I think we all have those little dreams we carry around with us. Given the chance, you’d learn to play the piano, go skydiving or build a shed. For me, one of those distant dreams is diving.

And because of the choices I’ve made this year, I suddenly find myself somewhere where learning to dive isn’t just accessible and cheap, it’s what the whole place revolves around. So I’d be a fool not to chase my dreams.

Hydronauts

When I was sitting in George Town in Malaysia having a beer with Andy, the conversation turned to what we wanted to do in Thailand. I mentioned that I’d been thinking about learning to dive. Andy immediately told me he’d met several divemasters, and apparently also someone who had spent many years on Koh Tao.

Fast forward to Koh Pha Ngan, where I book my Open Water 20 dive course with Hydronauts on the recommendation of Andy’s contact. After a short chat, we’ve sorted out the course, which will teach me to dive down to 18 metres, along with accommodation and the deposit. The next email I receive asks me to create a profile on DiveRaid.com, sign up for an e-learning course and start reading and completing the first five of ten lessons, each with its own quiz.

For as long as I’ve heard people talk about diving, I’ve had the impression that it’s a formality, with someone quickly showing you how a tank works before you’re thrown in at the deep end. So I wasn’t prepared to study physics and biology before I’d so much as seen a pool.

In short, the theory is about understanding that diving is close to an extreme sport, and that you can very easily harm the environment, yourself and your dive buddy, and in the worst case lose your life. That’s why you learn physics to understand and control buoyancy, and biology to understand pressure and its effects on the body. There are plenty of other important topics, but broadly speaking you need to avoid drowning, avoid damaging the marine environment by staying in control, and avoid injuring yourself on the way back up.

Even though the theory caught me off guard, it also reassured me about my choice. Hydronauts wasn’t the cheapest option. Being met with clearly well-developed course material and important information right from the start made a good first impression.

Getting Started

My course is three days plus an introduction day. On the introduction day I meet my instructor, Axel. He’s a German guy about my age with over a thousand dives in his logbook. We hit it off fairly well from the start, which is lucky, because for the next three days I’m more or less constantly in his company.

At the introduction meeting we go over what we need to get through in such a short time. I have an exam in dive theory on day two, and before that I’m doing a session in the pool with the gear on. After the exam there are four planned open water dives. Two to 12 metres and two to 18 metres.

A quick word on the teaching: it’s right back to school, with lessons, homework, quizzes and an exam. We sit in a small classroom with a whiteboard. Fortunately it’s only half a day before I get to try diving for the first time. In a pool.

It’s interesting to think back to the first time we stood by the pool and went through the tank, regulators, buoyancy jacket, weights and so on. It was very overwhelming, abstract and at the same time rather worrying. We’re standing there looking at a piece of equipment that’s supposed to keep me alive underwater, and I’m expected to handle it myself?

When I’m asked to inspect the O-ring, which is there to stop air leaking out, I have to admit I’ve got no idea what I’m looking for. It’s a black ring. It’s where it’s supposed to be. And apparently Axel thinks it’ll need replacing soon. When I ask what he means, he points to the outside of the O-ring, where there’s a tiny bit of cracking. Not enough for me to see it myself until he takes the ring out and holds it up in front of my eyes. He puts it back on the tank and tells me it’ll hold up fine for pool training. Okay Axel, if you say so.

Pool Training

I swim around the pool in full gear. I’m wearing a wetsuit, mask, boots, fins, buoyancy jacket (BCD), tank, regulators and weights. Around 20 kg of extra weight on my body. Luckily that doesn’t matter much in the water, and the BCD helps me float by working like a life jacket you can fill with air and empty again.

I learn to breathe through a regulator, which is pretty much the same technique as with a snorkel. The BCD gets filled and emptied, and I swim around a little on the bottom of the pool.

The first and biggest thing I have to learn is movement and buoyancy. You want to hold your depth underwater, and that’s not just about putting air in your BCD. Your breathing is the key. A deep breath in sends you up. A deep breath out sends you down. So to stay close to the bottom without touching it, you have to breathe in a relaxed, controlled way. Meditatively. Which gets complicated when Axel grabs my arm and gives me the signal that he can’t breathe.

The other important part of pool training is communication and practising procedures. What do you do if your buddy runs out of air? How do you signal that you’re tired? What do you do if you can’t find your buddy? I get put through my paces on the various drills. Enough that after the first day I’m completely wiped out and go more or less straight from class to dinner to bed.

First Dive

Day two is the exam and the first open water dive. The exam is 40 multiple choice questions. I get a single one wrong: the question about how many times greater the resistance is in water than in air. Axel is pleased, and we start getting ready to dive. A load of bags full of dive gear gets hauled down into a small motorboat, which takes us out to the dive boat.

It’s a small boat that was probably built for fishing, but now its deck is filled with tanks. A ladder leads up to the top deck, where we spend most of the trip.

Today I’m diving with Axel and an older man called Stefan. Axel is our instructor. Stefan is my buddy, and he’s the one I’ll be practising the drills with.

