Ditto on the swimming and the freeking gravy. It always tastes like wallpaper paste. I doctor it up with Kitchen Bouquet, just so’s I have something to serve, but I have much better luck with a jar. Of course, my deceased mother made the best gravy anyone ever ate. We all get a chance to remember that when I do the holiday meal.
Back when I was doing scuba instruction, I was absolutely astonished at the number of people who wanted to learn to dive but
[ul][li]didn’t know how to swim, [/li][li]were terrified of being in or under the water, or [/li][li]were horrifed by fish, never mind sharks, octopus, et cetera.[/ul]I kid you not; one guy asked me if there was any place he could dive where there are no fish. I jokingly told him that he could dive in the Great Salt Lake, and he responded by seriously asking me if there was good diving there. :rolleyes: Another student in a private class I was assisting another instructor with would not let go of the lane divider…in 3 feet depth of water. Thankfully, she gave up on the class, unlike other members who were in a constant state of near panic. (The instructor, wisely, opted to take them no deeper than 30 feet on any dive.) On many occasions I’ve had to drag students back to the boat because they were unable to swim ~100 feet to the swim step. I once dragged a string of 4 people back to a float because they couldn’t make headweigh against a ~1/4 knot current. [/li]
None of this, though, beats the guy who told me that he didn’t need to learn how to use the dive tables because he was (somehow) going to internally seperate the nitrogen out of the air he inhaled and fart it out. I agreed with him that he didn’t need to learn to use the dive tables 'cause I wasn’t going to certify him, so he shifted to a different instructor and got certified through him. :dubious:
As for the OP, if you have extremely low body fat, you may not be able to float and will have to keep moving vigourously in order to stay at the surface, but you should be able to swim. (The girl I did my divemaster program with had no fat on her whatsoever and struggled to pass the treading water requirement, despite being a competent swimmer.) I agree that swimming is a basic skill that anyone should have, and there are plenty of adult programs available. Wear water wings or a 3mm neoprene shortie to start out with if you have to.
Stranger
What kind of certification was this? IIRC, back in 1977 when I was PADI certified, you were required to demonstrate the ability to swim 400 yards without touching bottom or sides of a pool. If you couldn’t do that you weren’t going to get anywhere near open water. I’d think with current concerns about liability claims dive shops/instructors would be even more cautious.
The really interesting thing that ScubaSteve said is that he sinks to the bottom of the pool, i.e., unlike every other human being on Earth, he is denser than water. Interesting contention, but I’m afraid I would need extraordinary proof before I would buy such an extraordinary claim. It would make sense that he has difficulty swimming, though, since the basic secret of swimming is that human bodies float in water. They do not sink into it. Once you figure out that all you have to do is keep your head out of water some of the time, swimming is pretty darned easy.
Well if you breathe out all the way you can be denser than water (but not necessarily denser than sea water with its salt content) so maybe scuba just sinks when he beathes out. I have no cite, but I have often oxigenated my blood through heavy breathing, then breathed out all the air I can so that I can lie motionless at the bottom of a swimming pool for a minute or so with no effort required to remain underwater. I haven’t tried, and wouldn’t attempt to try this in the sea so don’t know if I would sink similarly in saline water. I also don’t have a very low fat % so someone very lean may sink easier than I can, fat being less dense than muscle.
I can’t see those steriographic pictures either, and thinkl those who can are just dillusional.
Re: swimming and low body fat
As a kid, when I took swimming lessons (once a week every summer for 8 years) I was SUPER SKINNY. To the point of being able to easily see ribs without me having to suck in or anything. I never noticed I had trouble staying afloat. Maybe I have soem fish DNA in me somewhere, but I took to the water very naturally and loved swimming (still do, but sdon’t get to do it very often.) It’s a shame I never joined the swim team, I had a killer breast stroke. I cudl also stay underwater fror a long time. During the swimming session of gym in high school, my friends and I would hold contests to sww who could swim underwater the furthest. Our school had a 25 meter long pool, I easily made it from one end and then back to the other, by then i came up cause I had already beaten everyone else. 
From the PADI website: “You need to be a reasonably proficient swimmer and comfortable in the water. You must swim 200 metres/200 yards nonstop, without a time or specific stroke requirement or a 300 metre/yard swim with mask, fins and snorkel. You’ll also perform a 10 minute tread/float”
As long as students are able to do a 200 meter swim, however slowly, in whatever position, in a pool (or pool-like conditions) they meet the requirements. In my experience (I spent about a year instructing, and two before that divemastering) most people struggle with this. More than once I had to schedule a seperate pool session just to let them do the swim cert. And swimming in a flat, clear pool is in no way comperable to swimming in the open ocean with waves, rips, and currents. IMHO, most people just aren’t prepared for diving in open water after one or two pool sessions.
