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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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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...

I'd been wanting to do the PADI Open Water diving course for a long time, knowing it would be like acquiring a whole new passport with which to explore an entirely different world. Quite a few of last term's students had done the course, but I held off, awaiting the visit of a good mate from back home who wanted to do it too - Jason 'Bruce' Lee. (A nickname earned due to the fact he was pretty much my only Aussie mate during my student exchange in Sweden a few years ago, rather than his undoubted martial arts prowess.) I'd known Jason since high school and then studied Environmental Engineering with him at my home university but ...