The flow of knowledge doesn’t only go one way with Tony’s students. They have much to teach us, if we will only listen! Here’s a tip that Tony already knew, and which made me laugh my head off at first, but which I then decided was pretty cool.
Gerard demonstrating the plastic bag technique for putting on a wetsuit
As demonstrated by Gerard (I’ve seen Hilton do this as well, while we were on the boat): a plastic shopping bag helps your wetsuit to slide on more easily. Put it over each foot as you pull on the corresponding leg, and then over each hand as you do your arms.
That’s not Gerard’s beer bottle in the background, by the way. Long Beach parking area is a crazy place on a Saturday morning!
Many people seem to think that they’ll experience claustrophobia when they put their faces in the water, with their breathing restricted to their regulator, wearing a wetsuit, and having all that water around them.
Here are some facts…
Breathing from a regulator
A regulator or demand valve is a brilliantly designed piece of equipment that attaches to a hose linked to a cylinder of compressed air. It’s constructed so that it’s easy to breathe from – no more effort is required than breathing without one, it gives you as much air as you need, and you can even cough or (I know this from sad experience) vomit with it in your mouth and you won’t have ANY trouble at all with the consequences… If you get my drift. In the unlikely event that it fails, it won’t fail in the “off” position and stop your air supply; it will free flow (deliver a continuous stream of air). One of the skills you do in your Open Water course is breathing off a free-flowing regulator, so you are fully equipped to handle this situation.
Your regulator delivers more than enough air, NOT less than you get breathing on land. If you do at some point feel as though you’re not getting enough, it’s because you’re breathing too shallowly. When you dive, your breathing must be deep and slow. Extracting the full goodness out of each breath maximises your enjoyment: your air will last longer, and you’ll feel more relaxed.
Bubbles rising in the Atlantic
Having to breathe out of your regulator – as opposed to being able to go take one breath in each corner of the room, or open your mouth as wide as it can go – is not restrictive at all. If you think about it, when you breathe on land, you’re drawing in the air that is in front of your face. There’s no hardship in not being able to take in the air from down the passageway – that’s not where you are.
What’s more, having the regulator in your mouth only feels funny for the first few minutes. It’s made with soft rubbery flanges that fit in your mouth (mouthpieces come in different sizes, too) and once it’s seated properly you won’t even know it’s there. If you’ve snorkeled, you know what it feels like to have a mouthpiece between your teeth. Breathing from a regulator is easier than breathing from a snorkel, and what’s more you don’t have to worry about rogue waves splashing water into your breathing apparatus! So if you can snorkel, you can definitely scuba dive.
All that equipment
Some people worry about wearing a mask, and think they might feel closed in with one covering their eyes and nose. Firstly, it’s important to note that it’s essential for the mask to cover your nose so that you can equalise your ears . If you wore swimmers’ goggles, they would get compressed onto your face at depth (which would hurt, and might look funny). This way, you can exhale through your nose into the mask to equalise (one of many techniques).
To be honest, a mask is no more claustrophobic to wear than a pair of wrap around sunglasses, and it’s probably going to be a lot more comfortable once you’ve found the one that suits your face shape.
Oscar enjoying all that space
Others worry about wearing a wetsuit, that they won’t feel free to move. They’re right about that: wearing a wetsuit on land is one of the least comfortable things you can do. They’re hot, restrictive, and tight. In the water, however, you won’t even notice it’s there. Wetsuits keep you warm (important in the Cape) and protect you from marine creatures that might sting or scratch you as you pass through their domain. Deciding you won’t like or try diving because wetsuits make you feel cramped is like deciding you aren’t going to eat Haagen-Dazs ice cream because you don’t like the font they write their product labels in.
