My last dive was in the Philippines in 1977, but as I am going to be spending a week at the San Souci Resort in Jamaica in a week or so, and diving is one of the included activities, I wanted to take a refresher and with a certified dive shop rather than the resort type of thing offered at San Souci. I contacted my local dive shop and tonight was the class.

I arrived and met my fellow trainees, two gentlemen and a lady as well as the instructor. We went over what we would be covering in the class. The amusing port was when the instructor ask when everyone had certified. I won that particular deal with my 1976 certification, which was more than ten years before even the instructor's cert date.

We then moved to the pool area where we spent a couple of hours going through the basics of modern SCUBA diving. Needless to say things have changed substantially since I went through the program. I was happy to find I was as comfortable in the water as I had been those many years ago. The equipment differences were substantial. No longer do we use weight belts, but the weights are loaded into pouches that snap in place to the bouncy compensator device (BCD). Back in my day, all you had to worry about was the regulator hose, now there are two regulator hoses, a hose for the dive computer, and another one for the BCD inflator valve. In a way, all this stuff flying around seems to be more of a problem, but it does make diving safer, especially if you have to share your tank with a buddy. In fact, they don't even teach buddy breathing, which was sharing a single regulator, anymore since you have a complete separate regulator on a yellow hose for this eventuality.

I had a great time and am looking forward to Jamaica... Largo Lives!!!

_________________
Pyrat
Reflections in a double bourbon...