Open Water finally

So, I went to bed early because I felt icky, but I woke up in the wee hours and didn't get back to sleep. I was so unaccountably nervous for today's open water demos.

Here's how it worked.

I biked down to the shop (not Mango) and got there around 6:30 am. Gathered gear, weight belt, and helped load tanks onto the boat (we took Martini's Law). We broke up into groups of 4 again, same group I've been with all week (Toby, Paul, and Steve) with Vanessa evaluating. Before the boat took off, we gathered as a small group and did our Open Water briefings. If you follow the slate for Open Water skills, you get through all the information. The trick is to actually read it! My skills were:

Mask Remove and Replace
PPB - Efficient Fin Kicks

I gave my spiel, should have gone into more of a description of how to do the skills, but overall didn't do bad.

Then we all (16 candidates) got on the boat and went out to the dive site, Small Bight (Bay). Really beautiful spot with sandy patches and coral all around. We each took turns one right after another to work through our skills. Just like in the pool, we played student twice, assistant once, and instructor once for our two skills.

Mine were both underwater skills. The Mask Remove Replace is a really straightforward skill, so that went fine. The PPB Efficient Fin Kicks is harder. I had them do it at the same time, and only barely caught one of the assigned mistakes. Had I not caught it I would have failed the session.

Then we got back on the boat and did our fake debrief with our 'students.' Again, follow the slate, remember the mistakes (a pencil underwater was invaluable) and it's easy enough.

We went back to the shop, and Vanessa gave us our scores. I got 4.2 out of 5, which is nice and solid. Again though, very close to getting a 1!

Now that it's over, I'm happy, and hopefully I won't be so nervous beforehand next time.

Had time afterwards to bike home, take a shower, and eat a peanut butter sandwich. Then I headed to Mango Inn for the first portion of the Emergency First Response Instructor course.

I forgot how much I hate the EFR course.The books don't make sense to me. I got all my knowledge reviews set for tomorrow, but honestly, I'm probably not right on a lot of them. Sigh.

Tomorrow we have more lecture on EFR, then we go over knowledge reviews, then we do skills demos for primary, secondary, and O2 tasks, then we take our exam. It's open book, so shouldn't be too bad.

So I biked toward home, and stopped at Mermaid's for pizza. It's a weird little buffet, cafeteria, restaurant, with a mini-market in it. Pizza was on sale (Monday special) for 120 lemps. Got a mushroom and bell pepper pizza, and the mushrooms were pretty sad little canned ones, but goddamn it was a good pizza. My appetite is back, at least for today, and it was really nice to eat a good meal.

Now I'm home, finished my O2 provider knowledge review, and studied for my remedial Equipment and General exams (I got 85% on both, and even though i only need 75% on the actual IE, they like us to have a really good solid score going in). Should be good prep.