All that water
Finally, some people worry that they’ll feel trapped under the weight of all the water above them, and that it’s impossibly far to get to the surface. There are a few answers to this:
Firstly, you’ll learn a skill called a CESA, or Controlled Emergency Swimming Ascent, on your Open Water course. This enables you to swim for the surface in a controlled, non-panicky manner if you need to. This is not something you’ll just do if you’re feeling uncomfortable one day – it’s for when you run out of air and have no buddy nearby to borrow an octo from.
Second, when you learn to dive you’re not suddenly going to start spending all your time at 30 metres. The PADIOpen Water course qualifies you to dive to 18 metres, and you have to do an Advanced course to get to 30 metres, and a Deep specialty to get to 40 metres. So these things come with time. Some divers have no interest in deep diving, and there’s nothing wrong with that – Tony and I spend most of our time in less than 10 metres of water because the best and easiest photographic opportunities are there, and we can stay down a looooong time because our air lasts forever! Your first diving experiences will be in relatively shallow water, and only as you get used to being underwater will your instructor gradually increase the depth you go to.
Looking up in the clear Atlantic
I will admit that when visibility is poor, one loses the feeling of having three beautiful dimensions around one to play in. But this is infrequent, and if you’re diving for fun, then you hopefully won’t have to get in the water when conditions aren’t great (unless you’re desperate to get wet, in which case you won’t care!). But the feeling of space when one drops into the gin-clear water of the Atlantic on a summer’s day is so extreme as to make one almost dizzy. Being underwater is the closest I get to flying, and I love it.
In conclusion, diving involves a fair amount of unfamiliar equipment, and is quite different to our day-to-day experiences as human beings on planet earth. You may not like it; but you probably will. If you’re not sure, sign up for a Discover Scuba Diving experience (DSD). Tony even sometimes does these in people’s swimming pools – just to give you a taste of the freedom that comes with breathing underwater. You can make an educated decision about diving after that.
Having done most of my diving in warm water I arrived in Cape Town armed with a 5 millimetre thick one piece wetsuit and a shorty to go over that, also in 5mm. This wetsuit had served me well and had done well over 700 dives. Being a custom-made suit it fits like a glove. The hoodie is attached to the shorty. I wanted it like that as I find a hood attached to the wetsuit makes my head feel spring loaded, and when turning your head it always feels like it wants to spring back.
It now has now done its time, has a few leaky holes and is fast becoming scruffy, as this photo Clare took on a dive we did on the BOS 400 demonstrates.
Glue on my knees in the Atlantic
Neoprene also breaks down eventually, it becomes waterlogged and looses its density and insulation properties. It now feels like a 3mm wetsuit and I get cold.
So what next, a new wetsuit, or a dry suit? (Or both?!)
Drysuits
The idea of a drysuit is very appealing, aptly named, it keeps you dry and you could go for a dive dressed in your Sunday best. The right thing to wear under a drysuit is an undergarment designed for the job.
The drysuit undergarment
These garments are most often fleece-lined and keep you warm.
Inside the drysuit undergarment
Neoprene or silicone rubber neck and wrist seals ensure no water enters the suit in these places and the boots are attached and part of the suit. A large watertight zipper opening allows you to step into the suit.
Full drysuit
Drysuits have a few more tricks, an inflator on the chest (most often) allows you to trim your buoyancy by putting air into the suit. This also prevents the suit from squeezing you at depth.
Drysuit showing neck seal and air vents
An adjustable deflate button, sometimes several, allow you to vent air or, set correctly, will vent automatically. An extra hose is required for your first stage and a good idea is to do a course on drysuit diving before you head off to the ocean. Most drysuit suppliers will give you an orientation dive with the purchase.
We dived in the Atlantic the first time I tried a drysuit in Cape Town, a windy day with a long boat ride, 6 degrees celcius on the bottom and I was warm as toast.
Drysuit diving in the Atlantic
Wetsuits
A decent wetsuit is also very good at keeping you warm and does not have the added buoyancy concerns of drysuits, nor does a small leak turn your dive into a freezing disaster.
