[steve-k]

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when i read through the forum, it could be quite intimadating for anybody new to diving, we drift off into discussions that might as well be french to a new diver

so just to show we are all human and have all been there, lets here your noobi diving experiance, crap boiancy? couldnt do your skills? it was bloody freezing? good or bad lets here them all

 

[steve-k]

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and here is mine (thx wl for reminding me lol)

i was on my first open water dive, it was 3oc in stoney, my local padi school/shop had convinced me to purchase, a drysute and fookin huge undersute, oh and i deffinatley needed some force finns,
getting back to my dive, i was in stoney wearing all my new gear for the first time, when i tried to finn i actually went backwards

lol  what a numpty i must of looked

 

[And]

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<font color='#0000FF'>Au contraire mon ami, plonger sous-marine est hollandais d'habitude double me

My first scuba dive was in Stoney Cove. Down to 6 metres, gobsmacked at the fishes. Ears and mask clear no problem. Went finning off like a nutter, arms and legs all over the place. My instructor grabbed me by the scruff of the neck (gentle type he is) and pointed out that the fishes come and swim round you if your stir the bottom up a bit (lesser spotted bottom stirrer that was me) Went under the pub and looked at some crayfish. At the end of the dive found out my drysuit leaked as I sloshed my way to the car. Laughed at by everybody as I emptied my drysuit on the carpark, I'm sure I saw a little roach come out you know. But I loved it. It was a simple life back then (only 18 months or so! blimey)

WL

 

[peter k]

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Quote[/b] (wetlettuce @ June 02 2003,20:09)]Au contraire mon ami, plonger sous-marine est hollandais d'habitude double me

Ah, Oui, Oui, Mange Tout c'est Beunos Aries. Joux je aux ping-pong a'la carte c'est tournez tu doner au' s'hish.

I don't think it can be that bad as I've noticed a load of noobies registering over the past month or so. So someone is doing something right. God knows who it is though. Certainly not MATTBIN anyway.

Peter

 

[Jules]

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<font color='#736AFF'>last weekend at the farnes I went to put my gloves on and realised that I had two right ones and no left. We have two pairs the same and I had brought half of each pair. Looked really stoopid and was really hard to get on...

aslo usual tricks like not attaching hoses, putting full kit on and then realising that the tank is still tied to the boat, even nearly jumped in once with my kip open but some-one stopped me.
jules

 

[steve-k]

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3oc temp in crapenwray on a training day, i was the asistant, i had had a heavy night on the p**s, and felt the worse for ir it, but i did my bit, budy check, bla bla then to do s giant stride entry of the peer, 0.001 second after hitting the water the afull truth was realised, i had not ziped up my sute

after the initial concernes from the shore dwellers, there was a quiat, not the laughing you would expect, i think all being divers they realised how bloody cold it was, and it was fookin freezing

 

[Digger]

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<font color='#000080'>I did an absolute beauty learning the hard way in a dive centre in Cyprus.

You know when they tell you to mae sure everything's tucked in and secured before you roll in? Make sure you do. I rolled off, so hear a loud hissing. I go for the alternate, presuming it was freeflowing, but it was not there. Stan, my good man on the boat is almost falling over laughing. I look up, and see a yellow hose hanging off the side of the boat.

My reg had got caught under a ridge on the boat, and the force of me rolling off had ripped the reg from the 1st stage. I got back on board, sorted myself out, and got back in the water (thanks to a well prepared spares crate) as my group hit the bottom of the shot.

C'est simple. Quand un moniteur dit que c'est une bonne idee, il est, pour la plupart, une bonne idee. Mon petit-pois.

