living to work was not the way forward. Working to live was a better approach. So they had put work on the back-burner and gone after what really mattered.

We reached the dive school and parted company as he was off diving at Nusa Penida and I donned my L-Plates.

To kick-start the white matter, it was coffee and class room to watch the fourth and fifth videos which corresponded to the fourth and fifth chapters in the course manual. These to me, were by far the most important sections in the whole course, mainly because it was all about Dive Planning; specifically the RDP.

That behind us, we postponed the theory assessment to the next morning as we needed to get out to Dog’s Point, Sanur as soon as possible because the tide charts determined our dive window.

27th. December 2013 – 17:00: What went down must come up.

It is a cliché to say that what goes up must come down, it is equally true if not also clichéd to acknowledge that what goes down must come up. Don’t just take my word for it, just ask STELA, AKA STELLA without whom the five point ascent would be impossible to remember if not achieve.

Again I won’t bore you with what the acronym stands for. For that, refer again to:

<Scuba Diving Acronyms>

Depending on whether you accept that 'L' stands for 'look' AND 'listen', then 5 characters in the acronym match the 5 points that need to be noted when ascending. That said, as acronyms goes, there are 2 'L's in look and listen when last I checked. So the acronym really should be STELLA. The question therefore should be, is this actually a six point ascent and has the math not as yet been SORTED?

If we go by the same argument as the five point descent (refer to my post on the five point descent) and drop the 'T' and 'A', we are left with the essential truth about the now four point ascent and that is, after you have gotten all the skills SORTED and even though you've turned in a less than STELLA but passable performance in the sand-pit, you emerge from the water without the need for a hard SELL on scuba diving as it would be a bit like preaching to the already baptized.

So you ask yourself why you did it. Surely not for its own sake; as mind blowing as that may be. I think that it is because you begin to understand what it is about human nature and yourself that wants to forever push at the boundaries of your own identity. You start to understand that there is something more to it when you know that you don’t really have to or indeed need to rip your mask off underwater, then learn how to put it back on and clear it, yet against all intuition you did precisely that. You don't really have to or need to know what it feels like to run out of air in the middle of breathing in and have to depend on your buddy to assist. Yet against all logic you did it. You don’t have to know what it feels like to sip the dregs of a free flowing second stage, yet against all common sense, you did it. In fact, you don't need to do any of these things to live a full and valuable life. Yet you did. Why? It's too simple to dismiss it as an egoistic adrenaline rush and leave it at that. Something more profound is happening I think. It is a journey into the self. Self improvement always exists just beyond the edges of the known self. Where you have never been before is where the thalamus operates. It is where risk and mitigation are the yin and yang of existence. I for one am glad I went there and returned to tell the tale in these humble pages.

You pass from sand-pit to the sea or, was that from the frying pan to the fire?

27th. December 2013 – 16:00: Soporific Yoga.

Buoyancy is the business end of scuba diving and has historically involved a cast of thousands all the way from Archimedes and Charles Darwin to my instructor. People (Tim Ecott for example) have written about it. NASA built the Sonny Carter Training Facility based on its concepts. All this technology was developed to emulate what a fish can do subconsciously with their swim bladder, which in evolutionary terms is uncannily closely related to, surprise surprise, mammalian lungs.

The Fin Pivot

Lying stretched prone and face down on the pool bottom, arms folded in front of you is not the most graceful position for a diver to find himself in but it is where buoyancy control starts. You take a small breath inwards to determine if your upper body rises off the bottom. If it doesn’t then you pump a tiny bit of air into the BCD, then breath in again. Surprisingly you find that your upper body rises off the bottom leaving the edge of your fins remain apparently anchored to the bottom; hence the term fin pivot. Breathe out and your upper body falls back down. After a bit of practise by just controlling your breathing you achieve a somewhat soporific state of weightlessness.

The Hover

Mastering the hover takes years but it starts right there in the pool. The principle is straightforward. Kneeling on the bottom, you are already negatively buoyant. If you breathe in and you start to rise slowly then you can probably become neutrally buoyant and maintain it by simply controlling your breathing. If you don’t rise off the bottom, then pump a little air into your BCD and breathe in again. If you start to rise off the bottom then you’ve nearly got it right. If not breathe out and repeat the process.

Once you start to rise off the bottom, then you can control your buoyancy by lung capacity alone and will not need to depend on the BCD.  Breathe in – rise, breathe out – fall.  How much you breathe in or out will determine by how much you rise and fall. True mastery of your breathing will get you to a point where you neither rise nor fall. That’s the art that takes years but it is mesmerizing to watch divers like my instructors who have.

