Monday, June 13, 2016

PADI Open Water Dive Course for Delphino and Christina on Artificial Reef, Sharm, and Dibba Rock

My logged dives #1452-1455

Friday, June 10 and Sat Jun 11, 2016

Certified divers #234-235

One of my colleagues at work, Delphino Ulysses Williams, asked if I could train him and his friend Christina Schweitzer in Open Water diving this hot Ramadhan weekend, and of course I agreed. How can I resist another opportunity to train new divers?

We had many complications arranging the weekend involving others with different agendas and Nomad Ocean Adventure's new Ramadhan schedule of sending out early morning and night boats only, which makes it almost impossible to bring divers up in time Thursday to get them through 3 pool modules and ready for an early morning dive. However they promised a 9:30 a.m. boat on Saturday (and the others with different agendas postponed to the following weekend) so it would be just the 4 of us, Delphino, Christina, and Bobbi and I. The student divers had booked their eLearning through Nomad, so we decided to start at Nomad Fujairah on Friday and arranged to cross the border and finish the course in Musandam the following day.



All went well the first day. It's hard to pace these courses. You never know how the students will respond to familiarization process in training. But Delphino and Christina had no problems snorkeling and they adapted well to SCUBA, and we had confined modules 1 and 2 out of the way well before the 2 pm dive to Artificial Reef. Module 3 still remained to be done and the rental boat (the Nomad boat was under engine repair) had to be returned before we would be ready, so we rounded out the somewhat exhausting day with a shore dive off Royal Beach, focusing on compass work in addition to the usual skills for that dive.

We crossed the border into Oman after dusk and ended up at Nomad Ocean Adventure there in time for dinner. The students requested an early start next morning in lieu of more pool work that night, so we met at 6 a.m. for briefing. We were at the pool at 6:30 but had to get gear together, so it was another hour before we hit the pool. Minor glitches prolonged things, and the time of the ocean dive was brought forward to 9:00 because there was not an early boat that day, and all divers were anxious to get away before we would be ready. We were done module 4 at 8:30 but were in the position of having to finish module 5 at the beach at Ras Morovi and then somehow getting in two more dives plus flexible skills including CESA, or, Bobbi's brilliant idea, return to Fujairah and finish off at Nomad there. The students elected to take things easy and not be rushed by more advanced divers. 

We stayed behind to finish the module 5 pool work in NoA's pool, the marvelous cook at Nomad insisted on making lunch for us (ours had gone on the boat he said) and it was only this that delayed Bobbi and my arrival at Nomad FUJ to 11 a.m. where we saw the boat just then leaving. But the kind people there, Kyle and Jess, assured us there would be another at noon, so we got on that one to Dibba Rock, where I managed to find us a sting ray, and Bobbi and I saw several sharks in the shallows, but in mediocre vis, not long enough in any one sighting to GoPro them.



Our last dive was to Sharm, what we most recently used to call Three Rocks, and before that (last century) Pinnacles. It was the location where I had certified Mohammed Chowdhury as a PADI Scuba Diver just a few weeks back (so you can see the video we made there for comparison). This day was a little more murky than that dive, but still Sharm has its charm.  The video of Delphino and Christina's dive for certification there, and the subsequent selfie, round out the story.



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