When a new mask comes along, you just know. You know it’s the one. But only after it’s passed a scuba-style Rosie Project of specifications of course! A girl has standards 
Check out my new video on choosing the perfect mask. From finding the perfect fit to determining quality, I hope it helps you out this Summer! Click here!
I thought I would share this excerpt from the novel ‘Three Views Of Crystal Water’ by Katherine Govier.
‘Every time, it is as if I have never done this thing before; never left the safe air and gone feet first in to this cold, wallowing, two-faced, foreign element. I call it alien, although in the sweet sate it is what nourishes me and even fills my body: aren’t we ninety per cent water? But I fear this part of me. It is a world unto itself. I also adore it. Water is seductive, silky to the skin, welcome in its chill when the sun is burning. Endlessly lovely: sometimes a scroll, its lines of foam columns of script telling an ancient tale; sometimes a healer. It soothes, offering weightlessness and dream in exchange for consciousness. But try to enter it! Its surface is a pane of glass I shatter at my peril. It stings. Its weight exaggerates my insult. It bulges and caves into great troughs. It tosses me like an angry parent. It sucks me down.’
It’s about the Japanese women pearl divers in the 1920’s. The illustrious way it is written, and her descriptions of water especially, struck something in me that I’m sure you diveaddicts have also felt.
Note : oceanlingo.com will be reviewing more dive fiction in more depth (excuse the pun) soon!
I learnt to dive in Australian Cool/Temperate waters.
These reached a glorious low of 14 degrees during Winter. I believe that experiencing diving in cold water, with so many other elements to consider and obstruct your learning process, makes for a diver who can enjoy both types of diving. I think I would have struggled with the cold more, if I had learnt say – in Fiji, and then been dipped into freezing, currenty, poor viz water and expected to know how to deal with that change.
So the ’6 Reasons Why Learning To Dive In Cold Water Will Make You A Better Diver’ Are –
1. Difficulty Levels. Tasks are more difficult to achieve in cold water and bad viz. Thick gloves, hoods and wetsuits hinder movement and make you a better diver in the long run. You learn to realise your body’s limits to temperature, and a different skill set in dealing with serious things like hypothermia; and annoying things like trying to do up a buckle underwater with numb fingers.
2. Quality Time. Meaning more time and attention from intstructors. People would generally take the ‘warm tropical dive followed by post-dive cocktails under a palm tree’ option. This means smaller classes/less students in cooler water climates.
3. Qualification. Dive charters in the tropics often only give patrons a ‘Try Dive.’ This (though fun) gives you no proper qualification, and is usually a one-off fast money spinner for the charter itself. You get your ‘Open Water Certificate’ if you endure a proper course.
4. Gear. Cool water diving involves a whole new set of gear to get used to. heat packs. Hoods and gloves. And dry-suits and semi-drys, which alter buoyancy and get you used to weight belt changes during preparation etc.
5. Warming Up! Huddling over a mug of hot chocolate post-freezing-dive, is like sensory overload! A hot choccy in the tropics just doesn’t have the same meaning. My other favourite reason is getting to wear humungous hoodies after!
6. Appreciation. Diving in the tropics for the first time, having trained for two years in cold water, was soooo eeeeesy!! I was able to appreciate where I was. And having learnt the skills in difficult conditions meant using them without being complacent to their value was awesome.
(Pic – buddies hooded up at Tasman Hauler site, Eden, Aus)
