3 By Sea

Yep. Those are 10lb weights in each hand.

Of the 23 guys that started this training, these are the 16 that finished.

So I became a little delinquint with updating here the last few days of school. The last week of dive school was an appropriate culmination of the whole experience. We did our open water dives off the coast of Panama City Beach.

That’s me, second from the left. Visibitlity was decent for both dives and we were able to see all sorts of fish.

All in all, the dives were great. As I mentioned, this was a great end to school. Here is another pic of the fish and the bridge.

So, after five weeks of Navy dive school, I’ve got a bunch of pictures and a new piece of hardware.

We’ve finally started diving someplace other than the pool. And although the water is much colder and extremely turbid (to the point of being completely black at about 25 feet) it is good to be out of the pool and diving.

The weather here has been a little crazy. From the 20’s on Friday to the high 60’s to low 70’s on Monday and Tuesday, a few of us are experiencing some sinus issues. Under normal circumstances, no bid deal. But when being able to dive a requirement to continue the training here, it becomes a big deal. The biggest problem is the sinus squeeze. And I had a pretty good squeeze on Monday. I didn’t want to stop the dive because it was the only dive we were going to do. I did have quite a bit of pressure in my sinuses but didn’t think much of it after I was able to clear (on the 3rd or 4th try). When we surfaced after about 20 minutes, the bottom quarter of my mask was full of blood and fluids. This is a common side effect of a sinus squeeze so there wasn’t much concern on my part or the dive supervisors part. My dive partner was a little freaked out when we surfaced though.

After a quick visit to medical with a diagnosis of swollen sinuses and some blood behind my tympanic membrane, the corpsman gave me Sudafed, Afrin and Flonase. I’ve never really had problems with my sinuses before so I’ve never used these products. But they work.

Tuesday had us doing the same thing we had been doing Monday. We continued to work on Circling Line and Jack Stay searches. I sat out the dives on Tuesday because of the whole sinus thing. I didn’t really want to, but missing a repetitive day is better than not being able to dive later in the week when we start going over new stuff.

We had a Coast Guard PA visit us last week and here took these pics.  They’re pretty good.

Friday was so cold that we did not dive at all. I think that the temp hovered right around 2o for most of the day.

Although the cold makes for a boring blog entry, I did manage to get some pics.

This is a picture of us waiting to enter the pool…

We all had a date with this guy.

Yesterday and today consisted of pretty  much the same things. Tuesday and Wednesday are the last two days of pool week. And for those of you who do not speak Navy Dive School, that just means that we will concentrated more on actually diving and less on learning how to get our asses kicked. The last two days have been a lot like the days we got our individual hits, except we had our buddy swimming next to us. And holding on to us.  Ostensibly, this is intended to teach us to work together to fix any problems we might encounter. Like getting malested by a passing dolphin. All things considered, it actaully turned out to be fun. My dive buddy and I are a good match. We both have decent breath holds, we don’t get panicked under water, and we have a good time during the hits.  So for buddy hits, we just had fun. Even when an imposer would throw and elbow to a nose or go a little long while imposing a problem.

At this point, all of the hard stuff at dive school (hard stuff being all those things that could get you sent home) are behind us. From here on out we’ll being working on actual diving. Hoo-yah.

I’m sure some of you(and by some of you, I mean both people that read this blog) are thinking, “Hey, what about all the PT? It doesn’t sound like they’re do that much PT.” Well, we PT all day long. Eight-counts, push-up, monkey fuckers… all sorts of stuff. All day. So don’t fret. We get plenty of exercise.

Pictures are still in the works, but they’ll be up soon.

Pool week. Still. Today was an “easy day” as they like to say at dive school. Not because it’s really and easy day, but because saying it is an easy day makes it go a little smoother. We started at the normal time (0600) with some cals and a 3 mile run. The we spent most of the day on the pool deck and in the pool taking our “heavy” hits.

Heavy hits involve the imposer doing pretty much anything for 20 seconds (give or take…although I think they tend to err on the side of long) to you, your tanks and regulator. Mostly they devise ways to foul your hose and regulator around the manifold and first stage. Knots, loops, whatever. And you have to figure out how to breath and fix the whole mess. Usually you’re figuring all of this out without your mask and after you’ve been flipped and rolled across the bottom of the pool a couple of times.

The class as a whole did pretty well. We didn’t lose anyone today although one or two came close. We did get some pretty good pics of the action, so I may try to post those in a day or two.

That’s all the news for now.

I’m going to combine day eight and nine together. Not because they were much alike, but because I was so violently sick on Wendsday night and Thursday that I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to do the training. Even under normal circumstances this wouldn’t be a good thing, but especially here where the training is time intensive. Even more so for these two days. We started the pool phase of traing this week. But I didn’t know if I was going to be able to make it out of my room for more than 14 minutes at a time, let alone swim in a pool for a couple of hours. Luckily, the medics here see this on a regular basis and hooked me up with some decent meds to control the flow issues.

Thursday we concentrated on pool basics. But before we could get in the water, all of the Coasties had to spend a little time in a pressure chamber. Everything went well and we were all cleared to continue training. Once we were in the pool we basically had to show that we could breate on and purge a regulator. We also had to ditch all of our gear (tanks, fins, mask) in the deep end, surface then dive back down and put everything back on. Overall, it was a pretty easy day in the pool.

Friday was the first day of “pool week.” Pool week is basically one week of getting kicked around by a bunch of instructors who swim around all day coming up with new ways to impose underwater problems on scuba students.

Once we’re suited out and in the pool, 5 or 6 guys at a time start swimming laps on the bottom of the deep end of the pool waiting for and imposer to strike. Depending on the severity of the problem or “hit” there are certain things that can or can not be done. For instance, on a light hit an instructor will only pull your regulator out of your mouth (although they can not secure your air), remove your mask, remove your fins, undue one strap on your tanks, or any combination of the above. A moderate hit is just like an easy hit except that now, the instructor can secure your air and undue all of the straps on your tank, spin and roll you around. Each of these was done in a series of three hits. You have to pass two of the three to pass the phase and continue the training and stay in school.

Everyone passed their hits and Monday we start heavy hits and buddy hits. It should be an exciting week at dive school.

Hoo yah!