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| Lesson 3 |
| 18 June 2011, 17:12 |
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So us divers love spending time in the ocean, right? Well while we're down at 30m there is another group on the surface, with tans and bleached hair, posing on the waves and speaking a whole new language using words like 'grom' and 'knarly'. What's all that about?
We decided to find out, so we took a random dive instructor and enrolled him in a surf school. And to balance it out we found an equally random surf instructor and booked her on a PADI open water course. This is what happened in week three:
Kevin Murphy, PADI dive instructor
So I hope your all anxiously waiting, wanting to know weather or not I finally succeeded in standing up. Well I`m going to keep the suspense going for a bit longer just to keep you informed as to the structure of our lessons. Lesson 3 started out with the class doing our stretching exercises, or me just trying not to fall over. Which, come to think of it, is most of what my surfing entails. We headed out into the surf to practice our skills from the previous lessons, namely pushing yourself up with your arms once you've caught a wave. Once back into the groove you would then try standing up and once comfortable with that, the idea would be to try and steer yourself along the wave. So clearly for me as I had not exactly been the star pupil I was finished my warm ups in oh.... about the time it takes to fall off a surfboard! Michelle set the rest of the class off on some more advanced techniques and my remedial instruction started. Finding ones balance on an ever changing medium is exceptionally hard. Every wave is slightly different from the preceding one, and with every new wave I feel my strength slowly waning bit by bit as I slowly get more tired. It also doesn't help when the rest of your class mates come flying by, especially those who vowed to honour and obey, through sickness and physical ineptitude.
Moment of triumph!
Slowly as time passed, under Michelle's experienced instruction, I started to feel the beginnings of some small form of stability trying really hard to come through. Even though I was constantly falling off, I just knew that it was so frustratingly close each and every time. I would either be just a little to far forward on my board, or having over compensated to far back. Which left me pitching nose first down the swell or dropping of the back of the wave. Words are inadequate when trying to describe my levels of frustration; or more likely my lack of the correct words, as those who know me know that I am fairly competitive. Michelle just kept on giving me advice and trying to get me to calm down all the while just suggesting an alternative aspect to think about on the next wave. And that,s the great thing about surfing that there will be a next wave filled with hope and possibility. Finally the call came from Michelle for the class to catch there last waves and so this was my last opportunity for the day. I selected my wave, turned around and paddled furiously waiting for the moment when you can feel that the wave has you in it's grasp. I pushed up with arms while sliding my knees forwards and then slowly brought my right foot forward to between my hands. I pushed up with my right leg and slowly rose to sort of semi squatting position, but I was balancing on just two feet!
The dive crew heading back after a session!
This was it, this was the moment that I had been trying to get to for the last three lessons. I looked around for somebody else to witness my magnificence, when that all to familiar feeling once again swept over me and I pitched forward doing a spectacular face plant. I came up beaming I think I was probably glowing as well. Michelle gave me a huge cheer as I made it out of the water. Gushing like an expectant bride I asked my wife if she saw me stand up. She looked at me for quite a while in silence before she slowly said ' There was definitely a pause before you fell"
Good enough for me, I'll take it!!
Michelle Davy, 'The Stoked school of surf''
I had been somewhat apprehensive about venturing off into the big blue. I had only just become comfortable with the pool environment and my new friend, the creepy crawly. But at some point chlorinated water and the mechanical creatures of the underworld had to be replaced with the ‘real deal’.
It was a calm beautiful day down at Long Beach, Simonstown. The ocean conditions, I was told, were perfect for diving-calm with good ‘vis’. The colour of the water was alluring and appeared deceptively warm. Well accustomed to Cape Town waters, I knew all too well that clear water usually couples with rather frigid water temps. As we entered the water from the shore, the bits of water than managed to sneak in through the seams of my 2 wetsuits was exactly as predicted- a freezing14 deg C. We started with a quick breathing exercise before venturing off for my first open water dive.
Left: Getting ready for the dive
Right: Michelle looking relaxed
Before I knew it, we had moved off from the corrugated sandy bottom of the shoreline to a beautiful kelp forest that gracefully swayed to and fro with the current. It reminded me of one of my favourite tanks at the aquarium-only now, I was swimming inside the ‘tank’. As we finned along, Kevin pointed out various strange creatures that I had never seen before from nudibranches to weird looking insect-like organisms. The ‘klipvis’ that chameleoned to their environment left me amazed as did the colours of myriad of anemones that covered the submerged wreck. A seal came out to play and frolicked around us inquisitively-a definite highlight of the dive. We spotted a family of puffadder shy sharks that lurked beneath a kelp bed. The menacing look in their eyes left me feeling a little uneasy as to what may have been hiding in the depths of the kelp forest. Had they been just a little bigger I may have opted for the uncontrolled ascent.