For now, time to go topside.

27th. December 2013 – 15:00: The Bermuda Triangle.

The legitimate location for the Secondary Regulator AKA that bright yellow button looking thing is on your chest, somewhere within a triangle whose apex is at the suprasternal notch and the base is at the imaginary horizontal line joining the costal cartilage on either side of the base of the rib cage. The yellow hose leading to the first stage is routed under your right arm to streamline your profile while travelling. It is visible at any distance, even when visibility is non-existent. Visible that is, until you first need to use it.

There is a highly refined protocol for the use of this instrument of survival that hopefully would never need to be followed except in a drill:

• Your instructor shuts of the air at the first stage – check.
• You breathe a few times – check.
• You detect that there is no air-flow into your primary regulator – check.
• You signal to your buddy that you are out of air – check.
• You signal to your buddy that you would like to share air – check.
• Your buddy offers you his secondary regulator – check.
• You replace your useless regulator with your buddy’s secondary regulator – check.
• You breathe normally – check.
• You and your buddy end the dive, lock right forearms and ascend normally – check.

You get the drill, right up to the point when you run out of air for the first time.  You can see your buddy, you know where your buddy’s secondary should be, but that location is now a Bermuda Triangle and your buddy’s secondary is lost somewhere in that  space.  It’s at this point, somewhere between despair and mild panic, that you realize what the true value of your buddy is. Your buddy has done all the work for you. You are breathing a lung full of sweet lifesaving air in the space of, wait for it – six seconds.

27th. December 2013 – 11:30: Where's the sand from the sand-pit?

Ok, so you’re in the water. True it’s a sand-pit without sand.  You know how a baby feels when it has lost its pacifier. After much angst, the dummy, sorry second stage, is safely back in my mouth. Only now, I have to replace it with the snorkel mouth piece.  Time to spit the dummy. What next? The confined water skills of course.

Surface neutral buoyancy.

This is where my BFF and weight-belt lock horns. Like all battles, it was not 100% pure science.  The antagonists are big players:nature and science. Archimedes stepped into the bathtub; we stepped off perfectly good Terra firma. He noticed something; so did we. The only difference is that he noticed it first and it was ground-breaking science. To us rookies it was merely a quod erat demonstrandum derivative moment. Mercifully, the trade-off was that  we no longer had to run around in our birthday suits crying “Eureka”, which in dive speak is the same as yelling "Shark". An instant pool-side evacuation is guaranteed.

For now, I was content to play the pacifist and let BFF and weight-belt face each other off. As long as the surface of the pool was at eye-level and I could remain neutrally buoyant by merely holding my breath with a deflated (sic..defeated) BFF, I was happy to remain in the DMZ and let Archimedes do all the work. He’s going to win anyway.

The five point descent.

The human brain (at least mine that is) is a strange creature. When it was relaxed sitting pool-side, the instructions made total sense. Who could forget the word “SORTED”, which is the acronym for the five point descent? What it stood for was just as easy to remember.  Reader I refer you to:

<Scuba Diving Acronyms>

for the five point descent only. More of this later when it’s time to climb back up.

It all made sense, that is, until you actually hit the water. When you’re in the water, fiddling with your mask because a fly has gotten in somehow, buoyancy negative, regulator or snorkel not purged, water defying gravity and trickling up your nose, pool-side instruction started to make total nonsense.

Why was it called the five point descent when there are six letters in the acronym? Oh that’s right; you didn't need the ‘T’ because you’re “guaranteed” water-proof watch had stopped working so you can’t note the time. Ditch the ‘T’, five letters - that figures.  You were descending anyway that’s why it’s called the five point descent and not something else like the “six point swimming horizontally with a bunch of stuff strapped onto your body and a fly for a passenger”.  So you might as well drop the “D” because "descent" was too obvious.

What you were left with was "SORE". Yes that’s got to be right thinks I. That’s exactly how I felt. I’m sure my passenger Louie felt the same way too.

At least that’s what your brain was telling you. But hold on a second, were there not six letters? And what was the task associated the fifth letter? Wasn’t there something about: Elevate and Exhale mentioned in the good book? Oops, that’s two ‘E’s! Now, I was more confused. The acronym for the five point descent should really be “SORTEED”. Now where’s the dictionary when you needed one? This must be a typo in the PADI manual.  Too late, had to go with "SORTED" because I was actually descending.