You would think that dive operations would be concerned about liability; however, their desire to sell, sell, sell diving as a pleasent hobby to people in all conditions of fitness and as a “destination activity” for yuppies looking for something to alternate with laying on the beach and drinking in the bar at Club Med has led to what I consider to be some unwise compromises in training methods and certification requirements. The liability is covered by the dive organizations, who point back to their training materials (which do contain all the necessary safety information) but neglect to note that many people need more than the minimal training and supervision before being competent divers. When I first certified, the class was two full evenings a week for three weeks, with time split evenly between pool work and lecture. These days, it’s often one 4-5 hour pool session and “self-study” with little or no lecture as people “don’t have time” to come to a class or study. This, for a gear-intensive activity in which mistakes can be potentially lethal. :rolleyes: There’s no requirement that students learn to freedive, either; One day I went to go pull a float for another instructor and his class was amazed that I could swim underwater, for a minute or more, without an “oxygen tank”. ::sigh::
I’ll get off my hobbyhorse now, but it just frustrates me all to hell, and I got tired of filling out accident reports every time I watched some inadequately-trained diver get hurt out of ignorance or lack of situational awareness. If you’re going to be in open water with 50 lbs of dive gear on, you should be healthy, alert, able to handle yourself (man, did I get tired of having to drag people of out of water because they didn’t have the strength to climb up a ladder), and you should definitely know how to swim.
I’ve seen people who are unable to float, as noted above. Most of your body is water, but bone mass is definitely denser than water, and even allowing for lung and nasal cavities some people with extremely low body fat don’t seem to be able to float statically, or at least not enough to keep head above water. Anyone can swim, but if the first thing that happens when you jump in the water is that you immediately go under it’s hard to concentrate on listening to what your swim coach is telling you to do.
Stranger
The trick is to miss the ground. 
And remember to have a willingness to not to mind that it’s going to hurt if you fail to miss the ground. If you are really trying properly, the likelihood is that you will fail to miss it fairly hard. Oh, and once you get flying, do not wave at anybody! And do not listen to anything they have to say, as it is likely to be something as unhelpful as “Good God, you can’t possibly be flying!”
It is vitally important not to believe them or they’ll suddenly be right.
More on flying here. Or you can be safe and just stick with this.
Stranger
Stranger, thanks for the cite. It has definitely changed (we didn’t know from metric back then, for starts) and I’m fairly sure it was a bit longer. Also, there was no such thing as “Adventure travel” and although I’m sure there were some resorts getting people to dive to enhance their “vacation experience”, all the divers I knew were of a different, old school variety. Probably a bit more dangerous as a breed, but generally less likely to put someone through a class who was ill-equipped to handle the physical demands.
Also, FWIW, when I was a teenage swimmer I struggled to maintain weight and would sink like a rock if not moving. All bone and muscle, but sadly mostly bones (about six feet tall and 135 lbs when I graduated from high school). Also, sadly, this has not lasted. I float a lot better these days.
Maybe some of them are. I think most of them are just lying- they don’t see anything there, either, because there’s nothing to see. They laugh at us for trying to see something there once we’re out of earshot.
I can’t:
Whistle, either with or without fingers in my mouth. And I’m amazed that some people can not only consistently produce a whistling sound, but can produce different notes.
Hear a musical note played or sung and tell what note it is.
Recognize a tune if I hear it played in a very different arrangement than I’m used to hearing.
Look at something (say, a frying pan) and be able to say “oh, that’s a 12-inch pan” unless the size is printed on there, or all frying pans that shape are that size. I literally have to drag out the 8x8 or 9x13 baking pans (I know which ones those are, and take it on faith that they are those sizes) and compare sizes to know what size of pan I’m using.
Dive headfirst into a pool, even if I know it’s deep enough. I chicken out and do a belly flop.
:smack: I completely did not realize the irony when I started this thread!
As it was pointed out later on in the thread, I did indeed get my name from the action figure in Big Daddy. My nickname used to be just “Steve” (because unfortunately I look like the guy from Blue’s Clues). So to differeniate from all the other Steves in the world, my friends thought it’d bve funny to add “Scuba” to it.
You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve heard “Damn you Scuba Steve!” when I make a mistake lol.
Dad?? Is that you?
Swimming is overrated. Sit in the sun, sweat, get skin cancer; go in the water, drown, get eaten by a shark, bitten by a barracuda, stung by an urchin or jellyfish. Bah!
And I can make gravy out of almost nothing!
This is what I believe is my problem. Last time I tried to learn, I had hardly any body fat, and was fairly muscular, although I’m sure I’d have a much better time with it now unfortunately.
And I definitely agree with what you said about freaking out when you go underwater first thing. This is probably what has led me to cling to the sides of the pool until I get up enough courage to let go.
As a child, I would have given anything to have gills. Now, the desert is an environment to avoid. Snakes, scorpions, blistering sun, no water…stay out of the desert. It’ll kill you and eat you as a joke.
Stranger
You can’t swim? Shit, my friend is 22 and he can’t spell his middle name!
He isn’t dyslexic or anything, he just has trouble with that one word no matter how many times he sees it.
It’s John by the way.
You could see if you can get lessons in breaststroke or another stroke where your head isn’t supposed to go under the water. I can swim (certainly not on anything like a competitive level, but well enough), and I don’t like to put my head under water. Now, I pretty much have to swim without my head going under water- I’m a danger to myself and others in the pool without my glasses.
Me neither. Well, I CAN, but only from the side-if I crouch down and go in hands first. But on a diving board? No, I just can’t. Not because I’m scared, but because I’m a klutz.