Open water and rescue class continued.

By Rusty Miller

My open water students dived on Sunday to finish their certification along with my dive master candidate. I had a brand new certified diver come to the springs with the rescue students and my assistant instructor. The assistant instructor and I had a quick briefing on what skills she would be training the rescue students to do. She had done a very thorough job going through the standards and procedures that NAUI has given. NAUI also give the instructor leeway to teach other ways as long as it basically meets their standard.
After our briefing it was time for the students to start with my assistant instructor. She briefed them on the skills that they where going to accomplish for the dives and then she went over the required skills they will be doing. I have to say I am very proud of what my AI has accomplished over the last 3 years of being her instructor. I personally think she will make a better instructor than me. I certainly don’t want to forget about the newly certified diver that I invited to go diving with me at the springs, she was a bit nervous but I assured her she would be safe and have a great time diving.
I observed the rescue class begin their skills at the surface and then me and my new dive buddy slowly descended to the platform at about 15 feet. She was having some trouble getting her ears cleared but after a couple of tries she was able to continue to the platform. I had her perform a couple of the basic skills so she would feel comfortable and then we swam over to the rescue class to watch how they where progressing on the newly acquired skills.
We then went around the spring basin before we surfaced for about 30 minutes to get warmed up a little. After she surfaced I watched the rescue class until it was time for them to take a surface break and warm up. While on the surface I went over what I observed with my AI and give her some pointers to help her out as they progressed through the rest of the dives.
After my dive buddy felt comfortable we got geared up and proceeded to do our next dive. This dive I was loaned by my DM in training and we decided that we would proceed to the spring boil, that is where the spring at the cave entrance pushes all the water out into the main spring. What made this dive different was two weeks before when we had those really bad storms come through It rained so much that the river had backed up so bad into the spring and cave system that the spring was spewing out brown water and made the visibility of the spring s not as clear as it normally is. It was quite awesome to descend down through the brown water and then into the clear water in the bowl at below the cave entrance. My DM anf dive buddy met me there and my dive buddies eyes were very calm and excited to be there. We surfaced and she was so excited and she thanked me many times for diving with her and showing her the wonders of diving. My AI finished the rescue at the beach and I am very proud of what she has accomplished and allowing me to guide her through it.
Until the next article, keep making bubbles.

-Russell Miller #59999