Not quite text-book, you must understand, because I let way too much air out of BFF and it was too late to correct the obligatory but inevitable rookie thing. The fly has landed; with an ungraceful thump, at the bottom of the pool. Thankfully, I was still breathing. Perhaps there were letters missing off the end of the acronym that the instructor did mentioned but I didn’t pay attention to because I was too busy with equalizing. Oh dear one more letter for the five point descent. Nah... way too many ‘E’s in the acronym. If "SORTED" was good enough for PADI, it was good enough for me.

What I was too busy to have noticed was that Louie had decided abandon my mask, exit - stage up, skip the 101 class and move on to the five point ascent because he knew what was coming up next and I didn’t.

Clear your mask.

So that’s why Louie deserted his host.  The instructor pointed his index finger at my buddy and I. Then he held a stop signal, followed by pointing his index and middle finger at his eyes and then pointed to himself. So it began a textbook and flawless partial mask clearing demonstration followed by our attempt:

Step	What the Instructor did	What I did on my first attempt
1	Lift the bottom of the mask slightly	Lift the bottom of the mask as far as possible.
2	Let a little water into the mask to partially flood it.	You guessed it.
3	Re-seat the mask on your face	Got that right
4	Look up tilting your head back	Kept my head straight and rolled my eyeballs up into my skull.
5	Place a slight pressure on the mask above the eyelids.	Place a lot of pressure on one side of the mask above one eye.
6	Blow gently but continuously through your nose until you see all the water disappear from inside your mask.	Create a hurricane with your nose inside your mask. (Thankfully Louie didn’t hang around)
7	While doing all the above don’t forget to keep breathing through the second stage.	Say what?

Just when I thought that that was that, variants on the same theme manifested. There was the full mask flooding and clearing, mask removal and replacement and if that wasn't enough, swimming with your mask removed.

It was while holding my mask the furthest away from my head under water as it had ever been, I began to muse:

“Alas poor Yorick, I [thought] I knew him well...

he hath born me on his back a thousand times...”

I contemplated my reading on how high-tech this simple device really was. From the perspective of the exercises we had just been through, two things became patently clear.

The closer the mask lens is to your face, not only does your field of vision increase, but there is also a lower volume inside the mask. The lower this volume, the less water gets into your mask and as a result, the less water you have to clear. Low volume masks are typical of the ones that free divers use. I noticed that the mask my instructor was using was very similar. A low volume mask is however a double edged sword. It does not take much water to completely fill such a mask. For this reason low volume masks tend not to be suitable for inexperienced divers as they could be too preoccupied with clearing their mask more often than is really necessary. 

Whether or not the mask leaks water at all is dependent on the softness of the silicon composition around the skirt of the mask. The softer its composition, the more effectively it seals against your face. If this seal is effective, and it usually is with most modern masks, then a low volume mask makes perfect sense, even for scuba diving.

27th. December 2013 – 10:00: Scuba Diving 101.

Equipment and assembly.

Do you dear reader, have any idea how difficult it is for a somewhat overweight, old-ish, left-handed half blind (try finding the o-ring on the DIN without your glasses) dive rookie, to assemble diving gear intended for young, right handed 20/20 visioned divers? Needless to say, to start with, I got things back to front, inside out, top to bottom. It took me twice as long to get it right. Regardless, I can now do this with my eyes closed. Being half blind does have its advantage after all. Besides, it did make me realise how patient my instructors really were.

Donning the equipment.

Wetsuit

The theory says that it’s good to wear a tight-fitting wetsuit because under pressure, this  traps a thinner lay of water between it and your skin which is easier to keep warm. But dear oh dear! Use your imagination in regards to the worst case scenario of getting into one of these and you are watching a live unedited version of what I was doing. You know that you are starting off on the wrong foot when you try to step into the arm instead of a leg of a wetsuit that is already inside out. Worse, still, you don't realize it because the wetsuit fits better. I still have the scar where the end of a zip decided to embed itself into my heel. But I wear it with pride; sort of like a battle-scar.

Weight Belt

Added thus to an already overweight diver and you get close to my reality. It’s hard to sweep Archimedean Physics under the carpet:  The heavier you are, the more weight you are going to have on your weight-belt. This piece of humble equipment was definitely going to be my Achilles-heel.  To add insult to injury, the release buckle is on the left. It is also mandatory to hold the weight belt in your right hand on the loose end. I found out the hard way as to why, to a south-paw, this is nigh impossible. It was so heavy that the only way I could put it on was bending over. This is not a problem in itself, until you try standing up. Only then do you understand how Atlas felt until Hercules came along. Mental note: get younger and lose some weight.

BCD

Straight-forward and logical. Much more hi-tech than a weight-belt but it’s not too much of a problem on dry land. I’m sure BCD and I are going to be BFFs.