Mares Flexa 8-6-5
Mares, a brand of dive gear, exceptional quality, not the cheapest, but most definitely one of the best, make this wetsuit. Called a Flexa 8-6-5 it has 8mm on the torso and on the upper legs and arms, 6mm on all the body joints, so your knees and elbows bend easily, and 5 mm on the rest. It has a built in back pad that give you extra padding where your BCD back plate sits against your body and very snug neck, wrist and ankle seals. I do like the front zip, but I don’t like the stiff velcro attachment on the neck and may have this removed.
Mares Flexa 8-6-5 showing neck seal
The water on the first day I tested the suit was 14 degrees celcius and I did two dives back to back, spending just under an hour and a half in the water, without feeling cold at all. The subsequent dives I have done in it have been a pleasure.
Mares Flexa 8-6-5
I know there are a lot of very good wetsuits available and both Reef and Coral will custom make a suit perfectly, but personally I rate this suit as one of the best.
Maybe your wetsuit smells funky because you perspired in it. Maybe there are other reasons… Whatever the cause, here are some tips for keeping it fresh and fragrant.
Give it a hot rinse
This is the most important part of regular pong prevention. Don’t waste your time dipping the suit into a communal rinsing tank at the dive centre. Unless you get there first, that water is full of contaminants…salt, body fluids and sand. The easiest way to do this is to take your suit in the shower with you, otherwise lay it down flat in the bath and give it a good once-over with the shower head. Hot water is better than cool water for breaking down the mineral salts from the ocean and your body.
Our garden after a day of diving
Hang it in the shade
After rinsing, hang your suit to dry on a thick wooden or plastic hanger, preferably one specially made for wetsuits. You can tape two normal plastic hangers together to make a (much cheaper) good solution. Try to keep the front and back of the suit apart so it can dry more quickly. Even a length of plastic piping pushed through the arms of the suit to make them stand out helps a lot with drying. (Plus, it makes the suit look like someone is in it, which scares away burglars and pigeons when it’s hanging outside!) Air circulation is key. Avoid direct sunlight, it will dry faster but will be stiff and hard to get on the next time you try.
Soap the suit
Every once in a while give your suit a shampoo. Scrub it well inside and out, using a sponge on the neoprene and a soft brush on any nylon or plushy linings. Almost any kind of soap will work to reduce the smell, but some are better than others. The best soaps for the job are “wetsuit shampoos” (check your local dive store) or a gentle baby shampoo like Johnson’s. Next best are regular bath soaps and shampoos.
I also use the cheapest, smelliest shampoos and bubble baths that I can find. Examples are Colgate shampoo and those 1.5 litre bottles of luridly coloured bubble bath that cost almost nothing. The cheaper it is, the stronger the smell, it seems! Dish and laundry soaps (like the green Sunlight laundry bars) are too harsh to use regularly on your wetsuit, but will do the job in an emergency. Don’t ever have your wetsuit dry cleaned (unless you want to destroy it)!
Clare and I occasionally put our suits through the washing machine – on the coolest temperature setting (it’s 30 degrees celcius on our Bosch), with mild organic laundry detergent (Pick n Pay and Woolworths have good in-house brands) and some baby fabric softener for smell (Sta-Soft has a good baby-safe fabric softener fragrance that is very mild and smells great). Turn off the spin cycle and let the suits air dry out of the sun. Just be careful when you open the drum – there will still be water inside if you didn’t spin the wetsuits, and arms and legs tend to trap gallons of liquid!
We also use laundry detergent to wash the suits by hand in my plastic tubs in the garden – the best seems to be something with enzymes in that will clean off the biological waste (you know what I’m talking about) inside the suit. Woolite, which works like a charm, has been discontinued (at least in Pick n Pay in South Africa) but something like Bio-Classic, added to the washing water and foamed by hand, also seems to work quite well. Purpose-made wetsuit shampoo will be your very best option for a long term solution – there are quite a few available.
