IE Day 3 - The Final Day of the Biggest Day

Colin briefs everyone before we go into the water for our skills. Photo: Ivan Guzman

This is a long one, but that’s because, it was a long day.

Today is the final day of my exams and determines whether I become a dive instructor or not. To be honest, I’m a little nervous and will have to try and relax a little. There’s a lot of critical things I need to do in my exams but there’s nothing new that I have to do. I just have to do what I’ve been doing in practice during my IDC training.

As usual, in the morning, I made breakfast which consisted of two eggs, scrambled, and some Australian oatmeal. In the morning, I was getting a little anxious about my exams later in the day. I had two open water teaching dives and a rescue demonstration. The more I reviewed my notes the more anxious I got. I had to eventually just sit on my bed and meditate a little.

Every candidate has to do a dive briefing for their dives they were assigned. Each briefing needs to cover certain topics (objective, value, skills, etc) or else you lose points on the evaluation. I felt my briefing could have been smoother because I had to change it last minute. Caroline, Gerry, Ivan and I were scheduled to do our open water dive evaluations first. I was in charge of finding our site and setting up our surface marker buoy. I was quite happy when I did find our site—I’ve only been there once.

My skill that I had to teach in the open water was establishing neutral buoyancy underwater and tying a bowline knot underwater. I felt I got lucky getting my skills as they seemed fairly basic. There were no real safety concerns I had to worry about (other than the obvious) and the skills were pretty straight forward.

The first skill I did underwater was having my students establish neutral buoyancy using the fin pivot method. After my briefing, the examiner secretly assigns the “students” problems to have underwater. The problems assigned to my “students” was to have Caroline push off with her hands when fin pivoting and to have her tie the wrong knot. I solved the problems well but actually had an issue with Caroline’s technique doing the fin pivot.

She had problems keeping her fins touching the ground—girls tend to have floaty feet—and so I had her redo the exercise lots of times. She was becoming annoyed, I was getting frustrated, and everything was taking too long. I later learned I didn’t need to be so concerned with her technique though because all that was required was that she get neutral buoyancy; which she did regardless of her fin lifting off the ground. I had her do a hover and all was done.

After doing my skills, Father Gerry had to do his skill and I played his student. I performed my “problem” of paddling with my hands while hovering. I kept thinking back that I forgot a critical step in my buoyancy skill with my other student—Ivan. I wasn’t sure if I checked to see if he used his low pressure inflator. He had no problems I noticed. Did I miss something? If I missed a standard he needed to do, and I let him pass, that would mean I failed the skill and the whole IE! I was worried underwater, really worried. Everything around me blurred as was fixated on the possibility of failing. I surfaced with my colleagues while the second half of candidates did their open water skills.

At the surface I talked with Father Gerry, Ivan, and Caroline about if I forgot anything. They assured me I didn’t which made me feel a lot better. We waited for at least a half hour for the others to finish their skills. The last exercise we had to do was to demonstrate rescuing an unconscious diver at the surface—something I’ve done many times before.

It took us about an hour to complete all of our rescue skills. I did fairly well on it and the only problem the examiner noticed was me not blowing into the mask strong enough. Regardless, I passed the rescue evaluation. Still, nobody knew their score from the open water skills which was stressing me out.

After we all got out of the water and cleaned up, Colin the examiner spent time with each person independently to go over their performance. Caroline was the first to meet and talk with Colin. I knew she had done well and passed immediately because Colin shook her hand when she sat down—something Colin does when someone passes an evaluation. While Colin was talking with Caroline my mind was filling with negative thoughts about my performance. So much for managing stress.

I met up with Colin after Caroline and sat next to him. He shook my hand and gave me a big smile—I passed! He told me I had a good IE performance and noted that I’m very technically precise when I do things. This was a problem when I had Caroline redo her skill several times; wasting time on perfecting her skill even though she already satisfied the requirement.

Colin hands me something I've been waiting for. The start of something new!

After everyone got their scores for the open water evaluations, I wanted to celebrate with a beer but we all had to wait for some to finish their make-ups. About a half hour later, we had our closing ceremony where Colin handed out certificates to the candidates that passed. I was so happy, and truly felt I had earned it. Despite this though, I still had an anxious feeling in my body. My guess it that I was so stressed from the day, that I needed lots of relaxing time to relieve that stress.

The victims of the IE. (Left to Right): Jesse, Jay, Dave, Caroline, Father Gerry, Jason, and Ivan.

Everyone involved including Colin the examiner, Pedro (middle) and Warren who were the IDC instructors.

We were starving and hadn’t eaten lunch so Caroline, Dave, and I went into Sabang for lunch. The guys from Manila had to go back to Manila at that time. We ate at a restaurant I’ve never eaten at before that offers you a free 15 minute “trail” massage while you wait in your seat for your meal. I ordered the sizzling beef stroganoff with a San Miguel beer. I could tell while getting my massage that my muscles were extremely tense. After lunch, a beer, and a massage, I felt a lot more relaxed. I never knew how well a massage works.

My free trial massage and beer at the restaurant was very relaxing.

Later in the evening, I went with Dave and Caroline to Mermaid dive resort where I met Ricky the Filipino dive instructor there. He seemed cool and even bought me two beers while we hung out there. Around 6:30 PM, I went to the Point Bar to have our Asia Divers celebration and BBQ. Most of the instructors were there along with my friends Grace, Greg, and Maziar. It was a joyous time as Allan, the owner of Asia Divers bought a round of drinks and gave a toast out to me. Warren then presented me with an Asia Divers Instructor t-shirt with my name spelled “Jayson”. Fun times.

Warren hands me the Instructor "Jayson" Asia Divers t-shirt.

Asia Divers Instructors and staff.

Next stop was to Atlantis resort because I wanted to also celebrate with Caroline, Dave and the rest. At the bar there, I met Keith from Los Angeles who has just divorced his wife and decided to go to the Philippines for 2 weeks. From what I understood, he wanted change, wanted to go places, she didn’t, so he left. Nice.

Caroline dances with Jay at Broadway.

After Atlantis, Keith, Grace, Greg, Pedro, Caroline, Dave, Jay, and I went over to Broadway bar to shoot some pool and celebrate. Warren and Maziar met us there too. It was fun and intoxicating.

Dave, Me, and Caroline pose for a group shot.

- jason