Almost six years ago, I went to Cancun for long weekend with my friend and during our 3 nights stay there we took the public transpotation to Playa Del Carmen and then ferry to Cozumel for a day trip (looking back, I can’t believe we did all these in one day, a snorkeling trip, a dinner at a popular place and driving around the island). That was my first time trying snorkling and we didn’t see a lot of fish in deep open water, so I didn’t think snorkelling is fun to do.

It was until my Hawaii trip that I got to see the beauty of underwater world, the colorful school of fish, the coral life and the beatiful Manta Rays. However, without being able to freedive, one can only see thing from distance, unless at places like Captain Cook where the reef is at shallow place. It was that time my boyfriend suggested me to get the Open Water diving certification so that we can go diving together. Combining the suggestions from my friend who did Great Barrier Reef live board, I booked a 9 days trip for 9 tanks in total to get us the Advanced Open Water certifications with Dressel Diver in Cozumel.

Where to take the course?

I chose Cozumel because it is famous for diving and the hotel is reasonable priced there with a lot of choices of dive shop. Dressel Diver is the on-site dive center for the all-inclusive hotel Iberostar. I think having an on-site dive shop for beginner is a huge plus, as it makes your daily logistic much easier. For Open Water certification, we have two pool sessions in the morning, the first one started at 8:30 AM and finished by 12:00 PM, and then we had our first two dives in that afternoon around 1:30 PM, so in between we just rest at the beach and eat free burger and sandwich and took a nap. I had my OW with OMAR who I think is a good instructor, very patient and less self-ego allowed me to take some time to practice my fully flooded mask cleaning skills. I feel very safe diving with him.

For our AOW, we need to do 5 dives (navigation, deep dive, peak performance bouyancy, night and drift), we had four different instructors. For PPB and Navigation, Night dive the entire group was getting AOW, so the briefing was thorough and the instructor answered a lot of question for me, we got a lot time underwater for practice. While for the drift dive, we were the only two divers doing the AOW, the instructor FLO has a lot of self-ego (he might be a good instructor, but he insisted on reducing our weights then blaming us on struggling too much of getting down and finning too much). I certainly learned a lot from this experience, but given that I told him from the beginning that we were new divers, I don’t expect myself to know what to do when I can not descend, especially when I did it easily with the weight I used during previous four dives. Also I don’t think he helped us checking if the weight is distributed evenly since both of us were not only struggling with descend, but also struggling stay in vertical position, we kept rolling back on our back and had to keep finning to hold balance which contribute negatively to our descend. And of course as I struggled in descned, I struggled to stay at my safety stop, and it was not only me but another person in my group also shoot up to the surface under his watch, even earlier than me.

Some may say you should have bagged at least 10 dives before going for your AOW, I think with how losely those course constructed, it is really just a way to help you dive under supervision and learn stuff and get comfortable, because the instructor should be there adress your concerns and answer your questions while DM’s role is a guide not a teacher. It is good to know what is the wrong technique so that you don’t need to correct them after following wrong practice for long.

Thoughts On Dressel Diver?

As some mentioned, it is a volume based dive shop and during thanksgiving week they were very busy. Each DM went down 5 times a day, I can see they are tired and exhausted. Given that I think the quality of the service was quite good, and they usually don’t have more than 8 people under one DM. However, in future if I want to horn my skills, I might go for a smaller shop so that I can go with one instructor through out my stay there with a more customerized service. But it is hard to beat the fact that it is an on-site dive shop in a good AI hotel. We definitely enjoy our quite time at Iberostar.

Notes On Diving Skills

I defintely learned a lot from talking to other instructors, watching Youtube, reading scubaboard and reflecting my own mistakes,

• With more experience and more relaxed breathing, I can reduce weight to 8lb from 10lb. No happy feet!
• With 8lb of weight, I really need to pay attention around 6m to 5m as the bouyancy changed quickly at this level, and if I were in a slow upward movement with air inflated and more bouyant it will be really hard to stop.
• Make sure to deflate BCD with two pulls plug in the front and at the back, sometimes air can be trapped in the back of the BCD. I need to quickly release air in BCD if I find myself going up quickly.
• Try to swim down if it is unstoppable (not sure I am capable of doing so).
• The position of the Tank need to adjust to make you more balance.
• Leg and hands position to adjust for butt heavy or head heavy situation (I found an excellent Youtube channel ).
• Inhale and exhale for bouyancy adjustment (there is a great scubarboard discussion about how to using inhale slowly to go up without holding the breath).

Other than that I do have some trouble doing full flooded mask cleaning at the very beginning, here are a few things that I tried,

• Swim with only snorkel on in the pool
• Swim with only regulator on in the pool
• It is the vertical position with air bubble coming from the regulator that makes me uncomfortable, also the fact that mask got flooded with water in the nose trigging some reflex. So the only way to overcome the uncomfortableness is to practice more and get used to it. I should practice more after the safty stop to refresh the knowledge

One thing I found that what AOW deep diving didn’t teach is your deco time and how to read your dive computer and I guess since every dive computer is different, one really need to read the manual carefully and be responsible for themself to avoid decompression sickness.

The youtube channel mentioned above has really thorough analysis of many scuba incidences and as a climber I always like to read incidence report so that I can either prevent incidency from happening or calming myself if it happened.

Lastly, I want to remind myself as a new diver,

• Do buddy check everytime you get into water
• Stay with your buddy and DM
• Dive within your ability

Keep safe and happy diving!

About Cozumel

As we finished our dives quickly than I expected, we had two days to spare. So we rent a car and drove the entire island.

The south west side of the island are all resorts and nothing else, you might be able to walk on sandy beach from hotel to beach club, but outside of resort you really need a car / scooter because there is absolutely nothing ouside not even gas station.

On the east side of the island, it is no-man’s land with beatiful beaches and several beach clubs, between which is just empty beach. The water is clean and sand is good but the wave is stronger than the west side partially due to wind.

Our favorite beach club is on the South end of the island called Buccanos, it has outstanding food, great view and awesome snorkeling.

We don’t like the downtown area too much since my boyfriend can’t stand the smell of gasoline from the old cars, plus the traffic was really bad there. But the we do recommand Lobster Shack in downtown, the double fresh caught wild lobster meat was so good.

Reference

• Buoyancy Compensator (BCD) Styles and Features
• Trim and Position
• Perfect Weight