So Kay's birthday present was to begin her technical dive training about which she is both excited and a little scared.

Well I guess we should start with a little background information. Kay is an instructor and has been working here in Sharm for the last year or so. She actually went from open water diver to instructor in a surprisingly short time, having only learned to dive about two years ago, but she was one of those lucky people who happened to take to it very quickly and without too much trouble. A bit of a natural I guess you would say, although she will probably slap me one for saying that as for even the most natural of divers, becoming a divemaster and Instructor is no easy route. Anyway, on her birthday she was greeted with her surprise present of a technical diving course with our very own Leigh Cunningham.

We caught Kay prior to the course to ask how things were going, to which she told us that she was shocked by the amount of macho backlash she had received already. Before she'd even tried on a twin-set (and no I don't mean the type you wear with pearls!)

However once on the course, all that became irrelevant as she put her mind to mastering the necessary skills for extending either your depth or time underwater. Learning about redundancy (carrying spare kit on your dive), sending up SMB's from depth, coping with the worst case scenarios and the like. All often re-told in gory detail by many a student when they emerge red-faced and flustered after and hour underwater with the Master Leigh. As it turned out, the one skill Kay was really worried about (the SMB stuff) turned out to be fine once she had been given a couple of handy tips. The skills most people talk of are the nasty masky skills, where you have to perform various tasks whilst wearing a blacked out mask that has been damaged to prevent you clearing it. Added to which Leigh likes to add a little flavour by purging your reg to simulate a freeflow, etc. All great practice, but certainly not for the feinthearted, and I think possibly the subject of all the scary stories aimed (unintentionally of course) to put people off.

Anyway, within a day or so, Kay had made her mind up to take the course further and do the Deco Procedures and Extended Range courses. The course culminated with an awesome dive deep into the canyon on Thomas reef, approximately 65 metres which, if I remember rightly, which took them deep enough to just make it under the second arch.

If you have ventured deeper and darker, why not drop us a line, tell us your story:

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