A fart in a wetsuit

For the last three days my brother Laurie and I have been doing our open water diving course.

Now I was going to update the blog daily with news about the course, but after a morning of doing theory, the first thing we did in the pool was a two hundred metre swim and ten minutes of treading water.

I haven't been in a swimming pool for years and I've certainly never been much of a swimmer. I didn't have much of a problem from the fitness side of the swim, it's just that I was using muscles that I probably haven't pushed hard since I stopped working out in the gym about ten years ago. I thought I could cheat it a bit by pushing off from the side and just gliding underwater part of the way. It doesn't pay to cheat, at least not if you haven't tied your swimmers up properly.

Anyway, by the time I got home that night, my shoulders were so sore and tired I couldn't find a position to put them in that was comfortable. So I had an early night.

Of course the two hundred metre swim and the treading water weren't all we did. We practised a lot of the skills you need to know before you go in the open water. Stuff that could save your life, like finding your regulator and putting it back in your mouth after someone has kicked it out accidentally. Clearing water out of your mask while underwater is something that comes in handy, especially when you're bearded like me. It's surprising how much there is to learn. It's not just a case of strapping a tank to your back and breathing underwater.

The second day involved more theory and an exam, which everyone passed quite easily. Then we started off in the pool with a bit of snorkelling. First we had to duck dive to the bottom, three metres down, swim through a hoop and come back up. It's very easy to get down there and get through, but just about everyone of us got our fins hooked as we went through, even those of us that had watched the others and tried to swim as low as possible.

Then we did it after hyperventilating, which allows you to stay down longer and swim through the hoop more than once.

There were a couple of toys on the bottom, a shark and a lobster. Laurie went just before me, picked up one of the toys and swam through the hoop three times. Now, I was going to do that just to show off, because no one else had done it yet. Laurie had knocked the hoop sideways when he went through the last time, so I turned to Terry, our instructor, and said, "leave it crooked". Then I dived down, picked up both the toys, and swam through the hoop three times.

Of course the next person, a retired guy called Dave who's in his sixties, dived down and went through four times. I should mention at this point that out of six students on the course and the instructor, not one person doesn't have their fair share of grey hair. Most of us have pot bellies too.

The rest of the day was spent practising more skills, like breathing from an alternate air source, ie. your buddy's second regulator, and hovering.

You might think hovering, staying stationary in the water, would be easy. It's certainly important if you're diving near a reef to stop you crashing into it. It's harder than it sounds though, because as you breathe in and your lungs fill up, you become more bouyant, as you breathe out, you become less bouyant. You need to have just the right amount of air in your BCD (bouyancy compensation device, like a life jacket), then you control your breathing so that you're breathing out as you start to ascend and in as you start to descend. Of course the deeper you go, the less bouyant you are, so you have to make adjustments again.

Day three was today and involved an early start as we had to be down the Gold Coast around eight in the morning due to the tides.

From the Southport Spit we had a quick ten minute boat trip to Wave Break Island. We jumped in the water in our snorkelling gear and wetsuits and put on our BCDs and weight belts in the water. Putting on a weight belt in the water is easy, you just lie on your back holding the belt with one hand, then roll over onto your front and do it up. Putting on the BCD is a different matter as you invariably get tangled up in your straps.

After two days of swimming in a pool that's heated to around 30 degrees Celsius, jumping into seawater at 20 degrees was a bit of a shock, even wearing full length wetsuits.

For the first dive we just practiced a few of the skills we'd done in the pool and went down to about seven metres. It's a sandy bottom there, so there isn't much to see and visibility was only about three to five metres anyway. It was still a good first dive though, so different to being in the pool, and we did see a few fish.

We stayed in the water after the first dive. We just handed our BCDs up to Max in the boat, who changed the tanks over and passed them back down to us. Then we went down again and practiced a few more skills. By this time we'd been in the water for close to two hours, so some of us were starting to feel cold.

I must say, the biggest relief on getting back in the boat was taking off my mask. Leaving your mask up on your forehead is considered a sign that you're in distress in the water, so you don't do it. Instead you just leave your mask on, or push it down around your neck where it can be a bit of a nuisance.

Tomorrow is an even earlier start as we're diving at Cook Island, just off Fingal Head, near Tweed Heads. Hopefully the water will be clearer there. We don't have many skills to practice there as we did most of them today, so it'll be more of an experience thing. Terry reckons we should get to see a few turtles.

Oh, and if you've ever wondered, when you fart in a wet suit the bubbles run up your back and escape out around your neck. That means if you do it under water, the bubbles from your regulator as you exhale should hide it.