The weekend preparing for the dive trip.

At last it’s the weekend! I can hang up my wand for a bit and relax …. and this Sunday is the day I locate my dive gear starting with my regulator, chase out any spiders that may be residing in the mouthpiece (yuck!), clean it out and send it for servicing.

I tracked down my favourite bouyancy compensator device (bcd) to clean out and inflated it to check for potential leaks (salt crystals can be damaging). I love my Zeagle Ranger…. it is a back inflator and great for taking photographs. I use it when I am diving for pleasure and not teaching. When I teach I usually use my Apollo …. but this is a pure fun diving trip with no students aboard!!!

My dive bag smelt suspiciously of cat pee, so it needed a LOT of scrubbing out. My white Apollo split fins are in good shape … they aren’t guaranteed for life for nothing … and my booties are fine. I located my emergency sausage as Yanni said there was some current diving, found my weight belt, checked my compass and reluctantly packed my gloves. I so do not advocate diving with gloves and discourage my students to use them as they aren’t supposed to touch anything underwater in the first place anyway!

My favourite snorkel disintegrated when I rinsed it so I’ll need to pack one from my teaching gear! My favourite Mares mask is has a sadly yellowed skirt. It’s old but the fit is excellent for my face so I don’t care… I’m not about to enter any fashion pages underwater. 

This reminds me of a job I took when I was a Divemaster. It was for Nona TV3 in 1997, they needed a female Divemaster or Instructor to teach and take diving an aspiring TV talk show host. The whole segment involved training her in a pool then taking her to Tioman Island for her dive. She then had to interview me as to why this dentist dives and dives professionally at that! It was fun and took a few days to shoot but the most hilarious thing was … the TV starlet-to-be insisted on wearing lipstick and makeup throughout her dives! She looked like The Joker in Batman: The Dark Knight, whilst underwater!   

Vanity has no boundaries evidently!    :lol: 

I found my dive instructor slates and my dive wheel … memories came flooding back … all those dives with my students when I was actively teaching …. what fun it was introducing them to the world of diving. The beauty, the freedom, the awe I experience when underwater is difficult to express and so wonderful to share. SCUBA to me is visiting God’s underwater garden.

Yes, I am looking forward to the dive trip! I still have to check out my underwater casing for my camera though…