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Today at 7:12 PM (PST), I entered the water at Whiskey Cove with Tanya. We followed the slope to a depth of 79 feet (24 metres), swam along for a while and then slowly made our way back to the shallows.

The water was perfect with only a hint of rippling on the surface.

When we emerged 32 minutes later, we pulled our fins off and made our way back to the van. Not a single word was said (though that might have been more to do with fatigue than not wanting to spoil the moment).

We had just completed out one hundredth dive. It was an important milestone. We couldn’t enter the instructor exam next week without it.

It was also cool to finish this milestone where and with whom I started. Back in January, I was at 41 dives and creeping along at a nudibranch’s pace (a nudibranch is an underwater slug. Learn to dive already friends!). Tanya was looking for a dive buddy and asked me (actually, I distinctly recall the message going something like “Dave, we’re diving sunday”. Being that it came from nowhere, I could only reply with “Okay”).

After Tanya and I went diving, the dives just sort of piled on. Which is why I call it the start. Almost 2 years to get to 40… 10 months to get to 100. Thank you again, Tanya!

I should end the story there, but after the dives we raced back to Langley to do a snorkel swim assessment in the pool and now my knees are on fire. I really need to learn not to push my limits, but I get the next 4 days to rest before the instructor exam, so it should be okay.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 17th, 2008 at 11:41 pm and is filed under Scuba. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.