Sports by MarkS

Once we were at the baths we unloaded all the scuba equipment, got changed and put on wet suits selected by the instructor. Then we attached our BCDs to our scuba tanks, and things got interesting...

To check your regulator on your tank is working OK, you have to press the purge button on it to release a short burst of air. Unfortunately, while everyone else’s worked OK, when I pressed the purge button on mine the second stage wouldn’t shut off and sounded as though it was going to explode.

The second stage is the part of the regulator that you put in your mouth for breathing underwater, so it was worrying when it malfunctioned. The instructor fixed the problem, though, and explained it sometimes happens if the regulator's not clean. So I'll remember that for next time.

Here’s a regulator:

And here’s the full scuba tank, BCD jacket and regulator set-up:

Then we took to the water. The first exercise we did was the hardest, even though it was simply breathing with the regulator underwater. I didn’t breathe in properly at first and had to go to the surface again 3 times before I asked an instructor and realised I wasn’t breathing correctly (through the mouth only). A 10-year-old boy called Connor, also at the class, seemed to have mastered it though. How embarrassing...

We then did a series of exercises, including lying on the pool floor, taking out and putting our regulators back in underwater, learning some hand signals, putting on our fins and inflating/deflating our BCDs.

Finally, we got to the real Jacques Cousteau part: swimming in scuba diving gear underwater. It’s great. Even when there’s only 8 of you and you’re only swimming the length of the pool, doing it for the first time feels awesome – especially if you’re not usually good at swimming.

We didn’t take any underwater shots, but we would have looked like this:

And that was it for the first session. I was tempted by the offer of an after-dive beer afterwards, but by then it was 10.40pm and I’d already drunk enough pool water thanks.

Roll on next week...