Yesterday and today have been terrific successes!
Both days started with us freezing in the classroom with the air conditioning(Take note: Be sure to bring a jacket and long pants!). The first day we went over how to properly perform and conduct a Rescue Course. This is one of the most challenging for me, just because I haven’t assisted on any of these while being a Divemaster. While I do understand the information given, I realize it will just take some experience to apply and hone the skills and fluidity of the course. After this classroom session we had a lunch break and I darted straight for the door and to Quepos.
On Fridays and Saturday afternoons, Quepos has one of the coolest markets I’ve ever seen. They have an assortment of different exotic fruits and foods – seeing them all just made my head spin (Ice cream beans ROCK!!!).
After lunch, we headed out to open water to perform our first Open Water skills. When doing this, each of the students are assigned two skills. Just like the confined classes, we have to give a briefing, conduct problem observation and solving, and at the end give our debriefing. My two skills were both from the Open Water class: first a controlled descent, then a regulator recovery. Both of these skills I had great confidence in performing and received a 4.6 out of 5 on both!
Now on to how today went: Today’s class started off with Risk Management. This is an extremely important class for any instructor to know and understand. Anyone – no matter what job it is – needs to know what they are responsible for and how to keep themselves covered in case something happens. Paperwork is an extremely important part of this class: if it’s not properly filled out you and the shop you work for can find themselves in a world of hurt if an accident were to occur. Overall, it was a great class and definitely a vital one! Next we headed back onto the boat, for our second Open Water skills presentation. My two skills this time were surfacing an unresponsive diver from Rescue Diver, and to tie a sheet bend from Search and Recovery. I won’t lie – I was worried about the first skill just because I haven’t had much practice with some of the rescue skills. Turns out, we all did great and got at least a 4.0. On top of that, while on a dive, we ran into a couple of starfish, an octopus, dragon wrasse (AWESOME looking fish!!), king angelfish, and some cute parrotfish. Again, ending both days with a gaze out at that beautiful sun setting behind the sea was just the best way to do it 🙂