Relearning to Skin Dive

This morning's assignment was taking/leading the PADI Discover Skin Diving experience. Once we are certified Divemasters, we'll be able to lead the course so today we had to practice and demonstrate all the skills as well as practice instructing others in doing them. The skills themselves were not enormously difficult, most were things that we had covered back in our Open Water courses. It's an entirely different beast to try to teach the skills, of course. 

After that, we did a series of waterskills tests such as a 400-meter swim, an 800-meter snorkel swim, a 100-meter diver tow (complete with full gear on both divers), and 15 minutes treading/floating. For each skill, there was a minimum competence or time requirement. The hardest, surprisingly, was the 100-meter diver tow. The easiest, unsurprisingly, was the 15 minute float. As one of our instructors, Dec, put it, you would either get a score of 5 (perfect) or drown. I'm happy to report none of my class drowned. 

The final skill for the day was an underwater equipment exchange. Both people in the buddy team geared up fully and then descended till they were kneeling on the bottom of the bay. Then, while breathing in turns off the same regulator, each and every piece of gear was exchanged--from the mask and snorkel to the fins. While this isn't a skill you should ever need to use in a diving situation, it does give the instructors a good look at students' competence and comfort underwater.

Mike, Jen, and I gearing up in minimal kit for the skin diver course. 

The water is bathtub warm.

Listening to one of our classmates explain how to correctly
ascend after ducking underwater. 

Getting more practice at instructing others in skin diving
skills. 

The two Michaels demonstrating how to do a surface dive.

Dad out for a fun dive while I'm in class.