I decided earlier in the year to try my hand at gaining instuctor certification so decided it was time to once again head back to Mallorca and Can Picafort with Scuba Med Divers
I flew to Palma from Bristol on the 24th of April. Dave picked me up at the airport and we headed straight to the Esperanza Hotel , where the IDC was being held.
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The Esperanza Beach |
I hadn’t even unpacked or been to my accommodation and I was in a classroom going through a few of the presentations from the AI components of the IDC.
The classroom at the Esperanza dive centre is large enough for the six students and has a whiteboard, laptop with large external LCD screen and tea, coffee making facilities along with a fridge to keep some cold drinks and fruit of the chocolate kind in.
This wasn’t going to be a holiday and I wasn’t going to get any rest, that much was clear from the start. I was introduced to Mike, Florian and Rina, I said hi to my friends from last season Laura and Michelle.
After a couple of presentations and a course orientation it was off to the pool to practice Skill circuits.
I get a cylinder, some weights a bcd and some regs from the kit room, the kit room is small but well organised.
Its good to see Alix again too as she takes Rina and I off to the central pool.
The Esperanza is a great location, its got a nice heated pool, a good supermarket and good value for money restaurants should you decide to buy a cooked meal.
I assemble my kit, a silent demo quality kit assembly while Alix watches and I remember to clip a snorkel onto my mask strap! (something I will need to get used to when doing teaching dives when I pass the IE)
Bloody hell, this is where I start to remember how rusty I am with demonstration quality skills, Alix runs through the demos with Rina and I, I start remembering and the only one I really struggle with is CESA.
CESA is not something I was ever taught, I only really picked it up last year doing my DM Internship, so it was never ingrained into me from the start.
We finish the skill circuit and head back to the classroom, Alix gives Dave the OK and I am pleasantly surprised I wasn’t as rusty as I thought I was.
Another presentation from the AI section and then off to the Hostel.
I along with a few of the others are staying at the Flamenco Hostel in Can Picafort, near the marina, its very basic but clean enough and friendly enough (Accommodation in a tourist class room to myself with breakfast supplied worked out at 270 Euros for the twelve nights) .
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During my stay I actually ended up moving between three different rooms at the Flamenco each with a decent seaside view over the beach and the marina, one room had a separate bathroom down the hallway but apart from that all reasonably sized and similar.
The next few days where all a blur, basically lots of pool skill circuits (me always struggling to demo CESA), classroom presentations then being shown how to micro teach PADI style and how to do the confined water and open water teaching presentations.
Dave worked me hard to bring me up to speed with everybody else who had started the IDC a couple of days before me.
I was being scored quite well and I even managed 100% on the AI Standards exam and only used 30 minutes to do it.
This was feeling good especially after the hard time I had on Fundies the previous weekend.
Dave asked if I fancied having some extra practice at the other exams so I gave them a go and managed to pass them all aswell (just with regards to physics and physiology, I needed to get some more studying in prior to the OWSI section of the IDC and the IE should I be signed off to go to it).
The only open water dives that are part of the IDC AI Component are the open water teaching presentations we all had to do.
Before the dives we all gave our briefings to each other role playing students, Divemasters and instructors.
Dive 247: 26/04/2008 The Bridge, Bonaire, Mallorca – Water Temp: 17oC Max Depth: 7.9 Metres Dive Time: 54 Minutes.
MI: Dave Campling
AI Candidates: Rina Houston, Michelle Sigron, Florian Aufhammer, Mike Mudryk (Mike recently acquired 8 Acre lake an inland dive site near Huddersfield) & Myself.
5mm Suit, hood & gloves and believe me for doing these teaching presentations that was just about warm enough, you do tend to sit around a lot negatively buoyant on the bottom when being involved or not in everybodys presentations.
I was given full mask flood and hover to do in open water and essentially I had to make sure the candidate doing the skill was safe and they completed the skill to meet performance requirements.
There was loads of jellyfish and they upset Michelle a bit, a demon she would have to deal with herself.
Somebody took the mask off and somebody did a fin pivot instead of a hover but overall not to shabby, mistakes spotted and corrected.
After the Skills presentations we had a wee ten minute fin around looking at the scenery then back to the shore and debrief time.
The next day Clive the Course Director would arrive and we would all start the OWSI section of the IDC together….
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