Of course, all of this applies to booties too, which can develop an unearthly smell quite of their own accord. A good soak after rinsing in some Dettol or Savlon helps to keep bacteria at bay. Once dried I silcone the zips. I put talcum powder (the smellier the better) inside all my pairs now and then to keep them fresh. The only problem is that you may resemble a cocaine smuggler the first time you put them on after powdering. But your dive buddy won’t mind!
There is an often repeated joke that there are two types of diver: those who pee in their wetsuits and those who lie about it. Its true to say that having just paid handsomely for a new wetsuit the idea is not to pee in it. However, sooner or later it’s going to happen to you! This is why….
The physiology
Basically, you can’t help yourself. The physiological phenomenon in question is known as immersion diuresis, a term which refers to your body’s response to being under pressure. Blood is shifted to your body’s core because of the cold and pressure on your body, which increases your blood pressure. The hypothalamus gland thinks this means your total fluid volume is too high and tells your kidneys to make urine.
What can you do to avoid immersion diuresis? Avoid diuretics like coffee and other caffeine-rich drinks before you dive! Intentionally not drinking any liquids might seem like a sensible idea, but dehydration predisposes you to decompression sickness and saps your energy.
Try to stay warm. A by-product of your body’s reaction to cold is urine. Wearing a warm chicken vest under your wetsuit may save you from having to empty your bladder while underwater. Make sure you have good gloves, thick booties and a decent hoodie. On the boat, stay out of the wind if you can, wear an anorak and a beanie or cap.
Be sober, healthy, and well rested. Some over-the-counter and prescription medications can interfere with your body’s heat conservation activities, typically by hindering the constriction of blood vessels near the skin. Antihistamines, taken for hayfever and other allergies, are particular culprits as is alcohol. Make sure you are physically fit.
How to avoid it
What can you do to prevent urination on a dive? Drink less water? The counter-intuitive answer is that you should drink more.
Deliberately dehydrating yourself, in the hope you can hold it until you surface and get out of your suit, just makes the problem worse. Because of immersion diuresis and your body’s involuntary reaction to the chilly water, chances are you’ll have to pee anyway. And dehydration makes the result stronger in odor and colour.
If you do have to pee in your wetsuit…
If you’re well-hydrated, your urine will be almost clear and nearly odourless. So it can be your little secret.
There’s no health risk to urinating in your wetsuit. If you’ve watched Survivor or read anything about treating stings from jelly fish and bluebottles, you may recall that urine is sterile, unless you already have a urinary tract infection. The worst you have to fear is a case of nappy rash if the urine stays against your skin for a long time, and this is much less of a problem when your urine is diluted.
Long Beach parking area, the divemobile, and the shower in the background
The solution is to open your wetsuit under water and rinse it between dives, if you can stand the rush of cold water. If you’re at Long Beach for a training dive, there’s a conveniently located shower in the parking area!
Cape Town water is not warm. The Atlantic ocean’s temperature ranges between 8 and 13 degrees, while False Bay can be anywhere between 10 degrees (very unusual) to 20 degrees (also rather unusual, and generally combined with visibility that can be measured in centimetres rather than metres), with an average somewhere around the 15 degree mark.
Being cold increases your risk of decompression sickness, and it makes you stupid and slow, and hence a danger to yourself and your buddy. It dimishes your enjoyment of the dive and can lead you to get out of the water when you still have plenty of air and time at your disposal.
Here are a couple of suggestions – tried and tested by Tony, a lifelong warm-water diver, and me, a boat-diving wussy…
Gear
Justin demonstrates the virtues of a good wetsuit
Ah, you say, cold water means you need a drysuit, or at least a nice thick (5mm plus a 5mm shorty on top, or otherwise at least 7mm) wetsuit to keep out the chill. This is true, but there are three other essential components to a Cape diver’s gear that can make a HUGE difference.
