Since chances were unlikely that we’d be able to travel at all this year, Brendan and I decided to use our extra time and budget to get our PADI Open Water Diving Certification. This allows us to dive without a divemaster down to 60 feet!

I was certified as a NAUI Junior Diver at a Girl Scout camp up in Traverse City, Michigan when I was thirteen but I never got to use my skills after camp was over. Brendan’s family all took SCUBA lessons on one of their family vacations growing up, but as the baby of the family he wasn’t old enough to join in so this is a totally new experience for him! We were both really excited to learn a new skill and move forward at a time when the world felt like it was standing still.

We started the E-Learning portion of the certification near Brendan’s birthday in May, and scheduled our pool sessions and checkout dives for mid-June and mid-July with Carolina Dive Center in Raleigh. Both of us were nervous for the practical part of the certification after trying to memorize all of the rules and requirements from the online class, but all of our instructors were very relaxed and focused more on teaching us the skills we needed in the water than trying to quiz us to see what we knew!

Confined Water Day one

Brendan and I picked up our SCUBA gear, including Buoyancy Control Devices (BCD), wetsuits, regulators, oxygen tanks, and weight belts a few days before our first dive when we went to purchase our facemasks, fins, and snorkels. The trunk of my car was packed with SCUBA gear! After testing everything out in Brendan’s mom’s pool to get comfortable swimming in wetsuits and breathing through snorkels we felt fully prepared for our first confined water lesson on June 13.

Because pools in North Carolina were still closed, the dive center scheduled our ‘pool’ dives out at Fantasy Lake Scuba Park (about half an hour away in Rolesville) where we’d also complete our open water dives. Confined water dives typically only take students down to 8 feet the first day and 15 the second, just to get people used to breathing from regulators, clearing flooded masks without panicking, and what to do in emergency situations.

We arrived at Fantasy Lake around noon on Saturday and introduced ourselves to Ricky, our instructor. He was from Wilmington and had been diving since 2000. Due to Covid-19, our class size had been restricted to six people and an instructor, and we all got to know each other by commiserating as we clumsily squeezed ourselves into wetsuits. The other students were Sam and Sean, a couple in their forties, and Alex and Kyle, siblings younger than us who both attended the same high school as Brendan! Small world.

Ricky started the day off by walking us through how to set up our SCUBA gear properly, including securely strapping the oxygen tank to our BCD vests, connecting the regulator to the tank, and finally, testing that the system worked by taking a few breaths through both the primary and emergency mouthpieces and inflating and deflating our BCDs. The videos we watched for class made this seem much harder than it actually was!

After we assembled our gear, it was time for our swimming tests to make sure we all had a base competency in the water. Because we were out at Fantasy Lake, where divers are required to wear a mask/fin/snorkel set at all times, we breezed through the 200 meter swim and 10 minutes of treading water. If we had been at a pool without all our gear on, it definitely would have been harder! Unfortunately, our class size quickly went from six to four when Sean had trouble breathing in his wetsuit during the swim. He and Sam decided to try the class again with a different wetsuit at a later date.

With such a small class, we flew through PADI’s required confined water exercises. Ricky started us off easy by having us release all of the air from our BCD vests and sit on the bottom of the lake (about 7 feet down) and just breathe through the regulator for a few minutes. After we were all comfortable, we started going through common underwater signals for ‘are you ok?’, ‘out of air’, ‘share air’, and ‘go up’. We practiced all of these signals, and the actions that were associated with them until Ricky was satisfied we’d be able to remember them for confined water day two.

We all had trouble at first remembering to breathe out a small stream of bubbles every time we took our regulators out of our mouths for regulator-recovery exercises (you never want to hold your breath while SCUBA diving to prevent lung over-expansion injuries) but it didn’t take long for all of us to get the hang of it! We also practiced clearing our face masks of water in case they leaked and how to put our masks back on if they fall off (or are kicked off by another diver). Both Brendan and I’s masks fogged up fast after the clearing exercises and we had to complete the rest of the day with just a small patch of clear glass to see through! We made sure to use more de-fogger for the second day of confined water dives.

