- Melwin Krabbendam's trip Dominican Republic
Rescue Diver Dive I First dive with Piet and Marco. We breathed through a 'pony bottle' and that was awesome. We also swum a distance against the current and that went well. (220 bar - 60 bar)
Divers: Marko (Srb) Dimitri (Rus) Experiences: Saw a big 'sharksucker' (75 cm.) Went into a very small cave
DSD with Jane, Stefan, Mark and Peter (Ned) Jane struggled to manage but started to enjoy the dive at the end of it.
Search & Find dive with Piet, Marko, Bombi and Dimitri (Global Divers Crew). Our goal was to find the wreck of Bottom's Up. We found it at the end of our searching pattern. On the boat Piet added the coördinates of the dive site for in the future and we all saved the reference of the beach in our heads. Hope we'll find it next time though! (Started with 190 bar & ended with 50 bar)
DSD II Dive with Jane, Stefan, Mark & Peter. Piet took charge over Mark & Stefan and I did that for Jane. Peter allready had his Open Water License so he did most of it 'alone'. Dive was @ Bottom's Up not @ Astron Wreck, because Bottom's Up is not on the list I used Astron Wreck as divesite name. Started with 200 bar ended with 150 bar. Got RD$500 tip which I spended on a dive flag that Piet had in his office. It's an awesome one.
IDC dive with Marko, Piet, Dimitri and Pavel. Conducted RDC exercise #4 & OWDC skill #7 and it didn't went very well. The divers made a lot of mistakes and I couldn't find a way to let them do it very properly. I'm not sure if it was my mistake or they just did a very poor job. I assume they weren't good and didn't know the skill from theirselves, to keep my confidence leveled at where it was. I'll find it strange that they didn't knew the skill while they're becoming instructors. Damn Russians! (Started with 200 bar & ended with 100 bar).
(Started with 150 bar & ended with 40 bar) IDC Dive with Marko, Pavel, Mer, Piet and Gianluca. Too tired to write something now. Sleep tight.
Instructor Examination Dive with Marko, Dimitri, Pavel, Mer and our examinator Rodolfo Guillen. My exercises where the fin pivot and to calm down a distressed diver underwater. The students demonstrated the skills and I saw, and reacted on the mistakes they made. For the fin pivot Pavel inflated his inflator too quickly and Dimitri skulled his hands. For the distressed diver exercise Pavel didn't guided the victim to a point where it could hold on to something to calm down. Because I didn't used my Divemaster Marko a lot I had some small minus points. Good scores though: 4.6 and 4.8 on 5.0! (Started with 210 bar & ended with 90 bar)
My 100th dive, hell yeah! Congratulations Mel! Dive with a German 'muskelprotz'. I showed a pert of the caverns from Las Cuevitas and a part of the rest. For me it was a good dive because the environment is just stunning. The German complained later that he didn't see anything. He should learn to look better in a sea like this. The Caribbean sea is one of the most spectaculair sea's in the world and if you don't like to dive here. Well, go figure! (Started with 210 bar & ended with 100 bar)
Very nice dive with a guy from Madrid. We saw a huge (!) stingray from about three meters. I didn't wanted to go too close because I remember the final destination story from Steve Irwin. My buddy liked his life a little bit less then me I guess and he went down and allmost sat on this beautifull creature. Nice experience and I hope to see more like these. It was really big though, his tail was like a bog baseball bat but then twice as long. Very impressive! (Started with 200 bar & ended with 85)
Interesting dive with, again, the guy from Madrid. We went through some caverns, saw a small stingray, some big fishes and a huge crowd of beautifull blue fishes. We made a nice safety stop @ the end of the dive and when we made our ascent to the surface the guy told me he wanted to stay longer under water which is a very good sign of course. He liked it as well as I but all the other divers had surfaced allready so we couldn't stay any longer. What I do notice is that I'm starting to be better and better and that I am more and more comfortable under water which is a nice thing to notice :-). (Started with 210 bar & ended with 100 bar)
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