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It was time for the one part of my PADI Open Water Scuba Diving course I'd been quietly dreading... At a depth of 18m in the big blue sea, I had to take my face-mask all the way off, briefly exposing my nose to the water and running the risk of breathing some in. This may sound easy enough to avoid, but practising this skill in the shallow section of the pool the day before, that's exactly what I'd done. Despite concentrating hard on breathing only through the regulator in my mouth, I'd taken a bit of water into my nose too and had had to rise, spluttering and coughing, to the surface. There'd be no chance of that here - you have to rise slowly from that depth or run the fairly serious risks of decompression sickness, ('the bends'). Focusing hard, I took a couple of deep breaths, gathered my thoughts and then pulled the mask slowly away from my face. Cold seawater rushed in, and I had to close my eyes against the stinging saltiness. So far so good - but as I pulled the face-mask all the way off my head, I somehow knocked the regulator
you breathe with) out of my mouth. So there I was, my nose and mouth both exposed to the water, eyes tightly closed against the salt, clutching my face-mask in one hand, feeling around for my regulator with the other, 18 metres down...

Scuba Diving with Bruce Lee

Michael Meadows
2006-10-23 12:57:11

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surface - looking around at my leisure, totally comfortable & relaxed, was absolutely amazing! I was hooked immediately.

Passing the Open Water course involves completing a number of set tasks, or 'skills', (such as the face-mask removal I described earlier). I didn't have too much trouble with the other ones, (although I think my instructor sometimes passed me too easily in her eagerness to get out of the water and back to the bar). The face-mask removal skill was the very last one, and the one I'd been just a little worried about ever since first trying it in the pool. (Of course, I now know that you can simply cough & splutter to your heart's content into the regulator - but I wasn't aware at the time of how easy & effective this was.) So, back to the scenario with which I started this blog entry... I'm 18m down, eyes closed, face-mask in one hand, starting to feel for my regulator with the other, and hoping I don't panic. In the event, (and I'm sorry if this is a bit of an anti-climax... actually no, I'm not really!), I was able to
Jen & Jason clowning around at Siam Paragon's Ocean World
Jen & Jason clowning around at Siam Paragon's Ocean World
handle it fine and am very glad it happened, (it increased my confidence that if something similar did go wrong, I'd be able to deal with it). Releasing a steady stream of tiny bubbles from my mouth, I leaned to my right in the water and then passed my arm up along my side (as we'd been taught to do), locating the regulator tube easily. It was a huge relief to fit the regulator back into my mouth, 'purge' it (clearing it of water), and then take a couple of deep breaths! It was still a little tricky to control my breathing while I put the face-mask back on after that, and then cleared it of water by blowing air out of my nose, but I felt a lot more confident about it all by then!

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