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Wednesday evening.

At Swanage pier, I have my second open water dive. Damon is my instructor for the evening and Jim is my buddy for the skills. I’m nervous as we approach the floating jetty, but as Damon pulls on his fin, the strap comes away. My mind is focused on his fixing it, and then on trying to stand solid as he leans on my shoulder for balance while donning his fins… so much so, that I’m calm and ready to take the first skill.

Damon steps off the jetty first. All’s well and he signs “OK”. I step over to the edge. “It’s a flippin’ long way down there”, Jim is happy to inform me that at only a metre “it’s not!” Right gloves heal on reg, fingers on mask, while left hand holds down any dangly bits. I step off the jetty, go under and surface. OK, but with a little water in my mask. Jim’s turn.

Next on the list of skills is the buoyancy. Air out of the BCD, and float at eye level. Done.

We swim over to the pier and make a five point descent, taking a while to reach the bottom. A couple more weights are added to my BCD and I kneel on the sand.

The next skill is throwing away my regulator and retrieving it. I’m still taking in water; we surface and Damon loosens the strap on my mask. This does help, but for some reason it’s a continuous battle throughout the evening. We five point descend; I breathe slowly, inhale, then remove the reg. Over my shoulder; lean to the right; retrieve the reg; replace the reg, pressing the ‘purge’ button to help clear it. Done, and it went well. I seem to be OK with blowing bubbles slowly.

We swim further and enter the training area. Damon signs that I am out of air and need to use my buddy’s second air source. I have water around my nose; it’s an uncomfortable distraction, so I take longer to relax. I sign ‘out of air’, Jim lifts his arms and I remove his second air source. I breathe in fully, then remove my reg while breathing out slowly. In a moment I have Jim’s second reg in my mouth. and I’m breathing again calmly. We link arms and are ready to ascend. We do the STELLA ascent (the double L is ‘look and listen’). Done. I forget about manually filling my BCD on surfacing. so we repeat and I manually inflate the BCD. (It takes a while to catch my breath.) Done.

Time to remove my weight belt and hold it out. This is done. and it’s decided that while I’m here, I may as well put it back on. There’s a knack to this! Hold the belt next to your right hip; roll horizontally and catch the left side in your hand; fasten and done. It went better than expected. I did fumble in the fastening, with my big thick gloves, but I did fasten it. The weights have somehow slid, causing potential lopsidedness. Damon adds a couple of weights to my BCD to compensate and we swim some more.

Visibility is the worst yet, although it didn’t spook me as much as the first dive under the pier.

My least favourite skills are next. Half-fill the mask and clear it: a bit of a fumble with thick gloves, and not pretty, but done without inhaling any water. Fully fill the mask and clear it: more fumbling and a full mask, uncomfortable, and in clearing I let more in (or so I thought). I really didn’t like that. Taking the mask off is preferable to filling the mask (did I even say that?!), but it is done. Damon is happy; I am relieved!

We ascend in the usual fashion and bob about on the surface. Time to return to land. We swim back, passing over a huge spider crab going about his business. Arriving in the shallows, we remove our fins and walk the last few feet to the steps. I climb the steps like a lead balloon! I have four weights in my BCD on top of the four weights on my belt!

One at a time we stand under a cold shower, dunk our fins and mask, then return to the van. Dismantle equipment; change; debrief; fill out the logbook.

I am now a scuba diver!