After we ran through everything we needed to cover on Ricky’s instructional slates, he had us practice getting neutrally buoyant (neither floating up nor sinking down, a lot harder than it sounds) before taking us around a small part of the quarry for a practice dive! That’s the moment it became real, that we were learning to SCUBA and had a whole new world open to us. We only went down ten or fifteen feet, shivering when we hit the thermo-cline and the temperature dropped about ten degrees, and followed Ricky on a short swim around our tiny piece of the lake.

When we got out of the water, Ricky had us each disassemble and reassemble our SCUBA gear twice before turning us loose for the night. Brendan and I drove home, tired but excited for what the next day would bring.

Confined Water Day two

Our instructor for the second day was Paul, who had close to thirty years of diving experience. The four of us practiced our SCUBA assembly a few more times before diving in to the brisk water at 9am.

First, we reviewed our regulator rescue and recovery as well as all the other skills we’d learned the day before. After about half an hour, Paul was satisfied that Ricky had taught us well and we moved on to everything else our open water dives would be testing. We practiced each skill a few times but spent most of our day hovering around 15 feet down, just getting used to swimming and being underwater.

The next part of our class was more than a month away but Brendan and I felt confident that we’d remember everything by then!

Open Water Day one

A month later, Brendan and I couldn’t wait to complete our certification with two afternoons of open water diving. These dives still took place at Fantasy Lake Scuba Park, but this time we drove up to a small dock over a 30’ deep part of the quarry, instead of the walk-up beach we’d gotten used to.

Our group was slightly larger this time, and we were happy to see Sam and Sean from our first day of confined dives return with more comfortable wetsuits. We also met two new people, Matt and Jalisa, and our instructor, Dave.

The day started off more exciting than any of us wanted when one of Brendan’s air tubes blew out right before he stepped off the dock. Luckily, Dave had a spare, but as he replaced Brendan’s equipment, we heard another pop and a hiss — Jalisa’s had done the same thing! Dave had us all check the air pressure on our cannisters, urging anyone who wasn’t in the water to hop in immediately when he saw they read close to 3500 PSI. The day was incredibly hot and we hadn’t noticed how long the air canisters had been sitting in the sun while Dave had debriefed us. The water cooled them down though, and the rest of the day was thankfully without incident.

We spent the next few hours practicing regulator recovery again and neutral buoyancy, where we had to find the perfect amount of air in our BCDs to sink slightly when we inhaled and float when we exhaled. The SCUBA experts rarely inflate their BCDs at all (with the exception of ascending and descending) and just use their breathing to stay stable!

The day finished off a little before sunset with a dive down to 25’ to a small play area underwater, complete with a basketball hoop and bowling balls to toss around, as well as a toilet lid that Dave frisbee’d around the group. We all had a great time getting more comfortable with the gear while trying to play catch in slow motion with the bowling balls.

Open Water Day two

CESA, open dive

Our final day of instruction was also our water skills testing day, and we started strong by actually practicing our CESA (controlled emergency swimming ascent) for situations where we absolutely need to surface and are less than 15’ beneath the surface. It’s a dangerous ascent if done improperly, so while Paul had us go through the motions on the surface a month prior, this was our first time actually trying it out.

Dave took us one at a time down fifteen feet while the rest of the group hung out near the dock. He would keep hold of our BCD the entire time to make sure we didn’t surface too quickly (to prevent the BENDS) and that we reached the surface in one single breath. We had to reach our arms towards the surface, look up, and kick slowly but purposefully while exhaling with a hum. Brendan needed two tries to get it right and I needed three! I kept having to inhale right at the last second, and kicked too slowly upwards.

After everyone had passed the CESA trial, Dave informed us it was time for the test dive! In order to become certified, we all had to go down at least 30’ and stay down for more than twenty minutes. If we surfaced at all during the dive, we wouldn’t pass and would have to redo our open water section. Dave also wanted us to be able to tell him what our air levels were at any time without looking — meaning we had to constantly check so we’d be ready if he turned to us and signed the question with his hands.

Each of us took turns leading the dive around the two planes sunk in the quarry and the dive was finished before we knew it! Dave high-fived all of us as we dismantled our equipment, we were officially certified SCUBA divers.

Brendan and I can’t wait to use our new certifications in future vacations, and we both hope to do the Nitrox and Advanced Open Water courses in the next few years, so we can go down further and stay under longer as we explore the oceans and lakes around us!