Deep Water and Underwater Navigation Dives complete!

We completed our Bookwork review and quizzing a couple of weekends earlier so Saturday, November 22, 2008, was a day for getting in over our heads and putting two dives for our Advanced Open Water Scuba Certification under our belts ๐Ÿ˜€

Yes, we completed our Deep Water and Underwater Navigation Dives with Blue Wilderness Dive Adventures Corp. in the Waikoloa Queen’s Market Place on the Big Island.

Andy as I usually see him...behind his camera.
Andy as I usually see him…behind his camera.

Note that Blue Wilderness has recently moved from Kamuela to Waikoloa Queen’s Market Place and will be updating their website. Until then, you can call them at their new number: 808-886-0980 to arrange a fun-filled day or night out on the waters of the Kohala coast!

We are taught in our initial Open Water certification to do our deepest dive first so we didn’t have to ask which dive we would do first today. Knowing it would be the Deep Dive first, we went to Ulua Caverns. A beautiful coral, sand and rock terrain!

My max depth indicated that I got as deep as 116 feet as I kept an eye on my gauges. Although this dive is to test how my body will deal with the greater depth, I didn’t feel any issues of Nitrogen Narcosis; but my breathing was less than ideal and I dipped my tank away too quickly – well, at least I didn’t hold my breath. ๐Ÿ˜€

Butterfly Fish and Coral somewhere between 60 and 100 foot depth at Ulua Caverns, Kohala Coast, Hawaii.
Butterfly Fish and Coral somewhere between 60 and 100 foot depth at Ulua Caverns, Kohala Coast, Hawaii.

Guess I need to work on the other often heavily encouraged piece of Scuba diving and get myself back in good physical condition. Aerobics here I come! Plus, I need to keep my mind on my conservative breathing while, not instead of, gazing at all the underwater visions! ๐Ÿ˜‰

And even at 100 plus feet deep, there were a lot of things to see! I was pleasantly surprised; although, the colors were severely lacking in reds and pictures are hard to “salvage” to make them decent if you can not get close enough for the flash to do its job. This being the main reason, I prefer the depths above 60 feet.

Because we were with our instructor and two others going for their Advanced Open Water, we could not just terminate our dive and go back to the boat mooring to do our safe ascent. Instead, I was instructed to buddy breath with our instructor using his alternate air source, and this allowed us all to complete our training dive and then enjoy a leisurely return to the mooring buoy where we did our three minute safety stops and then surfaced.

Andy taking another picture during our deep dive.
Andy taking another picture during our deep dive.

We slowly got back on the boat for a one-hour surface interval to help the nitrogen escape so we would be ready for our next dive. Once back on the boat, we relaxed, ate some wonderful baked goods to ‘refuel’, drank fluids and talked story for 45 to 50 minutes of our one hour surface interval. Then we moved the boat to Frog Rock for our Underwater Navigation dive.

This dive did not have to be as deep so my max depth was only about 60 feet this time. Unfortunately, it was also a bit more murky than our deep dive so enjoying the richer colors wasn’t that much improved. Although, I suppose that it was for the best because the murky water made us pay closer attention and learn underwater navigation as well as demonstrate our navigating abilities.

Coral on a lava shelf that I spotted as I came up from one of the ''deep'', dark caves at Frog Rock.
Coral on a lava shelf that I spotted as I came up from one of the ”deep”, dark caves at Frog Rock.

We were instructed to do a natural navigated straight line with out the compass using the formations, then a straight line with the compass and a 90 degree square with the compass to end up back where we started. All the while, we were frequently asked, “where’s the boat?” to be sure we are using all of the navigation resources AND paying attention to our surroundings!

The underwater navigation is a very necessary skill to have at any depth since visibility can be so unpredictable; but it is ESPECIALLY necessary when you get into deeper dives and begin to do Wreck Diving and more cave diving!

More on our Advanced Open Water Scuba Certification as we complete our Night Dive (that we opted to do again because once was not enough) and other Adventure Dives! For more on these two dives as well as future dives and a lot more, check out A Darker View. My inspiration for this Blog ๐Ÿ™‚