At 12:45 04/10/00 +1000, Bec. wrote:

>Finally the WWW has a dive report to share!!  :-)

Congratulations :-)

>This, so called friend - Mark,
       ^^^^^^^^^^

I think this is a great observation :-)

>kept asking me why don't we just go out anyway?

You did the right thing.  This was the proper decision.

>Just arrive one hour prior to departure and will tell you
>everything you need to know then we will jump in the sea and
>go.  I got chills thinking about it!!

You don't have to.  It is possible to do it in this time frame, but not the
way it was done in your friend's case.

>he had a five minute this is what to do.  We went to the dive
>site, got ready, walk in and started.

This is where it started to get on the wrong tracks.  5 minutes are not
enough for the intro theoretical stuff.

>Now while the instructor was very good and giving Mark
>a few skills ( inflate and deflate BCD)

You see, here, on an intro dive, the only skills that we teach are:
1. Equalizing.
2. Breathing from the regulator and no holding breath!
3. Clearing mask.
4. Swimming with no hands.
5. Signs.

(That's E.B.C.S.S. for the new instructor to memorize the order of the
lecture :-)   ).

Then we take them one on one, and hold their inflator throughout the dive
and monitor their buoyancy, their breathing rate, their comfort with the
pressure etc.  You see, many divers with as many as 20-40 dives, have
problems with buoyancy so we don't teach and expect an intro trainee to be
able to do it.  He has too many new things on his hand as it is.

>The dive went to about 12m for about 60mins,

This sounds too much for an intro dive.  Our intro's are limited to 30
minutes and 6m max. depth.

Anyway, thanks for the report.


Regards,

                   Kuty