After a fantastic 45 minute underworld exploration, we emerged to the sound of the canon fire from the naval base. A rather dramatic end to the dive, but I will surely never forget my first open water experience.
Left: Where has he gone?
Right: Surfers are comfortable with this size of shark.
We warmed up in the sun and then headed back out to do the skills portion of the day. I can’t say I was too excited for this part of it as by then my hands were still cold and after experiencing what diving was really about, I just wanted more of it. Having already done all the skills in the pool twice already, we got those out of the way quickly. The compass swim was the only new challenge. Kevin had very clearly explained during the land briefing what I was expected to do for this skill, so when the signal came, I headed off at 90 degrees for 30 fin cycles, thinking Kevin was right next to me all the way. I stopped, spun around and then realized I was all alone. No Kevin. No kelp. No’ klipvis’. Only a blanket of blue. I panicked momentarily, shakily held the compass out in front of me and swam back at roughly 270 degrees in the hope that the blue expanse would not engulf me forever. Just as I began losing hope, the kelp and Kevin came back into visibility.
For someone who spends almost ever day in the ocean, I have been surprised whilst doing this course, at how quickly I seem to panic whilst fully submerged. I’m not sure if it’s the limited field of vision, being adorned in all the heavy equipment, breathing through a respirator or perhaps just not feeling entirely in control that heightens the state of panic. Whatever the reason, diving has surely been a mental challenge thus far. The next dive we have planned is a dive with sharks. I have a feeling that after that experience, I’ll be feeling far more comfortable under water than bobbing around on the surface…
Make sure you follow Kevin and Michelle's blog every week. After they have qualified we are all going to head down to Sodwana for a weekend of surfing and diving! And we'll be running a competition for two lucky readers to join us. All to be revealed soon...
Thanks to our sponsors:
Amanzi instructor development
PADI
Pisces divers
The Stoked school of surf
Da Blu Juice dive surf adventures
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| Lesson 2 |
| 21 April 2011, 07:01 |
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So us divers love spending time in the ocean, right? Well while we're down at 30m there is another group on the surface, with tans and bleached hair, posing on the waves and speaking a whole new language using words like 'grom' and 'knarly'. What's all that about?
We decided to find out, so we took a random dive instructor and enrolled him in a surf school. And to balance it out we found an equally random surf instructor and booked her on a PADI open water course. This is what happened in week two:
Kevin Murphy, PADI dive instructor
Kevin gets that 'stoked' feeling!
I’ve been dreaming about surfing all week, not like radical cut backs and off the lip manoeuvres, but about falling off and trying just to stand up on the board. It’s actually been all consuming this past week as everybody I’ve come into contact with has been subjected to my weekend adventure. I think between my wife and myself our enthusiasm has hopefully convinced a number of people just to give it a try. Thank goodness we had a week between lessons as this gave my very weak arms time to recuperate. I was focused and determined that I too would actually stand this week. I listened intently to all the advice Michelle was heaping on me, but unfortunately on a genetic level I was having some doubts. To many years and too many beers to late to be trying this sort of thing out was going through my head. Wave after wave kept coming along with me ending up either off the board on the sand or stuck in some sort off odd kneeling position. The rest of my group seemed to be getting the hang of things, my show off wife even starting to change direction on the wave. For me; well not so much, the only direction I was getting was down. Reading this back to myself it all sounds a little negative but that was just my frustration at not being able to stand up. The whole experience of just actually playing in the water for 2 hours is just awesome. When last did you get to just be in the ocean and play? My balance, or rather the lack of it is my biggest stumbling block, but Michelle was always there giving encouragement and tips to help me out. Practice practice practice repetition repetition repetition is the mantra of most surfers I spoke to during the week. But all of them persevered to get to a point where they are actually surfing. So here I am standing in waist deep water trying to stand up on a broken foamy wave and failing to get up.
There are worse ways to spend a morning!
During one of my numerous breaks to catch my breath and recover from laughing I heard my wife and Michelle talking about finding that sweet spot on your board where your balance is guaranteed and you just know that you’re going to stand up. Rested and rejuvenated I headed out again to take on the surf determined to find my sweet spot. I picked my wave and paddled furiously remembering to keep all my muscles tight. I felt the wave taking the board then pushed up with my arms while sliding my knees up into my kneeling position. Then the tricky part getting my goofy foot to get between my hands so I could attempt the big stand without falling, Slowly slowly I shifted my body weight making minor adjustments here and there trying to find that stable platform to be able to stand up. All this is happening in a few seconds as the little foamies that we are catching don’t last that long before washing up on the beach and loose all their power. So with the speed of a drifting continent I finally started my first ascent in my illustrious surfing career. The bells were ringing Nirvana had been achieved!!! Talk about a sweet spot, this board was as stable as if I was standing on an aircraft carrier. I was about to unleash the most unbridled yell of ecstasy when I looked down and noticed that my board had actually beached itself.
