One of the things Jason and I wanted to do before he left was take an advanced open water diver class. That's what we did this weekend. The kids were pretty happy because they both got to go on sleepovers with friends. Basically you do five adventure dives to include a night dive, deep dive and practicing navigation and photography. All of our dives were from a boat and the current was pretty strong at one of the locations, which made for an interesting entry to the site. We traded in our old camera, which flooded on the last dive we did, and opted for one with the strobe. You can see how much better the pictures are.
These were some of the best dives we have done. The night dive was really cool. Everyone had chem lights on them and flashlights. It looked like something from outer space. Super cool!!! I was really nervous in the beginning, but it wasn't scary at all. We saw some octupus and some creatures that only come out at night.
Sunday's dive brought us within 5 feet of a nice little white tipped reef shark hanging around a sunken plane. It's hard to guess size and distance underwater, but we think he was about 5 feet long. Jason had gotten closer to him than I did and actually face to face, I know you're surprised. I was wondering if we would be practicing rescue diver techniques that day too! He tried to take some closer pictures, but when he pushed the button, the card was full and wouldn't take anymore pictures. Talk about mad! He spent the next minute deleting pictures, but the shark had left by then.
We are now qualified to dive to 100 ft. We will be doing some night dives with the kids, hopefully this week. Right now the surf on the North Shore is projected to be 16-20 ft, so we have to see how that effects the rest of the island water.
