PADI Rescue Diver Course - Day 1

Today was the first day of the PADI Rescue Diver Course Brett and I are taking with Abyss Scuba Diving. I know this because 1) I am wrecked b) I've consumed about 6 litres of water since 4PM and iv) I have tan lines on my wrist.

This particular course, as taught by Peter Letts, is considered by many in the dive community to be the best PADI course of any kind offered in New South Wales. I was expected to be destroyed, and I was. The course is meant to teach you how to respond to an emergency situation while scuba diving. We had two nights of theory - Thursday and Friday - in addition to the required Emergency First Response course.

We entered the water fully geared but overweighted, making it easier to sink when required. The first task was to drop our masks and then swim down to find it. This one freaked me out a little bit partially because I'm not used to trying to eyes my eyes in the ocean without a mask and partially because it was the first skill of the day. I found my mask and was much more comfortable the rest of the day. Later skills also required mask removal, such as this one:
Brett and I were sitting back to back on the bottom. The instructor came around, pulled our masks off and shut off the oxygen to one of our tanks. The kicker is that the secondary air supply for both of us had been disconnected, so we only had only one regulator between the two of us, and we did not know who has it until the other person ran out of air. Mine was first and we did well - same when Brett's was turned off. Peter got a bit confused and shut mine off a second time (which he denies!) but we still pulled it off.

At the surface, while the instructor and half of the divers were down doing the skill above, we had a real emergency. One of the divers started splashing around like wild and shouting that he was sinking and that the female diver next to him was pushing him under. We thought it was an exercise that Peter had organised, so I swam over and half-heartedly said, "Diver, diver, are you OK? I can help you." When I saw his eyes I could tell he was serious! I realised that his secondary air source had not been reconnected which meant that he couldn't get any air in his BC (which is what keeps you on the surface). As mentioned earlier, we were all over-weighted, so he was sinking. He could have put his snorkel or regulator in but he was panicking, and it was interesting to see the real thing while training. I swam around behind him and cradled him in front of me, inflating my BC to get his head out of the water. He calmed down and Brett came over to reconnect his hose. All was well.

The course covered quite a bit, and as the conditions worsened, bringing visibility to nearly nothing, the exercises became more challenging. We were also put on the spot. For example, without Brett seeing it coming, I had to yank his air source out his mouth to see how he would react - while we were at the ocean floor. He did well!

When the day was done, we had a nice steak at the Oaks... nearly falling asleep at the table. Right now I'm looking forward to a good long sleep tonight to prepare for tomorrow.