Crazy Christmas Courses

Congratulations first of all to Michael and Bronwin McGee who got married at Matava on Xmas day. They just about made the wedding on time, after an uber 3 hr session of confined skills for their PADI Openwater course in the morning, we got back to the dive shop at 12.20, the wedding was at 1 on a nearby beach. While Richard was pacing the shores, the pastor was getting restless and Maggie was stressing out, the couple to be were more chilled out than anyone, slowly meandering back to their bure to get changed.

We all had a day off on the 26th, after wedding/xmas celebrations, then on the 27th 2 became 5 – Sally Cobb, Allison Walker and Thomas Castets joined the newlyweds, Richard made a rare appearance in the water and we had one of those amazing moments underwater, whilst surrounded by an uncountable number of fish, I watched my 5 new PADI students do a perfect free ascent. Awesome!

The next day was the start of a new PADI Openwater course, Caitlin Kelly, Chris Johnson, Jill Boag and Emma Richardson stepped up. Emma (scared of fish), completed her PADI DSD and the others went on to do the full open water course. The first dive can only be described as mayhem - divers everywhere, surrounded by a cloud of sand. I couldn’t have done it without the help of Mr Tevita Baivou – our resident Divemaster. However, after some serious skill sessions and lot of hard work, it was incredible to see the difference by the end of the course. All 3 put in a massive effort to get through the course and at the end, it was like looking at 3 different divers.

So a big thank you to all my Xmas students. I did some serious celebrating on New year!