A Day in the Dive Life of Jay

A day in the life of a Scuba Instructor at Maui Dreams typically starts the previous afternoon with a check of the schedule! This can be done via phone or with a stop at the store. Will I be doing an Open Water, Advanced or Rescue class? Maybe a guided dive with certified divers, or an Introductory Dive? There could always be a Scooter Dive, or maybe an EFR (Emergency First Response) class. For classes, I could be taking out anywhere from one to four people; for guided dives, it could be as many as six. Based on that, I formulate an idea of which beach to go to. What could conditions be like? Should I pick up my tanks tonight (we cannot begin loading tanks until 7am, so sometimes if it’s going to be a busy morning in the store we can load them the night before) or wait until the morning? All of this happens before our customers walk in the door.

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Divecation: Fiji

There are many reasons why people dive, but I think it generally boils down to a simple fact. You dive because you enjoy it. The feeling you get in the alien sounding underwater world is frankly unlike anything else. I would say it is usually that feeling that urges, if not compels new and experienced divers alike to take another trip under the waves. For my experience, I have to add one more criteria to my enjoyment of diving; that is the pleasure of diving with my wife. When we dive together, everything seems to fit. Of course we have grown into the symbiosis that is our diving these days. It is lucky we had a great place to get started.

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The Road to Divemaster

The viz has just improved from a little over zero to perhaps five feet, just enough that I can see that my Divemaster instructor Zac Lenox has lost a fin. This is the last dive of my training and I am guiding Zac and another Divemaster student Matt back to shore at Olowalu after completing a Scuba Review skills section. Only another one hundred yards to go, but in the wind and break the bottom is stirred up and I am doing my best to keep an eye on my charges while navigating with my compass to our dive flag set just off shore.

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She was afraid to go out in the water

I have said many times “I saw Jaws at a very influential age”. Growing up, I had a fascination with critters in the water but I had no interest in joining them. It started with tadpoles. We had a ditch that ran along the front of our house, and it was there that I first discovered them wiggling around. I would go out looking for them every season, patiently watching through the algae for them to emerge. My mom took me salmon fishing, I caught my first big catch at the age of 9. I was fine as long as I was on the boat. As a teen, I would go to the river during the summer. I was usually afraid to go in to the water once I saw that the “rocks” at the bottom were moving. We would also go to the Oregon Coast and I was told “watch out for the jelly fish, they can sting you”. I played in the ocean only once or twice always fearing what might be touching me.

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Unexpected Lessons at the IDC

About the IDC, what can I say? You learn so much about yourself and where you are in the dive world when you go through it – it’s truly amazing. During these two weeks of daily, intensive training, I had the one of the most fun, stressful, crazy, and growing periods of my life. I met a lot of really cool people and got “knowed up” by some very excellent instructors. We endured a lot of struggles, misinterpretations of training standards, and huge learning curves, but in the end you know what they call me? INSTRUCTOR!!

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