Originally Posted by
Garf 
I've done it!
It's takes months of hard work, but finally my instroketer announced today that I had failed to meet any performance requirements and she was thus happy to sign me off as a stroke 1 diver. I am exhausted but very happy.
My qualifying dives happened today in wraysbury. I was due to meet Scubee at 9am so deliberately set my alarm clock late and turned up 15 minutes late, apparantly a fundi-strokey skill, but one I have absolutely nailed. We talked about what we wanted to get out of the day, and Scubee made clear the necessity for not meeting any of the performance requirements. I was fired up, and thought I was ready.
So I hadn't remembered to put gas in my tank. My little there was in there was totally appropriate gas and therefore had to be dumped. So the 32% went into the atmosphere and the cylinder was refilled with good old fashioned air. We don't want any of these extended bottom times from nitrox no thank you.
Off for the first dive and I managed to lose her before we even got to a platform. I was absolutely on fire, things could not have been more strokey if I had tried. We met up again on the surface, and descended together. We did stay together this time unfortunately, but apparantly as I had already failed to descend together once she was happy to sign that off.
On the platform and we went through some trim and buoyancy skills. Mine were still a little bit good, and I was flatter in the water than I would have loked, but my trim has definitely got worse since starting my stroke training, and I was hitting the bottom repeatedly with my hands and knees. I performed a near flawless chinook turn, and there was a circular path of destruction in the silt around me I was delighted with. Once you know how to do this its incredibly simple and really useful if you want to kick the shit out of everything around you.
Back on the surface and we reviewed my kit. She was satisfied that I had added the required amount of cable ties, although she was a "little dissapointed" that there wasn't "more unecessary shit" attached to my harness. However, she was delighted to find breaks in both shoulder harnesses, and the 6 additional D rings I had on my harness obviously delighted her.
The second dive focussed on backwards kicking. apparantly I could still do it, and she wanted to see me flail about with both arms and both legs without actually going anywhere. It took quite an effort, but apparantly putting more effort in than is required is a good thing, and a true stroke will surface almost exhausted. Scubee demonstrated how to put a lot of effort in and hardly move backwards, and I just wacthed in awe. When I put that must effort in I move much quicker. Something to practice I guess. Anyway, she was happy at the end that I had done the necessary.
Well, I was shattered when I went home. I crashed out on the sofa for two hours. However, it was a great day in the sunshine. I learnt loads, and was finally rewarded with my Stroke 1 certificate, which I will treasure forever.
It will be some time before I begin training for stroke 2, so in the meantime I am just going to go and enjoy diving, apparantly this is the end goal of all stroke training, so I shall see how I get on and let you all know.
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