Booties
Get thick booties – the thickest ones you can find, especially if you have poor circulation. If you can, wear them with the cuffs inside your wetsuit.
Thick booties on the boat
Gloves
Gloves, at least 3mm thick, are essential. Don’t try and dive without them – you won’t be able to operate your camera or inflator hose after a while. Your fingers are not well-insulated. Again, tuck gloves into your sleeves if you can.
Hoodie
The hoodie is actually the most essential part of your gear. While it appears to be a myth that the majority of body heat is lost through your head, if it’s the only part of you that’s exposed, it WILL be the primary source of heat loss. Heat loss through the head increases with exercise up to a point, and like the hands, your head is not well insulated for the most part.
When Tony moved to Cape Town from Mozambique a year ago, he was quite resistant to wearing a hoodie, and got very, very cold (almost paralysed after a dive… not good) for the first while. He found a loose hoodie (not attached to his wetsuit) that didn’t make him feel restricted, and we are now able to do one hour dives in 12 degree water with relative ease (as long as we don’t sit around TOO much). I think this has been the greatest assistance to him in adapting to the 10 degree lower temperatures here, compared to further north.
Other techniques
A couple of other techniques that have worked for us…
Move about
If you get cold, swim a bit. We tend to stay still for longish periods, interacting with fish or taking photos or just looking, and this tends to cause one to get cold quite fast. Go for a short swim when you start getting chilled – it makes a big difference.
Wear a jacket on the boat ride
One of those cheap and nasty anoraks with a white flannel lining can transform your boat ride – specially the ride back to the slipway, after you’re wet. Put it on straight over your wetsuit. This can make a huge difference as it almost eliminates wind chill on your torso.
Congratulations to Kate, who arrived in Cape Town on 8 October 2010 having never dived before, and is leaving on 10 December qualified as a Divemaster, with more than 60 dives and over 45 hours underwater under her belt!
Kate demonstrates incorrect snorkel technique (in the car, on the wrong side)
While she was here we dived almost every day, in all sorts of conditions. She dived in visibility ranging from pea soup (with croutons) to over 10 metres, water temperatures from 11 degrees up to 18 degrees, and experienced a wide range of what Cape Town diving has to offer. She even did a dive in just a shorty wetsuit – the water LOOKED warm but wasn’t – and I am pretty sure she’s the first diver EVER to do something like that in this city!
She experienced everything from orally inflating another diver’s BCD at 15 metres, to securing Clare’s cylinder when it came loose (oops!), tying knots underwater, a meeting with a very frisky sevengill cowshark on her first ever dive with sharks at Shark Alley, and using a lift bag to ferry our artificial reef out to the correct depth.
Kate transporting part of the artificial reef
She spent a lot of time towing the buoy line, inflated SMBs and balloons underwater (the latter was highly amusing to watch), mapped wrecks and the pipeline at Long Beach, exchanged information on the layout of the SAS Pietermaritzburgwith wikivoyage guruPeter Southwood, enjoyed high-speed boat rides to various local dive sites, filled cylinders at a local dive centre, and navigated at night in order to find the yellow buoy at Long Beach. She’s breathed from a hang tank at a safety stop after a deep dive, and from another diver’s octo while swimming to shore. She’s a pro with a compass. She’s also done some underwater photography – thanks to her, the gobies at Long Beach have a serious complex about the paparazzi!
Kate and Clare getting their bearings on the beach. To infinity and beyond!
Kate dived with and without a computer, in various types of gear and several different wetsuits. She knows the difference between an A-clamp and a DIN fitting. She removes and replaces inserts on cylinders with her eyes closed, changes O-rings, and puts on her own kit. She has filled over twenty cylinders as part of her compressor operator course.
Kate was also a fantastic ambassador for diving for the various students of mine that she interacted with. As part of her Divemaster training, she led dives, demonstrated skills, helped students with their kit, and took on various tasks in order to prepare her for the responsibilities that go with this qualification. She did all of this with good humour, good sense and great precision.
