Scuba Newb - Learning to Breathe Underwater

originally posted November 12, 2017 A week had come and gone. Guy had come and gone. Low level panic was setting in. Why did I have to do a deep dive?? I don't want to dive deep as a general rule. I'm not trying to be the next Sylvia Earle, for f***s sake. I just want to have fun and swim with fishies and maybe see an octopus. Maybe AOW isn't for me. Maybe I should just stop where I am and enjoy my 60 foot limits.  Yeah, I guess you could say I was a little anxious about the deep dive. Nevertheless... if you've followed me this far you'll know that I don't give up easily. I went to the shop to pick up my rental gear and found Will manning the store. After handing off my wetsuit and regulator set, he said, "okay, we'll meet up at Blue Grotto about 4:00 to get you checked in and set up our gear. We'll do the deep dive first, take a little break and, once the sun goes down, get back in the water for the night dive." "We? Not Ch...

originally published November 7, 2017 The Sunday following my drift dive excursion, I had the last of my Advanced Open Water classes scheduled. Chris and I were to meet at Blue Grotto, home to my aborted second attempt at Confined Water diving (as relayed in "The Importance of Being Equal"), for my Deep Dive and Night Dive. I had snorkeled a place called Blue Heron Bridge at night a few times so the night dive didn't really weigh on me, it was the deep dive that was making me super anxious. The thought of allllll that water over my head, and not being able to get to the surface quickly, was nerve wracking. [ photo courtesy Scotty's Action Sports Network] After getting back from Rainbow River, Chris and I went over the dive plan and he assured me we wouldn't have to go any deeper than I was comfortable with. I'd have to get below 60 feet but we wouldn't have to go all the way to the bottom, and we would take things slow. Ryan, Chris' partn...

originally published November 6, 2017 I'd made my way through the Navigation, Peak Performance Buoyancy, and Search & Recovery portions of my Advanced Open Water training. Will provided some great insight for using breath control to fine tune buoyancy, and also helped me experiment with adjusting my BC for the best fit, until we finally hit on what seemed to be the ideal setup.  I did a bit better on the Navigation than I had in my Open Water, though I still sometimes forgot to count my fin kicks (how you measure distance traveled underwater). During the Search & Recovery portion, Will had some fun with me and the other student, a county firefighter, having us to perform our knot tying skills behind our backs, under our knees, with our eyes closed.      Back at the shop after a productive day in the water, Chris mentioned they were planning a drift dive at Rainbow River in a couple of weeks. This is a popular spot for centr...

originally published October 24, 2017 This is going to be tough. A lot of crazy things have happened since I last posted and now it's time to sort them all out. Why the long absence? Well, my house was broken into and my computer was stolen. I guess I should count myself lucky that the only things taken are replaceable. I'm a sentimental sort and have things like my grandmother's china and my father's fire helmets scattered about my home. If any of these things had been taken or damaged, I would have been inconsolable. So, yeah, I was lucky.  Still, it's disconcerting knowing strangers were in your home, pawing through your personal things, disrupting your life. Not an experience I wish to repeat. It took a few weeks for me to feel back to normal. I was not only afraid to be away from my home, for fear the thieves would return, I was afraid to be in it as well. I checked and rechecked that all the doors were locked each night and slept with the lights on for ...

originally published October 11, 2017 While Irma has come and gone, the impact from her 130 MPH winds is still being felt. Big Pine and Cudjoe Keys were among the hardest hit areas in Florida. A month later, piles of debris still line the streets, evidence of the homes destroyed and despair left behind. The Lower Keys were cut off from the mainland in the wake of the storm. The only road into the chain of islands was closed pending inspection by structural engineers to ensure it was safe. Electricity was out and cell service was down. Residents wandered the blasted landscape in a daze, wondering when help would come, when they might be able to reach their loved ones to tell them they had survived.  Indicative of this close knit community, residents began to reach out to help each other in any way they could. A local radio station was still able to broadcast and spread the word about a store which had a working land line. People lined up out the door for the cha...

originally published October 3, 2017 After lashing the state for a harrowing 72 hours, Hurricane Irma finally spun her way out of Florida. She will not be missed. Churning from the Southernmost Point up to the Georgia line, the storm left no part of the state untouched - some 4.5 million people were left without electricity, homes were shredded by tornadoes, streets were flooded. For many Floridians, the storm had passed leaving only minor damage in its wake. For others, the real challenge was just beginning.  With dive boats grounded until the hurricane had safely passed, scuba divers statewide were partaking of an extended surface interval, many wondering how their favorite sites had weathered the storm. We'll talk at length about the Keys in my next post but first, let's talk about cave country. North Florida is home to dozens of underwater springs and caves that draw tec divers from all over the world, and the people in this region were find...

originally published September 11, 2017 It's 11:30 ish Sunday night, September 10, 2017. I'm so tired. This week has been madness. Right on the heels of Hurricane Harvey decimating south Texas with insane flooding, Hurricane Irma formed in the Atlantic, quickly growing into a Category 5 monster that would smash long standing meteorological records. There was talk of needing to create a Category 6 for this storm, that is how big and powerful it was.   September started off simply enough. I was planning a road trip to south Florida to meet up with a group of high school friends, still my nearest and dearest pals. We were gathering to celebrate the Bat Mitzvah of the youngest daughter of one of these friends. The only problem being that my own daughter happens to be 9 months pregnant right now. So I drove three hours away hoping I wouldn't get a frantic phone call to come back.  While I tried to work in a dive to the popular Blue Heron Bridge site while I was down...