Hedonism II

★ 1 · Mark R. · 2010-03-18

This was my very first experience with SCUBA - and it occurred some time ago in 2005 at Hedo III, which is not listed separately here. Hedo III is in Runaway Bay. I signed up for the resort course and on the day of the course, I was ushered to the main pool for what turned out to be literally 15 minutes of general instruction. I was shown how to inflate and deflate my BC, how to read my SPG and then was asked to swim once around the pool to my starting point. The mask was fogging badly and the pool was very cloudy, so I'm not sure how I ended up near my starting point, but I did. The instructor and I definitely had some communication problems along the way, but I was told to "get on the boat." When I climbed onto the dive boat 20 minutes later with my rental gear in tow, I looked around at the other people and asked if anyone else was new to diving. All were experienced divers. The boat made a 20 minute ride to a dive site, and the dive master (my instructor) told everyone else to go to the bottom and wait for him (and me.) There was no dive briefing, no description of how deep, or how long we were going to dive. The entry was a back roll over the side (which I wasn't prepared for - I was told to hold my mask and reg, and then he pushed me backwards over the side. The water was very choppy and I was extremely nervous and began hyperventilating. The instructor jumped in and told me to go down the mooring line to the bottom. I was overbreathing the reg, and I was surely experiencing elevated levels of CO2, because as I tried to descend I became convinced that I wasn't getting enough air, and started to panic. After two attempts I gave up and climbed back on the boat. It was two years before I decided to try again with a local dive shop who in a 1 hour introductory course in the pool taught me enough to be comfortable and enjoy the experience. I later completed my OW certification and AOW, and now love to dive. This was a terrible experience however and I can't recommend the resort course from Hedo.