Kate helps Anna with her hoodie
During her stay, Kate buddied with all kinds of divers. She met Russians, Swedes, Canadians, French and fellow British divers, and some regte egte South Africans. She assisted foreign-language students with understanding the questions on the quizzes and exams when their English wasn’t up to the task. She got on famously with everyone she encountered, and was never grumpy or a prima donna.
In the ocean she encountered seals (she’s not a fan), giant short-tailedsting rays, hundreds of octopus, sevengill cowsharks, and her favourite friends – barehead gobies! They’re going to miss you, Kate… And especially your underwater singing!
Look at that sad little goby face!
The courses Kate completed during her stay in Cape Town are:
I am confident that she is a safe, capable diver with excellent experience under her belt so far, and I look forward to hearing about her future exploits in the underwater world.
Lots of boot space can be useful when you need to get dressed in the rain. Here, Kate demonstrates the proper technique for putting on a wetsuit inside a NissanTiida, which apparently has 467 litres of luggage space.
You don’t need to be an Olympic swimmer in order to learn to scuba dive. Scuba diving isn’t about covering big distances or swimming really fast. In fact, we take great care not to over-exert ourselves in the water, and if you swim too fast you won’t see a thing! Also, divers wear fins, which add a lot of power to your kick stroke, and wetsuits and BCDs, which assist with buoyancy.
However, you do need to be at least comfortable in the water in order to become a scuba diver. If you’re absolutely terrified of water and struggle to take a shower without a lifeguard on standby, scuba diving is not the sport for you. If you can’t swim at all, you do need to learn to swim before you learn to dive. If you’re a half way ok swimmer who can hold your own in your pool at home (but not necessarily swim the English Channel), then let’s talk!
There are swimming tests for the various courses (the precise name of the skills being tested is watermanship). For Open Water, you have to do the following, either in a swimsuit or wearing a wetsuit and weighted for neutral buoyancy (i.e. wearing a weight belt):
swim 200 metres continuously without any swim aids,
OR swim 300 metres continuously wearing fins, snorkel and mask ;
float unassisted in water too deep to stand in, for 10 minutes.
swim 800 metres non-stop, face in the water, wearing mask, snorkel and fins, with hands tucked in;
tow or push another diver for 100 metres in full gear, non-stop;
tread water for 15 minutes in water too deep to stand in, hands out of the water for the last 2 minutes.
At Open Water level, these swims are not timed. The Divemaster and Instructor swims are timed. You can use whatever stroke you want, but doggy paddle may get tiring! The swims are very important to confirm that you have basic water skills and can take care of yourself (and others, at DM and Instructor level).
If you’re a decent swimmer already, improving your swimming fitness, stamina and technique will definitely improve the quality of your dives. Not having to think about your position and attitude in the water will enable you to focus on the other things around you, and get more out of the experience. Developing your swimming muscles (that’s almost all your muscles!) and your cardiovascular endurance in the pool will make diving feel a lot less physically strenuous, and you’ll be far more relaxed knowing that your body is in a condition to handle the sport with no strain at all.
You should be comfortable on the surface as well as below the surface.
Finally, being a confident swimmer will make you a more confident scuba diver. While we try not to rush on dives, you never know when a situation will arise that will require you to swim towards or away from something quickly. If you do boat dives, you’ll need to float on the surface at the start and/or end of the dive, waiting for the other divers to gather together, or for the boat to pick you up. Strong swimming technique and developed muscles will help you in both these situations. Basic swimming skills should be part of your arsenal as a fully prepared and competent scuba diver.
If you are in need of swimming lessons – whether it’s to start from scratch or improve your stroke, contact Swimlab, run by Hilton and Wayne Slack, at the Wynberg Military Base swimming pool and in gyms around Cape Town. They offer swimming lessons, coaching, training for high performance swimmers, and even sell swimming gear.
