Baby seal to NAVY SEAL (Part 2)

Day three and four, and what a two days indeed.

Image Source

So once again before I start I would like to thank my older brother @stephb for giving me the opportunity to do this. Check out his blog for some great content, he also made a vlog about the day that will soon be up so be sure to check it out.

If you would like to check out day one and two here is the link to the "Baby seal to NAVY SEAL (Part 1): https://steemit.com/life/@dse/baby-seal-to-navy-seal-part-1

Our diving spot in Long Beach

From left to right: Steve (Instructor), me (Pieter) and Steph (My brother @stephb)

So let's get into day three and four.

Day Three

Day three was the big one, this would be the first time I ever Scuba dived in the see and that I would dive with someone except Steve (My diving Instructor.) The day started off with me and my brother @stephb driving from his place in Stellenbosch. Being a dummy I said noooo let's leave at 8 am to be there at 9am as it's still school holidays so there isn't really traffic... fast forward 90 minutes and I was naturally proven wrong.

Being already half an hour late we quickly got my brother suited up and continued off to Long Beach located in Simon's Town. For those of you that have never been to Simon's Town or South Africa, Simon's Town is also our Navy town, something I quite conveniently forget and lead to me saying to my brother "Hey bra, what's the Navy ships doing here?" (Insert bashing your head on a table hahaha). So we arrived at long beach and Steve ran us through the days plans and we continued to get into our wet suites and kits. (Another fun fact we had to wear two 5mm wet suites as the water temperature was 12 degree's Celsius - 53 degrees Fahrenheit). Here is some photo's setting up:

My Scuba Kit

Me in my wetsuit

So on day three we did two dives, the first dive was mainly focused on displaying competency of basic skills, how to clear your mask when you have a water leak or a misty mask, how to share and receive air from a diver that has run out, how to clear your regulator if it falls out underwater (The regulator is the thing you use to breath) and some general hand signals.

The second dive we quickly repeated some of the skills and then we did a fun dive, just exploring. We saw some cool sea life including baby sharks, several types of small fish and some lobsters. We headed out after the dive and took our kit off and disassembled everything to clean it. I never knew diving could be that exhausting, because as soon as we hit the road I fell asleep in the passenger seat.

Day Four

Day four was the final day, if I completed this days two dives, I would officially be a qualified PADI open water diver. On the first dive we did some more skills like the CESA emergency accent (When you run out of air and your 9 meters or shallower, then you need to exhale and swim to the surface) and some fin pivots (The skill to achieve a constant buoyancy and using your breathing to go lower or up).

Luckily for me I aced all of my skills and I was rewarded by having my forth dive be an entire fun dive and was it FUN!!!! I am now an official open water diver and this is something I would recommend everyone to do, the pleasure of breathing underwater and adventuring through the underwater world is a feeling like no other.

So what are you waiting for??? Get out there and get you qualification, NAVY SEAL out!!!