Starting the Open Water Course
Having decided that I wanted to learn to dive, Gary and I enrolled in a course in Bristol. Gary had learned to dive with BSAC when he was a teenager, but having been on a couple of club holidays to Malta, he felt less inclined to dive in the low visibility colder water round the UK and gave up diving. He felt that he would be better to re-learn everything, and so with 200 dives to his name, he enrolled on the PADI Open Water Course with me.
Our work commitments meant that our only option was to do our course over a few weeks. From past experience Gary knew that he wanted to have his own mask snorkel and fins, so we went to the dive store that we had enrolled with to buy our gear. We opted for light weight fins that we could take abroad with us, as Gary had made it a condition of our learning that he would not dive in the UK, and we planned to do our theory and pool work in Bristol and complete our course on our next holiday – which happened to be Jamaica.
I was very comfortable with the theory (I’m a bit of a nerd), but a lot less comfortable in the water. I’ve been a strong swimmer since childhood, but I hated getting water on my face – even to the point of not putting my face under the shower(!) The Open Water Course took me so far out of my comfort zone that I still don’t know how I completed it. Mask Clearing was my own personal idea of hell, and Regulator Recovery was scary stuff.
Whenever I had water in my mask it seemed to go up my nose and I struggled to hold it together. When the regulator was out of my mouth I desperately needed to breathe. I could hold my breath for about 20 seconds comfortably on the surface, but 5 seconds underwater and I could feel the panic rising. I am well aware now, that it was all in my head, but no-one took the time to explain it to me, and all I could think of was how to avoid doing the skills, rather than how to master them.
My over-riding memory of the course is being stood at the side of the pool to perform a giant stride entry. I was entering a pool in which I could comfortably stand. I could swim well, I had a tank of air on my back, regulator in my mouth so I could breathe underwater, and a mask on my face so that water wouldn’t get anywhere near most of my face. And I was having a massive panic attack at having to step in!
I had panic attacks before every dive for the first 16 dives of my life, until I realised the problem was the neck on my wetsuit! Most back-zip wetsuits have a high neck at the front, and mine was just a bit tight. A combination of a tight neck, and the weight of the scuba tank pulling the wetsuit down slightly at the back was enough to send me into a hyper-ventilating mess. Once in the water, the pressure came off and I was fine, but pre-dive – UGH!
After 16 dives, I cut the neck from my wetsuit and haven’t had a panic attack since! Now I always buy wetsuits with a front zip, so that I never have the problem.
As an instructor I’m now aware of some people desperately tugging at the neck of their wetsuits while kitting up, and recognise the symptoms.
If this is you – there are a couple of quick fixes, even if it’s a rental suit that you can’t take a pair of scissors to 😉
- Get someone to undo the zip a short distance and make sure the velcro flap at the back is not secured.
- If that doesn’t fix it, take the wetsuit off, turn it around and put the wetsuit on back to front! It doesn’t look pretty, but it brings the zip to the front and completely eliminates the problem 😉