Mask and Snorkel

Not a big fan of spitting anywhere, even at the best of times and least of all into something that was going to be so close to your face. With a bit of luck, the instructor won’t spit in my mask to demonstrate the art of de-fogging. Oh! Oh! too late...Just kidding. Anyway, with a lot of practice, I’ll be doing this in my sleep no doubt.

Flippers

At the risk of being flippant, now I know why beached whales find it difficult to get back into the sea.  At least the whale was born with a pair. Why would any reasonable adult ever think of actually pinning flippers onto perfectly working feet? Even when you succeed, walking with them is like trying to walk about with your ankles tied with cable-ties. Besides I’ve always wanted to waddle like a duck.

The Buddy Check.

The acronym is BWRAF. I won’t spoil your fun by telling you what it means. Nor can I tell you how I remember the acronym without defaming a very famous Hollywood actor. Write to me if you want to know but please bring along one of those PADI indemnity forms. Hey, if it works for you, use it.

Jumping off, AKA Stepping Off.

Given that you have managed to shuffle to the edge of the pool without falling on your face and have not already exhausted yourself trying to get up; inflate BCD a little, left hand on weight belt, right hand on mask and regulator, step off the land for the first time. Now where’s that second stage gotten to? Thankfully by now you will know the theory behind regulator recovery and the Bermuda triangle where the secondary regulator is supposed to be located. You will by now be in a brave new world; time to put theory into practice.

27th. December 2013 - 08:30: ...or so the theory goes.

The first form we hit was the PADI indemnity/liability release/diver medical form.  From its content, it was clear to anyone, why this form was necessary. Without wishing to trivialise its significance, if you took it really seriously, you would immediately pack up your life, go back to your bubble, sorry armchair and not move a muscle ever again. That is to say, stop living. I read it from start to finish as carefully as I dared, answered the questions with brutal honesty, prayed to the gods and signed the form. My answers must have pleased the gods as I was permitted to start the course.

Nothing too vigorous to flex the grey matter to start with. Two videos that followed the course material, followed by some equally challenging multiple choice questions and then it was time to put the theory into practice...pool-side/ confined water.

You first have to prove that you can tread water and stay afloat. Ah! I was born for this. On my back, breathe in, hold your breath, stare at the sky, breathe out; nothing to it, except try not to fall asleep. If you find yourself doing this, then you are bored. So roll-over and tread water. Ten minutes over already?

Did I hear you say swim 200m? Any stroke? All those days of swimming in the Hilton pool; this is where it pays off. I lost count after 7 laps and just kept going until told to stop.

27th. December 2013 - 06:30 : It started simply enough...

Here I am, I finally made it. It’s 06:30, I’m sitting outside the Sari Sigara opposite the beach in Jimbaran, Bali. A father drifts by on his motorcycle, infant in hand. She is fast asleep, dreaming no doubt to the sound of the sea on the other side of the road.  I cannot believe that it’s the morning of the first day of my PADI Open Water Dive course (OWC).  Perhaps I’d better explain how I ended up here.

Wind back to late November 2013, work tells me that taking leave over the Christmas / New Year break is mandatory (with rare exceptions).  I’d planned to do the OWC in July 2014 but this changed things a bit. Over the next few days I had to organise a course, a plane fare, accommodation and ensure that my dive buddy was free to do the course. Oops, that also gives me less than a month to get a bit fit after a long winter’s hibernation: Not much I can do here so back to the hibernation comfort zone. Thankfully it all fell into place due in the main to impeccable organisation on the part of my partner.

The dive bus from Blue Season Bali, painted, you guessed it, complete with bubbles, pulled up exactly on time and we headed to the school. On the way we picked up a Dive Master from Canada who was taking two ex-pat Kenyans who were well on their way to becoming Dive Masters themselves, on an Adventure dive to Nusa Panida. In my excitement or rather trepidation of the day’s events to come, regrettably I forgot their names

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When I got to the dive school, it was a beehive of activity. Magically, the administrators seemed to create order from the apparent chaos. I think those waving clip-boards seemed to have something to do with it. Everyone seemed to gravitate naturally to where they should be.

I found my to-be dive-buddy and good friend G. I’ve no idea how our instructor found us. I think the large yellow L-Plate hanging around my neck made it rather obvious. Then again, perhaps it was more likely that he had seen so many of us that he could smell the cold sweat above the salty sea air. We were whisked away to start the course, without incident apart from me tripping as gracefully as I could over some diving equipment on the way to the classroom.