Next time you are going down!!!
Michelle Davy, 'The Stoked school of surf''
The Tuesday night before my next ‘Scuba Wednesday’ was spent watching all of the PADI dvd’s and skim reading the manual. Somehow it brought back distant memories of those long university physics lectures with some guy with his PhD droning on about volume vs mass, displacement and buoyancy ratios on a hot summer Friday afternoon when all you wanted to do was hit the beach. I found myself nodding off from time to time and then being prodded awake with an elbow to the ribs by my little sister, who had thankfully been watching the dvd’s with me (which came in handy when it came to answering the ‘Knowledge Reviews’ at the end of each chapter). I now understood why Kevin could not take me into the pool before I had read the manual for safety purposes. Scuba Diving is certainly no joke.
The first pool session
Needlesstosay, I arrived at for the next session feeling somewhat more informed of exactly what I was to expect from using a regulator, BC vest, how to avoid the ‘Bends’ and potential hazardous situations whilst at depth. I felt confident and ready to hit the pool for my first confined water dive.
The first and most important exercise was getting accustomed to breathing through the regulator. We did this by simply kneeling down in the shallow end of the pool so that our heads were only at a depth of 30cm or so. Eventhough, I knew that the ‘escape exit’ was only a ruler’s length away, all the theory I had studied seemed to be lost in the state of panic that engulfed me. Breathing calmly when fully submerged goes against everything the human brain has been conditioned to think. Only seconds into my first submersion I had already broken the golden rule of scuba diving-I held my breath. Kevin noticed my stress immediately and encouraged me to start breathing again by using the signal of moving his hand away and towards his chest. ‘In and out’, in and out’ and soon my breathing matched the rhythm of my mental cues and Kevin’s signaling. I felt my heart rate slow down to a mild flutter. Immediately I felt calmer and reminded myself that I was in under good instruction and qualified care.
Dreaming of the reefs and wrecks to come..
We did a few signaling and emergency drill exercises at this depth (my least favourite being the ‘removing water from your mask drill’) before we slowly cruised along the bottom of the pool to the deeper end. Kevin moved with such serenity and grace whilst I followed in a somewhat jerkier motion as I experimented with the combination of breath and the inflation/deflation of the BC vest. There were several times when I totally over-cooked it found myself shooting up to the surface with Kevin swimming upwards rapidly to pull me back down. We progressed through the various emergency situation drills, this time at a depth of 4m. Removing water from my mask at this depth had me in a complete state of panic-so much so that I used the ‘abort and swim to the surface’ signal to which Kevin responded with the ‘breath in and out slowly’ signal, forcing me to stay calm and at depth.
Over the few hours that followed I found myself easing into the foreign experience, enjoying the peace of being under water and slowly beginning to ‘fin’ in a smooth motion along with the rhythmic pace of my breathing. I found myself smiling inwardly knowing that I had taken the step to conquer one of my biggest fears and in turn opened myself up to a whole new world of discovery.
As the sun refracted through the clear water enhancing its turquoise hue, I began to imagine what it would be like to be doing this in the ocean abundant with brightly coloured fish, whalesharks, rays and eels. In the meant time though, I guess my run in with the creepy-crawly will have to suffice as my first experience of the underworld.
Make sure you follow Kevin and Michelle's blog every week. After they have qualified we are all going to head down to Sodwana for a weekend of surfing and diving! And we'll be running a competition for two lucky readers to join us. All to be revealed soon...
Thanks to our sponsors:
Amanzi instructor development
PADI
Pisces divers
The Stoked school of surf
Da Blu Juice dive surf adventures
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| Lesson 1 |
| 15 April 2011, 21:40 |
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So us divers love spending time in the ocean, right? Well while we're down at 30m there is another group on the surface, with tans and bleached hair, posing on the waves and speaking a whole new language using words like 'grom' and 'knarly'. What's all that about?
We decided to find out, so we took a random dive instructor and enrolled him in a surf school. And to balance it out we found an equally random surf instructor and booked her on a PADI open water course. This is what happened in week one:
Kevin Murphy, PADI dive instructor
When opportunity comes knocking you had better be prepared to answer it; or so the saying goes. So when I was offered a chance to do a surfing course, in return for teaching the instructor how to dive, I was quite interested. When I was told that my surf instructor was the poster surf babe my wife decided that she was also extremely keen to do a course as well.
