Do you love wreck diving, or deep diving? Are you one of those people that when the stakes are higher the adrenalin flows and you start to get really excited about exploring places not many people have been before? Are you a confident recreational diver who’s always looking for new ways to push the limits? If any of that sounds like yourself than the PADI Tec 40 course is for you!
Recently I undertook the PADI Tec 40 course with Lets Go Adventure’s course director Dez Paroz. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was getting myself into when I signed up for the PADI Tec courses which wasn’t helped when Dez walks in on the first day and without any sugar coating told us the risks and hazards involved in technical diving, at present I am a PADI instructor and was well aware of the risks involved with technical diving but even I was questioning my skills and abilities and thinking is this course right for me? or should I continue to “enjoy a lifetime of recreation diving” as Dez would say. After listening to Dez’s rather scary introduction it was time for the theory part of the course which I actually found quiet interesting being a bit of a “dive nerd”, once I had a better understanding of what technical diving was exactly I started to get really interested and excited to get into the water and try out all the new gear configurations. One of the really cool aspects i enjoyed about the course was seeing all the different types of gear configurations that you are able to use within technical diving.
After we had completed majority of the theory we then sorted our gear out and headed to the pool, just like any other PADI course there was confined pool session which was really good to practice the skills in a safe environment rather than just jump straight into the deep end! We learnt all the skills that we were going to have to complete under the water, it also gave us an opportunity to try out new equipment one thing i will recommend if you are looking at doing the course would be to buy your gear before hand and make sure you are extremely comfortable in it and that will make the course 10x easier!
The next day it was time to head out on the boat and put all our skills into practice, this was great to start to pull everything together that we had learnt during the rest of the course. On this dive we did a simulated decompression dive just to make sure all our skills were up to scratch before D – Day! The training dives went well and gave us all a chance to see how the other guys dived and to gauge everyones confidence level in the water once I saw how comfortable my team mates were it gave me great confidence that our Decompression dive was going smoothly fingers crossed!
D-DAY! DA DA DAAA the day had come the day we were going to put all our skills and knowledge into practice and complete our decompression dives! Well we couldn’t have picked a better day for water conditions we had beautiful electric blue water with 20+ metres visibility just spectacular! Our Decompression dives all went well with everyone working extremely well together in teams of 3 to get back to the surface it was really great to see everyone so switched on and working together to complete our first decompression dive. After we had ascended the smiles were on tap and the excitement between everyone was great! talk of planning the next one had already started.
So if you have been thinking about entering into the world of technical diving I really encourage people to undertake the course even if your not going to be doing technical dives all the time it was a great way to gain more experience and knowledge about the technical dive world and made me feel as though I am now a slightly more confident diver and can not wait to complete the rest of the PADI TEC REC courses with Dez!
Jessica Jones 
