Brides and grooms who (want to) dive.

MrsDrink

Jealous!!
The Great Barrier Reef is what interested me in diving in the first place. As a child I had a photobook of it, and from then I wanted to learn to dive. It is most definitely on my must see list!

MrsDrink

jtr2803 wrote: »

Which made me laugh and flooded my mask.

When I was doing my OW confined water dives (and then later the open water dives) me and my instructor were just giggling the whole time - every time I completed a skill we had a giggle of joy. Needless to say I am a master at mask clearing lol. In fact I was doing it before she even checked the skill and ticked it off officially :rotfl:

I can thoroughly recommend Amarilla Divers in Tenerife if anyone ever wants to either do a course or just go for a dive with a great bunch of people. If you search for things to do on Trip Advisor and search for their name you will see a full in depth review I wrote - and I meant every word of it - they were amazing!

johannalf88

jtr2803 wrote: »

As MrsD says, you won't be allowed to take pics, the OW dives are purely to asses your skills and buoyancy, it might also depend where you then dive, I have heard of school not allowing anyone with less than 20/40 dives to take a camera down as it does distract you (and I agree) but personally I haven't come across this yet. I would also, unusually, recommend doing the OW dives out there, the reason I say that is because if you do it here you will probably have to wear a dry suit or 7mm suit and diving in a 3mm in warm water is totally different. You def need to dive with little or no suit to get used to it.

The dive centre at Vilamendhoo were fantastic, two dive guides specifically, I ended up having a private dive guide on my last dive and it was my best EVER dive, he helped me learn where to place a finger for balance when pic taking, he found me loads of cool stuff, showed me how the giant clams spit out water jets (which made me laugh and flooded my mask) and how the little blue triggers pulse when they hide in the rock.

If you want a bit of resort help with where to go in the Maldives I am more than happy to help, you are welcome to PM me

I was thinking surely it wasn't allowed! Tbh not that bothered about taking pictures... For starters don't have an underwater camera! As long as we can have a pic of us in the gear for the thank you cards! (we r asking for honeymoon money, so want a pic of the activity that the recipient paid for on the front of the thank you card!)

Well I will probably take you up on that offer! I just wish we could book it now, but OH needs to get time off. Will be bothering you with the questions late feb early march! :rotfl:

jtr2803

I am now counting down the days until my next dive in the Indian Ocean.....approx 70 to go!

It's my birthday while we are out there but my mum has offered to buy me my last few bits that I want for diving, it's nothing major -just a regulator bag, a white slate for taking pics, a weight belt and a few more memory cards

MrsDrink

Still jealous!!

jtr2803

But you get a whole week of diving with your hubby!! I am sooooo jealous! Am trying to work out how many dives I can get in this year, my initial aim was to get up to 50 logged dives but that's going to be pushing it, especially if we do go away next March as I will need to save some leave for that

Am hoping to do 5/6 in Kenya (unless the sites are poor) and maybe 10 in the Maldives but that depends on their schedules and whether I can buddy up with someone for house reef diving, if I can, then I will probably do an unlimited 6 day package and squeeze a few more in :rotfl:

MrsDrink

MrD's boots arrived this week!! Hurrah!! Now just need to get him a Suunto Vyper (to match mine :rotfl:). Then we have everything we need apart from BCDs, Regs and weight belts which we can easily hire. (Although after a nightmare with some people not respecting that when we say NOTHING we mean NOTHING when asked what we'd like as a wedding present - we've begrudgingly agreed to a SMALL contribution to them).

Am trying to get us some pool time booked in so we can brush up on some skills.

Oh and dive bags. Any recommendations? Would like to buy one big enough to fit two full sets of equipment (minus the tanks).

Also those of you who have all the equipment - roughly how much does it all weigh? With Thomas Cook we can have 10k extra 'sports equipment' for £20 (an extra 5k is added with the production of a PADI card). I'm just wondering whether one extra bag would be enough? (I think it would be but don't want to be stung)

jtr2803

Hey MrsD!

Excellent news on the boots . A computer is the one thing I don't have yet, might have to hire one when I am in resort but fortunately it's not too costly. My Cressi Flex BCD weighs just 2kg as it doesn't have a fixed back plate, so perfect for travelling. I will put that and my fins in my suitcase but I bought a Scubapro regulator bag for my shiny new regs, it was £15 from Ebay and I am planning on taking them in my hand luggage as I don't really want them being thrown around.

Have a look on the Simply Scuba website for bags, if you don't have regs/bcds then you only need a small one and 10kg will be fine. You really won't need a wetsuit for July in the Red Sea, even at 20m! I bought an Oceanic all in one rash suit for about £25 which I use for diving (and snorkeling actually), if you can find one then I would highly recommend it. I actually get most of my kit from Ebay, there are lots of specialist dive shops on there .

jtr2803

Ah my dive last weekend was called off due to snow so hoping to dive tomorrow to test my kit out although I have a rotten cold so hoping I feel better. It's only a few weeks till my U/W Photography course now and I am really looking forward to that. I leak tested the new camera case last weekend and it seems water-tight. Just need to tighten up some of the knobs on it.

OH has agreed to try snorkeling this year :T. I need him to try the mask that I bought him almost two years ago but if it doesn't fit I will get him a new one. I think he will be absolutely fine with getting the hang of it

MrsDrink

Oooo thanks for that JTR - and yaaaaaaaaay that your OH has agreed to try snorkelling - although ha - I far prefer diving to snorkelling - I feel safer somehow. When I'm snorkelling I don't really like going out of my depth.