You are in the middle of your Open Water course. There is possibly some pressure from your instructor/dive centre to make a scuba gear purchase. It is time to stop and think.
This will not make me very popular in the dive industry… But I do not recommend you buy your first set of dive gear without a fair amount of research. Sure, this can easily be done on the web or in one day by visiting a few dive centers, but the reality of the matter is you are new to the sport, you have yet to build a vast data bank in your head of the multitude of options available, you are impressed by your instructor’s opinion, and are swayed into buying the gear. A month later you decide diving is not for you, sky diving is the next option and you try and offload the gear with a ”hardly used dive gear” advert… You are going to lose money.
Don't let this be you!
But let’s be positive and say that you have decided that diving is the best thing you can do clothed. Some time has passed. You are done with the Adventures in Diving, have at least 10 dives in your dive log and want to dive the world.
You have booked your flights to the Red Sea and are starting to pack, thrilled with the idea of arriving at the dive centre with all of your own gear looking like a hard core diver. You even have your own heavy duty dive bag with wheels, handles and pockets galore.
You are now faced with a dilemma…
That fancy dive bag, the wheeled one with pockets, weighs 6 kgs empty. That won’t work, so you haul out the old lightweight bag you used on your previous travels.
The water temperature where you are going is 30 degrees, ouch, that 7mm two piece wetsuit won’t work there, so you decide to leave it at home and rent one. You discover your fins weigh a ton and are so long they wont fit in the old travel bag you are now using for weight saving, your very expensive BCD with 6 pockets, a back plate and 8 D-rings is also far too heavy… and to top it all your top of the range regulator is way too expensive for check in luggage and way too heavy for hand luggage. You decide to leave the whole lot at home and rent the hard and soft gear at your destination.
Ah, that ”brightest dive light in the world” that you bought, weighing in at 3kgs, is a bit too heavy so you decide to leave it at home too, and rent a light.
You can get dive lights in a wide variety of strengths, shapes, weights and profiles. Do your research!
So you arrive at your destination, rent everything you need and have a wonderful trip. You cram as many dives possible into every day and head home feeling wonderful. On the way home you reminisce on the dives, replaying them in your mind over and over again (this always happens when you are a dive junkie, trust me).
”That lightweight BCD I used with rear inflation is much more comfortable than my side inflation one… Hmm…”
”The rental dive torch was small, light and compact, and fitted easily into the one tiny pocket on the BCD, I wonder why I thought I need a BCD with 6 pockets? Hmm…”
”It was real easy getting into the rental wetsuit with a zip in front, why does my wetsuit not have that? Hmm…”
“Those short fins were so light and never made my legs tired – why do my fins feel so heavy?… Hmm!”
”That tiny mask they gave me was a breeze to clear, but mine is so big it takes several breaths to empty. Hmm…”
When you arrive home you re-evaluate you dive gear. It’s not junk, by no means, but not quite what you have found to be the best option. So you embark on a long, slow, deliberate road to replace these items with items in the style you have found to be ”your comfort zone”.
What to do?
This point – of having well-formed preferences for different types of gear – is only reached once you have dived for a while, once you have done 10-20 dives. There is no way you are able to reach this point half way into your Open Water course.
Many people will advocate that in the interest of health and hygiene you purchase your own soft gear, wetsuit, booties, fins, mask and snorkel, and some dive centres will only conduct your training if you make this purchase.
In all fairness to the dive centre, sales person, or your instructor, they will give you sound advice, and no manufacturer makes ”junk” in this industry. But the advice will be based on their own style, based on what they have available in their store and they will seldom recommend you shop around. It would be foolish to do so, but before you rush out and buy, try different configurations, rent different gear and decide what works for you.
For some general advice about buying gear, you can visit my follow-up posts on hard (BCD, regulator, cylinder) and soft (wetsuit, mask, fins, booties) gear.
