During the Underwater Navigator Specialty

During the Underwater Navigator specialty this movie was filmed.

In the Advanced Open water course the navigation dive is mandatory, but what you learn in this dive is still very basic. If you want to learn more about correct and save navigation underwater you can decide to do the Underwater Navigator Specialty, which is taught by our navigation specialists. This specialty can also be followed by Open Water divers, you don’t have to be Advanced Open water certified for this!

The Underwater Navigator specialty consists of 3 dives in which you will learn to use your compass better, but also how to find an object back underwater by using your compass. The use of the Nav-finder, or Navigation grit slate, will also be explained and used. At first you might be a bit overwhelmed by it, using the compass and the Nav-finder at the same time and also having to watch your depth, but you will see that with a bit of practice it gets easier very fast.

Today we did the last dive of the Underwater Navigator specialty course with Gertrude. She first brought us back to exactly the spot where we surfaced on our last dive together, just using the compass settings she took then. We descended within a meter of the Neptune statue we wanted to dive to! Very well done. To add to Gertrude’s confusion the instructor gave her a compass heading that went off the reef into the blue a bit, all within safe depths and distances of course. This way Gertrude had to trust on her compass skills without having any visual references anymore. In a very relaxed way she followed all the headings she had to and returned us to Neptune safely.

We want to congratulate Gertrude with her certification as Underwater Navigator and wish her a lot of fun using these skills in the darker, murkier surroundings of the lake she usually dives in!

 

 

0 replies

Leave a Reply

Want to join the discussion?
Feel free to contribute!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *