Certified!

After 6 weeks, it's over! This weekend was the final step to become dive certified, the open water tests. I had dreamed of doing these tests in the teal blue, 80 degree, crystal clear water of the Caribbean swarming with colorful fish. Instead, the reality of doing my open waters in Michigan turned out to be slightly different then my dream. The water color was goose crap green (yes, I believe that is a color at Lowes), the temp was 70's on the surface and high 40's at depth, and although fish were present, they weren't colorful. Oh and one other thing, instead of the possibility of finding sunken Spanish gold from a treasure ship in the Caribbean, I was treated to the junk at the bottom of Gull Lake, like an ice shack.

The open waters consist of two dives on both Saturday and Sunday. The first dive was a follow the leader type dive. Seven of us (the two troublemakers, the twelve year olds, did theirs the day before) headed out with the instructor in the middle of us. In theory, we would all swim shoulder to shoulder on a little tour of the lake four people on one side of the instructor, three on the other. I say in theory because that's almost what it was. Coming from the pool where it's possible to see the entire length of the pool, to the lake were things about four feet could be seen, six feet the object was a blob, and anything over eight feet is invisible was quite a change. One of the guys on my side couldn't clear his ears as we started our decent. He spent almost the whole dive on the surface trying to follow us trying to get down. I can't even say what was going on the other side because I only had visibility to the instructor. The instructor was "showing" us various things on the bottom, but out of the four or five things we were suppose to see, I think I only saw two and one was because I almost ran into the railroad crossing sign! Visibility was horrible, we did make it down to 47 feet and I it was cool to feel the temperature change at the various levels. I'm glad I had a thicker wet suit on then the one I used for the pool work!

The first dive ended at something they call the platform. It looks like nothing more then a dog cage on it's side. It's just a spot to stand without sinking to the bottom and stirring up the crud, as if the visibility could get much worse. At this point we rose to the surface. Come to find out we only have six of us. We spent about five minutes on the surface looking for any signs of the other guy. He happened to be the male half of one of the couples, the wife seemed a little stressed as the minutes passed and there was no sign of him. My thought was if he got stuck on something, there's almost no way anybody would find him until it was too late based on the visibility of the water. Turns out he lost sight of our group and ended up finding another group of divers doing their open waters. It ended in the best possible scenario, but it was slightly unsettling to know even the instructor didn't realize he was missing until we surfaced.

The reason for the platform was to run through the drills of clearing our masks and regulator recoveries, and finally buddy breathing. The real point of doing them is for the first time when doing these, the safety of the pool is gone, there is no possibility of shooting to the surface in an emergency. Things went smooth and this was the end of day one.

On Sunday both dives consisted of navigating underwater. Seems strange to work on this on the very last day, but I don't make the rules. We split into two groups, I had 5 in my group. It was suppose to work almost like our first dive the day before, one person was the leader who was also the navigator. One person pulled the dive flag, and the others were suppose to stay shoulder to shoulder. In my mind, we were horrible! I took flag detail, I'm not sure what the other three people were doing, but starting out, we weren't together at all. The leader and I would stop and wait for the others to get caught up, then the waves would literally bounce me like a worm on a hook with the bobber being the flag. At one point I remember watching the instructor swim under me to get the others in line and pointed in the right direction. I thought, "okay, this is good", we'll be fine now that he's getting everyone situated. While I'm watching that, next thing I know I've got the dive line tangled all over me! I'm untangling that as fast as I can because now I'm losing site of everybody. I made it, but I really burned through a lot of air. We were suppose to end the dive with 1800 psi of air left, I finished the first dive with 1550 psi, mainly because of that goat rodeo in the beginning. It definitely wasn't pretty!

The last dive was more of the same. This time I thought we did better, it could have been better, but it wasn't as much of as a fiasco as the first time. I'm embarrassed to say it, but I have a feeling the other group with the two trouble makers did better then we did! I would much rather do these dives, especially starting out, with only two people. Five people are way to many to get everybody descending at the same rate and sticking together.

Even though I thought we did horrible as a group, this concluded our diving. Then again, we didn't come up a diver short, so in that respect I suppose we did pretty good. We packed up, headed back to the dive shop to get some pizza and finish the last step, enter our dives in our log book. My log book is officially stamped, certifying me dive. I have to wait a few days before I get my official card (hence the repeated photo on this entry).

Now, all I want is my own equipment and a couple months in the Caribbean to practice my new skills!