Still remember the first time you were told to do the activity that you have been avoiding all along?
Cooking your first dish? Giving your first presentation? Driving on the road for the first time? Or even taking the first breathe underwater!
The first experience is always the most memorable. Now let our Divemaster Trainee Phoebe take you through her first time in her Divemaster training – Leading Leisure Dives!
(By Phoebe)
“WHAT? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? CANNOT LAH”
This was my first reaction when I received the manifest for the diving trip on 23-25 May 2014. To my “surprise”, I was going to lead the leisure group for the weekend.
It was barely 10 months since I started my PADI Open Water Diver course in July 2013 with Amazing Dive.
Time flies, and I am a DMT (Dive Master Trainee) today.
I well understand that leading a leisure dive is different from assisting OWD
groups. Being a guide to lead a dive, you have to manage the divers’ expectation, to be confident
and independent under any circumstance, to make critical decisions based on the conditions of the
environment and the divers, etc. And not to mention, I have to give dive briefings, which was one of my
greatest weakness.
I had butterflies in my stomach the entire Friday night, praying everything would be fine for this weekend.
Before the dives, I had a chance to chitchat with the divers, whom I would be leading, 3 being AOWD and 1 Rescue Diver. I was more nervous when I found out two of them were very experienced divers, who had been diving for about 10 years.
Okay, it’s “show time”! As the boat sailed off from the jetty, I knew it’s time for me to do my very first dive briefing. I checked with the boat I/C (Nicholas Tan) which dive site we were heading, and I organized my thoughts, ready to go! I took out my DM slate, swallowed down a gulp and started the dive briefing. My hands were clammy, but I was trying my best to stay cool so that they wouldn’t tell I was anxious. I followed the 10 points from dive slate, and double checked I had covered everything. It could have been the longest 10 minutes in my life; I ended the briefing with “Any questions? … If not, drink up and I will let you guys know 15 minutes before we reach the dive site!” PHEW…. What a relief!
The dive briefing for the subsequent dives were less “formal”, and as I built rapport with the divers, briefings weren’t as scary as before anymore. My next challenge was to lead a dive at a new dive site, a dive site which I had not visited before. Nicholas was kind enough to brief me every single dive before we reached the dive sites, giving me tips of where to go and what to look out for. I set my compass before every dive, making sure I would head to the correct direction. It was not as tough as I thought. In fact, I was secretly in high spirits every time I surfaced and saw the boat was not far away from us.
During the dives, I had to be really slow so that I could spot something interesting for the divers. We managed to see Blacktips, turtles, trigger fish, lion fish, blue spotted stingray and a couple of
nudibranchs. Enough said, let the pictures do the talking!
Thinking about all these challenges I have faced in Dive Master Course, I’m glad that I’ve taking up this path. There is so much more to learn and explore. Every dive is a new experience! Every dive trip is a learning curve!”
Find Phoebe’s experience interesting and fulfilling?
Take your first step to becoming a PADI Dive Professional – PADI Divemaster.
Contact Amazing Dive @ [email protected] or call 9677 3627 for more information! =)