Scuba Diving Training, Trips, News and Blog
Specialty Instructor Training
Alex and i headed up to Tutukaka on friday night to spend the weekend with Pete Mesley doing our PADI specialty instructor training.
when we arrived, the party for the raising of the Tui anchor was in full swing.
and as the weather had been complete and total bollocks that day and all diving was cancelled, lets just say that everyone was pretty much hammered. with a capital Hammer. we met some people from PADI and caught up with the peoples that we know and love in tutukaka.
saturday dawned bright and lovely and we headed down to the marina to load all our stuff on to Henrick J to head out to the wrecks. we were scheduled to dive the tui in the morning and the waikato for two dives in the afternoon. i hadnt dived on the tui before so after seeing her anchor the previous night – well i was hell of a excited!
i had Wreck One as an assignment – to plan the dive and carry it out as if pete and alex were my students. pete would ask me what each divers air and no deco time was and as the instructor, you need to know within 10 or so bar. i also needed to make sure that we returned to the line in time without a decompression stop. i didnt quite get one of my students to move fast enough so he had a “mandatory” 3 min deco stop. and that in real life would have been a NO-NO!
pete's breakfast of champions! full on burger (preservative and colouring) flavour
we returned back to tutukaka for tank fills and then headed out to the waikato where pete completed a reeling off and penetration workshop for alex and i. it was interesting and quite hard work and we were just working inside the helicopter hangar of the waikato which is actually a huge open space!
after the next return and tank fills in tutkaka, we returned back to the waikato for alexs turn to lead – Naturalist One.
the marine life – fish and animals and plants – on the waikato is amazing. there are leatherjackets schooling, vast spreads of anemones and there are fans growing on the area above the bridge.
sunday also dawned pretty bright but not as clear. there were a few spits of rain in the sky. but who cares!! under the ocean, its all wet anyways. we were headed out to the knights on board Bright Arrow with Ben as our skipper.
we headed out to the knights and anchored up around hope point. this morning alex and i were doing Deep One and Deep Two with each of us completing the dive plan and briefing and then leading the dive making sure all performance requirements were met. theoretially, we are not supposed to be looking at anything whilst we are training but its so hard not too!! on the second dive at hope point, there were so many kingfish around us that i am pretty sure we did 6-8 minutes instead of the 3.
we’d been a bit cheeky and jumped in to do an extra dive … but then we had another dive that day too.
ben headed us up to middle arch – one of mine and alexs favourite spots. pete was going to do a photography workshop with us.
i headed over the side with my Sea and Sea and alex was going to use petes Nikon. i spent about 30 minutes with a mosiac moray and the entrance to the arch and until some water started to fog up the screen, i was pretty happy with the results!
i can hear it telling me ........ "Tara! Pete said NO LOOKING WHILST TRAINING"