 

[Dr Stevil]

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<font color='#0000FF'>First ever open water dive - Crap'n'Rainy, February, water ~2 or 3 degrees C.  Mask removal was like being hit in the eyes with twin-icepicks. My instructor had one of those long comfy-grip reg mouthpieces which meant you had to open you mouth very wide to get it in, but the cold water makes you want to close it again. Struggled with that for about 30 seconds before bolting the whole two metres to the surface  

 

Went straight back down to "get on the horse" asap, never looked back since (excluding club politics BS  

)

Chee-az
Steve

 

[Bunny]

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Oh dear, where to start?

Ok, first open water non-dive. Jumped in the lusciously warm water of the Florida Keys, wind had picked up a bit, waves tumbling over my head. Took reg out of mouth to tell instructor that there was NO WAY I was staying here, and swallowed a bucket off water. Scrambled back to the boat, coughing and spluttering.

Second open water not-quite dive... Jumped in again, this time with benefit of a buoy line. Much happier about this. I pull myself down the line slowly, finally got to the bottom. Right. We're here. Cool. Now what. Been here, done that, time to go back up. (I had been at the bottom approx 1m). This u-turn approach gave my instructor the impression that I was bolting, so she started to pull me down. This in itself, made me extremely unhappy, and now I really WAS bolting!

Back on the boat, now well frustrated, not for me, this diving lark. Instructor perseveres. Come on, Yvonne, you're nearly there. Hm.

Third attempt - Back down on the line. Hanging on the bottom of the line looking around. Instructor signals "look! Fish!". Oh yes. And very pretty ones too. A bit far away though. Might actually have to let go of this line to get a little closer to the reef....  Houston, we have a dive! And I haven't looked back since.

So if you're just starting to dive, and your first couple of attempts left you thinking you'd NEVER get the hang of this... take heart and persevere. It's sooooo worth it.  

And in an unrelated topic, can someone tell me where I can get one of those little square pictures on the side?

 

[Dr Stevil]

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<font color='#0000FF'>THey're called avatars go to <your control panel> <personal info> <avatar options> and have a scroll through the gallery, or for an individual pic, mail a small pic it to Heads-up and he'll put it in the gallery for you
Chee-az
steve

 

[MATTBIN]

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First ever dive, a try dive in Holland in a pool. Big gob full of water, spit out reg, oh thats bright, now what you gonna breath - water. Er I dont think so, bolt to the surface and breath, well I was only 1m down. Havent done that since.
OW course, apparently the worst weight belt removal/replacement the Instructor had EVER seen, I didnt understand what I was supposed to do with it, do it differently now anyway.
Stoney a few weeks ago, might have been a good idea to attach the dry-suit feed, thanks Buddy for telling me just before I dropped in.

Live and learn
Matt

 

[abucksdiver]

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<font color='#000080'>I've also done the "forget to connect the drysuit hose" thang... but managed to connect it without anybody noticing

abucksdiver

 

[Bunny]

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Quote[/b] (Steve W @ June 03 2003,12:19)]THey're called avatars go to <your control panel> <personal info> <avatar options>

Don't seem to have "personal info" in my control panel. Maybe on my PC at home... will investigate...

 

[Jules]

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<font color='#736AFF'>arh but what's his email address? Dont know how you attach something to the emails you generate from this forum....
Julia
avatar less also

 

[Duiker]

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Several years ago the good lady and myself were enjoying our first real diving holiday in Phuket and had just completed our PADI AOW course. As we had a few spare dives we decided to take advantage of the opportunity to take the DSV specialty and had just completed a fairly hairy current dive at Shark Point (at times even the scooter could not swim against the current over the reef). We landed with the scooters in 9 meters of  soup, on a sandy bottom, and made sure we were on the lea side of the reef to reduce the current.
I proceeded to produce an SMB from my stab that our Instructor had given us to ensure pick up. The rope attached is also a handy five meters long to take out the conscious effort of a three-minute safety stop. I eagerly inflated said SMB and watched it disappear toward the surface like a bloody rocket (whilst ensuring I tied it to my stab to ensure I didn’t loose it as it wasn’t mine).
Suddenly I was jolted upward like I had been fired from a Polaris sub and surfaced so fast I practically left the bloody water! I was in NINE meters of water!
Lessons learnt? Don’t tie shit to your stab! Don’t be over confident. Don’t worry about kit, you can buy another.

