Dear Joanne,
It was a pleasure meeting you over the weekend.
I wanted to let you know that my husband and I really enjoyed doing our open water course with DiveDownBelow. We found our instructor, Bob, to be a very good teacher. We liked the way he clearly explained the skills we needed to perform during the dive briefing and then showed us what needed to be done, by example, under water. He was very patient throughout and would repeat the under water examples again if we signalled that we needed him to do so.
I also liked the fact that he had a very calming / patient demeanour – I was having problems with equalisation on the third open water dive and had to resurface, I wanted to return to the resort but Bob suggested that we could try the decent again slowly and we could resurface if I continued to have problems. Knowing that I was very nervous, he hovered close to me during the decent and ensured that I was comfortable and alright every step of the way.
I had not told Bob that I had a very bad diving experience during an introduction to scuba dive in Lombok.
The scuba operators there had cut a lot of corners (which I did not realise until now) and did not ensure that were were able to retrieve our regulators, clear our masks, etc. before we were taken out on our dive. I panicked underwater when I couldn’t clear my mask and got more panicked when the scuba instructor refused to take me to the surface when I signalled to him that there was a problem and I needed to surface. For some reason I removed my mask and regulator and did not know how to put them back on and had to make an emergency ascent.
It was a very frightening experience which made me really appreciate Bob’s knowledge, patience and calmness during our open water course without which I wouldn’t have been able to learn / complete the required skills. I wanted to pass on my thanks to him again.
We have had such a nice experience with DiveDownBelow and are now considering another dive trip to Sipadan.
Kind regards,
Valerie and Mike