There actually isn’t that much to say about the first couple of dives. The site we dive at is fairly shallow, between eight and twelve metres. It’s a sandy bottom with a little bit of coral. The area is apparently a place where they’re trying to grow new coral. There are some fish, but nothing to write home about. All in all, it was a bit like snorkelling close to shore.

But the slightly boring surroundings were the point, because Stefan and I still had to learn to keep our buoyancy neutral. Better to crash into a sandy bottom than a coral reef.

We practise some of the techniques. Some things go better than others. I struggle to shake my tendency to hold my breath when the regulator is out of my mouth. Stefan has had to unlearn a number of his old habits. Apparently people dived very differently thirty years ago.

We wrap up the first two dives and go through the plan for tomorrow and what we each need to work on. To be honest, day two was probably the worst day. Half a day of class, a lot of training and a first sea dive that wasn’t especially interesting. When I went to bed tired, I was a little disappointed.

Shipwrecks and Coral Forests

Day three starts early, as the boat leaves at 6:15. We’re heading out more or less as the sun comes up. Stefan couldn’t come because he was having trouble with his ears, so it’s just Axel and me for the last two dives.

Our destination is a shipwreck lying at around 40 metres. We stand on the top deck and I get a briefing. Axel is hoping we’ll be able to see the wreck from 18 metres, since we’re not allowed any deeper.

Apart from that, the list of skills to practise is quite short and is mostly about reaction training. Axel will spontaneously give me signals that I have to respond to. Out of air, discomfort, damaged equipment. The trick is communicating underwater with hand signals.

We arrive at the first site. The first divers jump in and report back that the water is crystal clear. The wreck can be seen from the surface. Axel and I go in shortly after.

It’s deep and clear. Even though I can’t see the bottom, I can see a long way down into a dark ravine. In the deepest corners, the rock faces are only visible in cold, dark colours. It feels like hovering high above a darkened landscape.

And in the middle of the landscape lies a large shipwreck. The deck is overgrown with algae, coral and other growth, and small schools of fish swim around the wreck and in and out of the openings.

We start our descent. At 18 metres we’re still not quite down at the ship’s deck. But a lot of details become much sharper. All the different fish swimming around. The jellyfish hiding by the bow. And the seabed, just barely visible as a dark layer beneath the ship.

We swim across the ship. There’s a large rock rising up from the seabed, and the ship leans against it. The rock is covered in coral. As we get closer, I can see all the tiny life that has made its home in and around it.

Axel gives me a couple of drills, and we head back to the boat after 45 minutes in the water. I’m over the moon. Even though we couldn’t dive all the way down to the wreck, I’ve had exactly the experience I’d dreamed of. And we still have one more dive.

Our second dive, and my last of the course, is at a coral forest. The checklist of drills is complete, so it’s just a fun dive.

We’re not in water as deep as at the wreck, but the bottom is still twenty metres down. On the other hand, it’s lively and varied. It’s a calm dive, where we mostly focus on swimming slowly and in control close to the coral while correcting for a gentle current.

We spot three rays, see loads of small fish among the coral and anemones, and I have a go at learning a technique for swimming backwards. It doesn’t go very well, so there’s more to learn later.

40 minutes later we’re back at the surface. On the boat I’m told to log my dives and get the course signed off. I now have an Open Water 20 certification with four dives in my logbook.

Certified Diver

On the way back, I’m introduced as a newly certified diver to a round of applause from everyone else on board. Back at the dive shop, I also get a few photos taken with a certification banner. Axel gives me a pat on the back and tells me he’s comfortable letting me go out and keep diving.

Which of course raises the question: where to from here? I can obviously get further certifications. For a recreational diver, the 30 and 40 metre courses are the obvious next steps, with all sorts of extra training in night diving, cave diving, diving with special gases and diving with other equipment that changes how long and how deep you can go. Diving is a wild world, one you can sink both a lifetime and a fortune into.

Right now I don’t know how big a part diving will play in my future. Besides being expensive, it’s also demanding and potentially harmful. Diving isn’t without risk. In fact, it’s pretty dangerous. Even at 18 metres you can seriously injure yourself, with decompression sickness being the main concern. The human body isn’t built to have 20, 30 or 40 metres of water pressing down on it and on the gases inside it.

Health aside, it’s also a hobby that takes a lot of effort. You don’t just pop out for a dive the way you lace up your running shoes and go for a run. Diving takes preparation, training, maintenance and cleaning up afterwards. It quickly becomes a multi-day project, which you also have to try to time around the weather and water conditions. There’s a lot of work involved in getting to a dive.

But when it all clicks and you’re floating in the middle of that vast ocean, with magical views and fantastic, otherworldly life in front of you, it’s hard to write off the effort as wasted. So I’m probably not done with diving, and I actually plan to have a look at what Danish dive clubs have to offer. I know we’ve got plenty, so when I get home, that’s one of the things I want to check out. Another expensive hobby for the list. Maybe.

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