 

[Dr Stevil]

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Quote[/b] (bunny @ June 03 2003,14:40)]Don't seem to have "personal info" in my control panel.

<font color='#0000FF'>second from left column, inbetween <Summary> and <e-mail settings>

 

[Finless]

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Even worse than the newbie cock up is the experienced cock up - I jumped in off the boat at Scapa last year with no fins on MUCH to everyone else's amusement - hence the "nom de plume" Finless. Mange tout, Rodney, what a plonker!

Furtunately for me, shortly after someone jumped in with dry suit zip not done up properly (front entry - only himself to blame) so I didn't suffer alone.

 

[Digger]

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<font color='#000080'>You don't have to send it to him to attatch an avatar. You can do it by imprting a photo. That's wha I did, and mine looks ok, except for the ugly bugger in the photo!

It's possible through the personal settings. Took me a while.

Could one of the moderators stick it on the Information board? Someone explained it in detail for me (thanks to whoever that was) a while back, and it's not too complicated. Only problem I had was that the photo I had was high-quality big photo, so I had to scale it down. There was only more sea behind me anyway!!!

How you can jump in without fins is beyond me. Then again, I've jumped in with sunglasses on from the roof of the boat. Result - nearly lost them, and they cost me a good £3!!!

The Diggershades. Best sunglasses I ever bought. Shame they broke so damned easily.

 

[GUV..]

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Ok i will admit to these:-

Doing my open water in Cuba ,due the location of island we had to travel out miles to get the water deeper than 2 metres so every dive was from a boat.Felt like james bond skimming over the water in the powerboat to get to the location.Kit up and sit on the edge of the boat final check and a backwards roll,i hear this almighty rip.I've snagged the shorty(wetsuit not the other thing)on a hook and its got a twelve inch rip in it.i check for blood(sharks) but it is only a scratch but my arse is hanging out the back and to make things worse i was diving commando style ,but i must admit the travel of water was quite nice

Last dive of the two weeks and already passed OW the instructors take me out to more adventurous places have a great dive and as i am getting low on air signal for ascent and they agree.I go into a vertical position to ascend and they do the same but they keep on moving and within seconds dissapear .Ok i am not panicked but began to feel uneasy as i have no watch or computer only a depth gauge ,so i ascend watching my bubbles and depth gauge and counting in seconds(one elephant,two elephant...etc) and eventually get to the safty stop at 5m and start counting again .Every thing around me is getting darker and theres nothing beneath me or around me except dark blue water which seems to be getting darker and darker by the second.I can now hear the boat which is now circling above me which is a real relief but then the boat shoots off, my thinking is its gone to pick up the instructors so it must be safe to go to the surface so prepare for the final asent ,i rise slowly and break the surface and that exact time i here this almight bang .The only thing i can think of is i have been hit by the boat but there is no pain,no blood and i can still see so i look around and realise that we are in th middle of a thunder storm and it was a clap of thunder above me. I can laugh now but at the time it scared me shitless.So over the two weeks of OW i managed to rip the arse out of one wetsuit and shit in another.

Regards,

MAL...

 

[Diving Dude]

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l`ve done the polaris ride the smb bit, early days, trying out smb without a reel or weighted, all this line floating around waiting to snag a diver...well it did.

As l`m getting dragged to the surface all l could think was that my son was alone 15mtrs below me, l dropped back down to 5 mtrs to see him slowly ascending with another one of our group.

Last feb in Kenya l`m the only experienced one on the boat of eight people, l`m diving with one of the guides, having waited 30mins kitted up l was getting a bit frustrated and warm and asked if l enter the water and wait, the guide agreed and l did a backward roll into the water without a reg in my gob.

l didn`t seem quite as cool after that.