3 Dives in a day! I'm goosed

After our open water certification yesterday it's a must we see the video of us diving in a bar with a few beers with our instuctors and camera lady.

It was early evening and our first dive of the day wasn't until the afternoon the following day so we had a few more beers on the beach where the bar had a fire show and half price beer (result).

The fire show wasn't bad and thanks to Sophie I now use the manual settings on my camera so got some good pictures.





 

 

After the nights fun we get a lie in to recover. Some dinner and a couple of smoothies and its time to start our open water advanced.

 

Dive 5                        Mango Bay                               Dive time 40mins

 

Its back to the sandy sea bed of Mango Bay so that we can complete our Navigation skills tests. The drills go well so we have time to swim to the reef. On the way back we are circled by a huge school of fish. Its a totally amasing experience. Dive 5 done and dusted its back to the boat for a snack and our surface break.

 

Dive 6                     Twins                                           Dive time 41mins

 

Having completed our Navigation skills tests on dive 5 its now time for our Buoyancy skills tests. This includes finn pivots (you lie on the sea bed and when you breath in the top half of your body swings up while your fins stay put and when you breath out you go back down). Its sounds easy until you try it. We then move onto hovering and my favorite test the invert. This is when a knife is stuck in the sand with just the handle showing and you have to manouver your body so that you head is facing the sea bed and your feet are pointing towards the sky. You then breath out gently so you slowly decend in the same position so that the handle pushes the button on the regulator (the mouthpiece you breath through. Its then time for the inverted hover. Its takes a while to get used to being what would be upside down in air, but its great fun and a really handy skill to learn for looking at and getting close to coral. We then have time to manover our way around a man made course of hoops and obsticals. Time to get back to shore and get some food before dive 7.

 

Dive 7 (Night Dive)      White Rock                         Dive time 42 mins

 

For our 3rd dive of the day its time to hit a dive site at night. All geared up and torches on we jump in and make our way to the bottom. All the skills we used in dive 6 really come in handy as we follow our instructor Neal around the reef. We get to see some stingray , hermit crabs, but just miss out on seeing the turtle due to another dive group pushing in. Neal isn't happy with them and i'm sure he will be having words with them back on land. The best bit of the dive was when we sat on the botton and covered the torches so we were sat in the dark you can then activate the luminessance (sorry for the spelling) in the water. The only way I can descibe it is like having a firefly show. Nobody whats to come up but our time is done. Back to base for some more food and a early night as we are up early tomorrow for what should be the last two dives of our advanced open water course. I get to play with a underwater camera tomorrow aswell so I should be able to get some pictures on here.