It was Wednesday and Day 2 of my scuba diving course!

We started by getting all our gear sorted. For those of you who aren’t too familiar with scuba diving this is what you need:

• A BCD : this is the ‘backpack’ you wear when you scuba dive, which can be inflated or deflated and carries the tank and breathing tube (known as the regulator).

• A wet suit, shoes, and gloves (Cape Town has cold water!! 12/13 degrees!)
• Flippers + mask and snorkel
• Weight belt
• The regulator (second stage), octopus, low pressure hose, pressure gauge (console)

• Air cylinder

After wet suits were on, into the pool we went! We had a set of skills we were to complete throughout the day and skill 1: swim 200m. This didn’t seem too bad 🙂

Then we learned how to assemble our BCDs, do buddy checks, put our BCDs on, and suddenly we were breathing under water!

It was the strangest feeling to breathe under water. In the beginning it was a bit uncomfortable, as I felt I had to get out of the water to breathe properly. It did take some time to get used to being under water for so long, but after a while, I was getting a good hang of it.

We practiced various skills such as:

• Flooding our masks full with water and emptying it
• Taking our BCDs on and off under water
• Taking our weight belts on and off under water
• Taking the regulator (the breathing tube) in and out of our mouths
• Turning our air off to feel what it’s like to be out of air
• Practicing going up without having any air
• Taking masks on and off
• Sharing air with your partner if you happen to be out of air
• Rolling backwards into the water

We successfully completed all the tasks and it had felt great to become comfortable getting used to breathing under water and I had scuba dived for the first time in my life! The learning curve was steep.

We ended the day by taking the theoretical exam which was successfully passed, so now we were ready to head for the ocean on Day 3!