ScubaSmith

5 Months have now passed since doing my Open Water and 32 Dives i thought it was about time to do my Advance Open Water. Also it just so happens that we were going on Holiday to Tenerife. First problem who do you trust in a place that you have never dived, after a chat with the owners at the Dive Show and a little research on Yorkshire-Divers.com I settled on Aqua Marina in Los Cristianos. Following lots of email questions back and forth they seemed to fit the bill, price seemed ok, they sent me the AOW manual straight out and the web site looked very professional. BUT would it live up to the expectation???

I have to say YES it was a fantastic 2 days of diving, My thanks to Paul my instructor for being an excellent tutor (even if his singing was awful) and to Neil (the owner) and the rest of his team for running an excellent operation! I can recommend them to anyone who is planning a dive in the area. (WWW.aqua-marina.com)

My Advanced Open Waterin Sunny Tenerife -

Well, how long can I make this one last, 4 dives to complete my advanced open water in the the murky depths of Tenerife! As some of you will know i'm not out to just to get the cards and say I'm good cos this bit of paper says I am. I'm out to really "know" how to dive so as I had done 32 dives in the cold depths of places like Stoney Cove I thought on my Jolly Hols to Tenerife I would do my AOW, I had already done Peak Performance bouyancy so only needed to do 4 dives, The mandatory deep and navigation as well as the Wreck dive and search and recovery.

Dive 1 - Off to the beach of Playa Vista in Los Cristianos to do search and recovery, this proved to be one of the most challenging dives i'd done to date, let me set the scene, all diving and boat trips had been cancelled the day before as the waves and surge were imposible to move in, today the waves were moving up and down around 5ft and as the viz just off the shore was around 8" if you were lucky. I was not holding up much hope of finding the lost weight pouch that Emma one of the Divemasters had lost 3 days before, that was my first task. Do a 'U' search pattern in the boat lane 20ft from shore heading out to sea, after a lot of 'corrective' coaching I mastered the search pattern but the pouch was no where to be found. Off to the next task, we swam out to about 6m deep were the viz got quite good (well compared to Stoney) 8ft or so. Now to do a circular pattern hanging on to a piece of string to find a bucket of rocks with a lift bag attached (well hopefully if my knots survived). The first real success of the day I found it as the book said I should, then to lift it and bring it back down and swim with it on the surface, and finally dump the rocks and head back to shore. In summary a really hard dive but really beneficial, but think if it were my choice Emma would have been buying a new bcd weight pouch not sending a muppet trainee to find it. Dive one PASSED

Dive 2 - A bit of reverse profile diving here, after an hour or so we all kitted up and headed to the RIB to goto El Condesito to do my wreck dive. More new things to master, only my second sea dive and my first trip on a RIB. Ok once I figured out getting the kit into the sea then the RIB we had a 15minute bounce out to the dive site (Old cement carrying boat sunk on Xmas eve by it's drunk skipper! "Remember never drink and dive - you'll spill it") This wreck was now starting to breakup so there was plenty to assess and look over (first excercise) then I had to tie a line to the boat and swim round feeding the line out, seemed easy enough then swim back again winding the line in, again sounded easy. Oh how over confident I could be! Reeling out not to bad only bounced off a few rocks and the hull a few times (forgot about sea currents) but made it round then headed back happily winding away and got 1/4 way back and noticed line wasn't tight on reel so back I go and unwind it and do it again, no problem I can learn from this, off we go again. I'm thinking yea got this sorted till I get 3/4 of the way back, I had spent so much time concentrating on swimming between the rocks and the hull I'd not been watching the reel, to put it bluntly it was completely shagged the whole reel was full of loose line I had to go back nearly all the way and redo the whole lot, I will let you imagine the names I called myself! But finally I got there and finished everything I had to, so we had a swim round the wreck, what a fantastic change from the murky waters of UK sites the water was crystal clear (in my eyes anyway 15m+). Loads of fish to look at and try and take some pictures (again forgot current tends to bounce you around so not many good pictures just lots of blurred ones!!) we bimbled about a bit till I was breathing fumes and then headed back to the RIB, after safety stop came out on 20bar so pretty good for me!! Dive Two PASSED

Piczo