Scuba Diving with Sheila

Over the New Year holidays (January 2010), I had a great time teaching Sheila to dive.

Sheila had emailed Global Dive about obtaining her PADI Open Water certificate while her and her husband were traveling through New Zealand.
Sheila is from Scotland and had been spending some time with BSAC divers in the swimming pool – and we had been emailing before her and her husband arrived in New Zealand so I knew how absolutely keen she was.
Sheila is a lovely lady.  She has a real go-get-em attitude when it comes to making the most of her life.
She had decided that after many years of pain, then an operation and recovery, that now was the time to learn to scuba dive.

The ultimate goal was to spend Friday and Saturday completing the theory and the confined water dives and then we were going to head up to the Poor Knights Islands Marine Reserve on Sunday and we were going out with Yukon Charters.

So Friday morning, we started off on theory – bright and early.
And it was very early for Sheila!  She had not long arrived in New Zealand.  We cracked through half of the theory and then headed down to the pool.  And the same again for Saturday.
We didnt quite get Confined Session 4 and 5 finished, however it was enough to pack the car and to head up to the Poor Knights to complete Open Water Dives One and Two.
And I think that was the result we were going for – to get out into the ocean and to spend some time diving in our most amazing Marine Reserve.

There were a couple of things that we thought might make us change things around a little – firstly, Sheila is 71 and rather slight.
But we had equipment to fit, PADI allows us to alter the skill as long as the performance requirement was met – and there was no other problem there.
Secondary to that, Sheila has an artificial hip.  And where I thought this might mean that it weighed more – no.
Not one itty bit.  The hip was extremely buoyant!  It took us a little while in the pool to wriggle some weights around to get things comfortable – but we got there in the end.
One thing I try to convey to my students – or hopefully something that I try and help them understand – is not to put too much pressure on themselves.  Just to slow down, relax and talk themselves into skills and practice – not out of it.

After finishing up relatively early on Saturday, we headed back to the shop and all took off having most things ready for the next day.

Sunscreen and Hats on 'Arrow'

We met up at Global Dive on Sunday morning at 6am – Bronson our Divemaster was driving us to Tutukaka – we loaded the truck and took off.  The sun came up on the journey north and it was looking like a great day!

We arrived at ‘Arrow’ and started loading our gear.
We had a wonderful welcome from Noel and Jo – and Paulie.
And we lathered on the sunscreen.
On board was Mary – who is another older lady diver and her and Sheila hit it off wonderfully.
Tea, coffee, biscuits, lollies and we were at Marys Wall for the first dive.

While we were anchoring up, gearing up and generally mucking around, we could see the sand on the bottom – of the Sand Gardens.  Dive! Tutukaka were anchored up to our port side and they had all their kayaks over board with snorkelers and divers all over the show.  Oh yes!  It was shaping up to be a great day.

We waited for the boat to clear and then geared up and headed over the side for weight checks.
We needed to do another weight check – for ocean diving as opposed to the pool – and also to make sure that the arrangement we had made worked well in the ocean with the floaty hip.
It took a bit of wiggling around for the descent and we headed off.
I have to say a HUGE thank you to my Divemaster – Bronson – who was brilliant!  He spent the whole day right next to Sheila, not crowding her (well I don’t think so), but watching me, flicking from side to side depending on where we needed him.  Hopefully he had a good dive too!

We did not make it all the way to Marys Wall.  There was a little lift at the site so we spent a good half an hour cruising down and around the boulders before the wall – watching the Trevally flicking past us and inspecting the Black Angelfish.

During our surface interval we took a trip into Riko Riko Cave.
Noel blew his horn – a beautifully carved Maori horn that his wife Jo found on a dive up in the back of the cave – and he told us stories of the bands and the singers (and possible submarines) that have been in that cave.

Our second dive was going to be at Magic Wall.
When you can stand on the back of the boat and see the bottom of Magic Wall – its going to be a great dive!

We geared up and all headed down the anchor line.  We settled over the rocks in the bay and then I led us down to Magic Wall.
With 15-20m visibility and hundreds and hundreds of fish, we spent a nice half an hour cruising backwards and forwards – watching all the demoiselles and the angelfish, the moray eels and the scorpionfish, the clown nudibranchs and the last remaining blue bell turnicates on the walls.

A spectacular last dive of the day followed up with steaming mugs of soup from Noel and Paulie.

A big thanks to Bronson for carrying everything – and I mean everything!  And driving.
Sheila said “for a scary tattooed man, he’s a gentle soul” and thats true, he is.  But I also know that he really enjoyed spending time with Sheila too.

Thank you to Noel and Mary for being so welcoming.  And to Paulie for all the space he made for us.

Some more photographs from my iPhone on the day – and some of the scenes and sea life that we saw are in the Picasa Slideshow below :

Sheila Dives the Poor Knights Islands Marine Reserve	Sheila dives the Poor Knights