Left: Kevin and his crew get ready for lesson 1
Right: Paddle, paddle, paddle
So my story is the same as most I assume, growing up in Joburg I was always a water baby, swimming; water polo; canoeing and sailing. Granted they were all done on dams or rivers but the affinity for water has always been there. I was even in the sea scouts as a kid! So moving to Cape Town opened up a whole new water sports environment for me. I was introduced to scuba diving about 14 years ago and have never looked back since. My passion soon turned into my hobby, which then became my vocation. So through all this time I have always been aware of the human flotsam and jetsam floating above this most amazing medium. Always wondering why they never even bother to put there heads in the water to take a look at the most miraculous part of our planet. So when the chance came to to try and see what it was all about I was super keen.
Left: It's easier on land.
Right: Diver in the water!
Michelle Davy, my instructor, and I hit it off straight away ( although I think maybe everybody gets to feel that way after meeting her) Instructing has given us a common platform as teaching people and exposing people to your passion has a lot of similarities, regardless of what your teaching. We arrived at the beach on a fairly overcast and miserable day to start our lesson. Michelle quickly took us through some fundamental knowledge requirements and then for a warm up. It was here that the alarm bells started a mild cacophony as I was battling just with some of the stretches. I`m about as supple as a mountain range and according to my mother in law not much lighter. Thankfully we soon moved to the ocean to start our lessons proper. So I found out I’m not a natural, in fact I thought of putting on my scuba gear as I seemed to be underwater most of the time. Then I actually started listening to Michelle’s advice because in between mouthfuls of water I saw my wife surf past my eyes with strains of “I’m surfing” reaching my ears. I wish i could end off on a fairy-tale note and tell you that by the end of the lesson I was carving up the waves, bru! But for now that would be lying and although I loved being in the water just playing, right now in my exhausted state all I can do is just nod off to sleep with the most ridiculous smile on my face.
Michelle Davy, 'The Stoked school of surf''
I love the ocean. I love to surf. I love to snorkel. And I was always told that if I enjoyed snorkeling, I would love to scuba dive as you get to see things that are much bigger at a closer range. Being a Cape Town surfer and knowing what lurks in our oceans, the idea of being submerged at depth for any long period of time and getting up close and personal with any large ocean fish somewhat never appealed. However, then an opportunity presented itself for me to coach a dive master to surf in exchange for him to teach me how to scuba. So it was now or never I thought. Life’s too short to have regrets…and besides how difficult scuba diving be anyway?
Kevin, my Dive Master, and I met over lunch so that he could give me my PADI Dive manual and a bit of a briefing before commencing the course. It was agreed we would start with the first confined dive session two days later. He reckoned we would need at least two confined dives before hitting the Big Blue. I arrogantly said that I was sure we could squeeze it all into one pool session, backing up the statement with a description of my years of swimming and ocean experience. I could see that Kevin was somewhat not convinced but agreed at the time simply to please me. He no doubt knew better than I did and would be chuckling under his breath in no time.
Left and right: Michelle hard at work studying her PADI manuals.
I skipped off home feeling rather confident in my new ocean adventure. I slid the brand new PADI Dive Manual in its fancy plastic case under my bed and forgot about it until 8:30am on Wednesday morning when I dug it out to take it to what was supposed to be my first confined water dive.
I met Kevin at 9:30am. His first words were ‘Let’s go over the Knowledge Reviews’. I stared at him blankly knowing in that instant that this first session was going to be a waste of time for both of us. At that point there was no excuse that jumped to mind that would cover for my absolute lack of interest in doing any of the self-study he had instructed me to do over our lunch meeting. The only thing I could think of was ‘But when you go surfing all you need is a board and a wetsuit, we don’t do any tests!’
Kevin was unimpressed to say the least. Since Wednesdays were now dedicated ‘Scuba Course’ days, he recommended that I returned home to spend the rest of the day watching the DVD’s and going through the ‘Knowledge Reviews’ at the end of each of the five chapters. Sheepishly, I closed the Diver Manual, sealed back into its nice plastic case, hopped in my car and sped off ashamed. Just as I was rounding the corner into my street in Sea Point, I noticed a little trickle of swell in the bay. My good intentions of spending the rest of the day studying were lost in the feathering offshore wind as I exchanged the Dive Manual for my surfboard and wetsuit and hit the beach.
Make sure you follow Kevin and Michelle's blog every week. After they have qualified we are all going to head down to Sodwana for a weekend of surfing and diving! And we'll be running a competition for two lucky readers to join us. All to be revealed soon...
Thanks to our sponsors:
Amanzi instructor development
PADI
Pisces divers
The Stoked school of surf
Da Blu Juice dive surf adventures
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share this blog |
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