Day 2.
It’s bad that I’m on day two and I’m halfway through the trip, but anyway. The next morning I felt better, not too much, but I wasn’t throwing up anymore. I didn’t want to go SCUBA diving but I didn’t want to lose money when I’d paid for diving already or spend 4 days in Cairns doing nothing even less. Plus there was no way Hendrik was letting me out of this one. I ate one slice of raisin toast and took another one for lunch. Luckily we first had a classroom session during which we learned about calculating how long and how deep you’re allowed to stay under the water. The precautions have to be taken because of nitrogen build up in the body which is a bad thing because it can form air bubbles in the blood stream, which can kill you.
There are three charts that allow you to calculate how deep you can go if you have already dived that day and our instructor spent the time showing us again and again how to use them.
“Do you all understand?” No, I didn’t understand. The numbers and letters were all just gibberish, and I was feeling rather overwhelmed again and hoping I just wouldn’t get sick. Luckily, there are computers that calculate everything for divers better than any chart could, and we would be using them when diving, so I wasn’t too worried.
Then it was back to the pool, to practice the skills like filling the mask with water underwater and then emptying it by tilting the head upwards and blowing through the nose and practice going down again. I went down to the bottom of the pool very slowly, equalizing all the time, feeling as if I was squeezing air out of my ears, and I made it with hardly any pain at all. I felt much better by the afternoon and therefore, felt much better about the whole SCUBA thing altogether.
After the pool we had to take and pass a test to be able to continue being certified. It was multiple choice and most of the questions were easy except for the chart calculations. The instructor purposefully left the room during the test, because he didn’t want anyone to fail either. So I filled in the same circles Hendrik had filled in and passed the test.
Tomorrow we were supposed to head out on the boat and our instructor gave us his sales pitch about owning your own mask and how better SCUBA diving will be with your own. It was true that it is more comfortable with your own equipment and you have a better chance of it not leaking. Plus we wanted to buy snorkeling gear for our trip anyway and figured we might as well invest in something that’s quality and has a lifetime guarantee, as I was told I’ll never again have to buy a mask and snorkel even if it breaks no matter if I stomp on it on purpose.