Dive! Dive! Dive!

We are so excited because we just got scuba certified! I (Dana) did it mainly for the enjoyment factor but we made sure to get Joshua certified for many reasons. One being: he needs to learn to be more comfortable in the water. We live on it! He doesn't enjoy swimming or getting wet. I am the complete opposite. Another reason was so that we could have the ability to clean the bottom of our boat. While you may be able to get some of it when you hold your breath you won't be able to get it all. Plus, what people charge for a cleaning is a lot. Within a few months our investment will pay for itself. Plus, Josh will be able to make a business cleaning bottoms, installing zincs, and doing emergency underwater repairs.

Our research also told us that in order to be able to get a tank filled you need a certification. So there we were, with many reasons to do it. Our next decision was where to get certified. You can Google search all you want but ultimately it comes down to word of mouth. We asked our friends at St. Augustine Cruisers Net to suggest somewhere and the answer was unanimously iDive.

His prices turned out to be one of the most reasonable when we did our research too. When Joshua called the owner, Ken, he was pleased with how he responded to his questions. They offer a mini class called "Try SCUBA". So we did! We don't have any pictures from that class but we immediately went after the class to sign up for certification.

 

See how happy and excited Josh was for the class? He made sure we were early. I was excited too but I was concentrating more on getting us there. ;-) 

Ken (left) and Josh demonstrating good buoyancy control

Dana!

 Here we were demonstrating skills. Josh did well on his buoyancy control here in the pool. I struggled a bit.

The second dive wasn't in a heated pool :-( but in a spring. DeLeon Springs actually. Here it was quite smaller then what I thought it would be. We got to practice our "giant stride" getting in though. It was fun! I struggled a bit this day but it turns out I didn't have enough weight. Once the instructor gave me more I was fine.

30 Day FREE amazon prime membership!!! Sign up now for this special trial. Cancel anytime.

We didn't get many pictures this day because the visibility wasn't great. What is weird is that some of the pictures came out with a blue tint while most of them were green (see above-ick).

Here is another diver harassing a turtle. It didn't much like the attention! Later she went on to try and pick it up but the turtle escaped her grasp.

The last day, our check out dive, was at Devil's Den. It was supposed to be at another location but they had what is called "brown out conditions". I think you all can guess what that meant. So our instructor had us go here. Unfortunately it cost us more money to dive here then the other spot but Ken promised us we would love it. Let's hope so.

Here's the view looking down. It is impressive to look at, very pretty. It's quite a ways down so I had a little bit of trouble getting down the stairs (fear of heights). Ken, ever the patient guy, talked to me the whole way as he had been the first down. I was fine once down. The water was a bit chilly but not bad.

These last two photos aren't as great. The light was poor and GoPros don't fare as well in low lighting. This one above is a still taken from the bottom of the stairs.

Here's the other side. Hi guys! This is Ken on the right and another instructor (I'm sorry, I forgot his name!) on the left. The other instructor ended up being my dive buddy at the end because Josh got too low on air and I hadn't been able to explore the whole way around. I wanted my moneys worth! Haha...again, we were shocked at the price but I enjoyed it.

When we came up we were officially certified, we passed!! So exciting! Ken cooked for us and we hung out until the woman threatened to lock us in ;-)

Certified!!!

Waiting for food

Grill master Ken

I'm going to post a video on Facebook so make sure to hop over to this link and check it out. While you're there please give us a "Like"! In case you want to know Ken is on FB too at this link> iDive.

Thanks for the great dives Ken, hopefully we can do more with you!