First Diving Year
Posted on December 30, 2023 • 3 minutes • 432 words
Table of contents
Spring
My passion for diving was always there, but I could not follow it until May 2023, when I joined an Open Water Diver (OWD) course. This was the start of a four-week journey that showed me the fundamentals of scuba diving, from gear and safety to underwater skills. I picked up some knowledge of how to plan and do dives, how to talk with my buddy and instructor. Along with my OWD course, I also chose to take an extra two-week course on Drysuit Diving. This was a challenge that I wanted to face, because I knew that diving in cold water would offer me new opportunities and experiences. I also learned how to enjoy the beauty and diversity of cold-water diving which I didn’t know before. I thought that I was the kind of person who wanted to be a cocktail diver. By the start of the summer, I had achieved my certifications as an OWD and a drysuit diver, and I was eager to discover the underwater world with curiosity. I still felt that I lacked confident and needed lots of training to understand how everything work and to get some routine.
In the autumn
I think how to adjust my buoyancy and trim, and how to deal with potential problems and emergencies come more and more after a lot of diving. To get this practice I continued dive nearly every weekend in the autumn.
Wintertime
Even in the winter season, I kept diving, but not as often.
I took the opportunity to complete the SSI Advanced Adventurer course (AOW), which gave me the chance to try out five different specialties: Perfect Buoyancy, Navigation, Night Dive, Deep Dive and Search & Recover. It was a bit challenging to dive in the cold conditions, but it was also a lot of fun and a valuable learning experience.
We did all the dives in the Swedish archipelago, it was so beautiful, sunny and fresh at the same time. There was a thin layer of snow on the bridge and -2 degrees.
I learned some details during this weekend, one important thing is that when the air temperature is so low, the regulator can easily freeze. You have to be cautious when you assemble your equipment. Dry and clean and don’t turn on the air from the tank until you are ready to get in the water. That means that you should not test the regulator on land by breathing in it. This is because it could make ice crystals form in the regulator which might cause the regulator to “free flow”.
