Someone's First Discover Scuba Diving Adventure

The day after the Cenote experience, was time for another diving experience,

Leah was going to try Scuba diving for the first time.  Abby was not feeling 100% and didn't want to go so it would just be me and Who #2 for the dive.

Prodive offered some excellent professional instruction, and their DSD program was much better and more thorough than the one I had back in 2006.

They even gave her a booklet to read and a quiz to do prior to the day.

At 11 am, I took both kids to check Leah into Prodive.  They got her suited up and all her gear ready.

I had a court hearing at 1:00 so I had to run back to the room and do it by Zoom as they were doing the classroom instruction.  Abby got to sit in on the class portion and there were two other divers, a father and son going for their DSD as well.

They then headed to the pool to practice before heading out to the ocean.

The hearing went well and I ran back to Prodive with my gear and got things ready.  I was coming along to dive it as well, and the instructor figured since this would be dive #280 for me he wouldn't have to worry about me all that much.

The Discover Scuba Diving by Prodive instructor, Andy, did an excellent dive brief and was excellent. We then went down to the beach and got on a boat and headed out to the reef. The boat has two other groups of divers as well. A short 15-minute boat ride and we were there.

Leah got to do a backroll off a boat for the first time. 

Basic instruction was roll in with hand on mask and reg in mouth, and then after surfacing go grab the down-line and wait for the instructor and other two DSD divers.

We then descended on the downline to visit the reef.

The instructor then had all three of them move together with him, typically holding hands as a group to stick together.

Certainly a high workload for that instructor, but he did a fantastic job keeping them together.

I would swim around them taking pictures and having fun.

Good amount of surge on the reef, you could not kick and just let the current push you back and forth.

 

Lots of cool fish to see.

We saw a stingray:

 A flounder:

A puffer fish:

Quite a few pipefish:

Leah had a great time.

With the current down there, we were not heading back to the boat.

Instead, the instructor launched a surface marker buoy. We then surfaced,  and the boat came to us to pick us up, and we climbed up the ladder to get back on board.

We then took the boat back to the beach and hopped out of the boat into the surf. 

Leah had a great time for her first dive experience, and is seriously thinking of getting certified as a diver.