Category Archives: Courses

As part of our PADI Specialty of the Month programme in 2019, we will be running the PADI Underwater Navigator Course on Sunday 13th October.

Be the diver everyone wants to follow and make your sense of direction legendary with the PADI Underwater Navigator Specialty course.

Finding your way to that beautiful reef could be a breeze.

It can be quite stressful in poor visibility underwater, improve your observation skills and learn more accurately how to use your compass underwater to find your way.

You will develop the techniques involved in navigating underwater within recreational limits while avoiding disturbing delicate marine life.

Build your confidence, save air and save energy.

Find out more about this course…

“Challenging” and “rewarding” best describe the PADI Rescue Diver Course

Learn how to turn yourself into the best buddy, increase your safety, recognise problems before they occur, take the PADI Rescue Diver Course.

Our next PADI Rescue Course will be running on Sunday October 27th and Sunday 10th November 2019.

Most divers cite the Rescue course to be the best course they took, whilst serious and testing, you will learn so much to improve your dive skills, and learn to look out for your fellow dive buddies.

We don’t like to think about it but accidents happen, rescue training expands your knowledge of diving, increases your dive skills, and makes you more aware of what’s happening around you. The course helps you recognize and respond to potential diving emergencies in the unlikely event that they should occur.

As a pre-requisite to the Rescue Diver course, you need a valid First Aid certification, taken within the last 24 months, the Emergency First Response course meets the necessary First Aid training required as part of the PADI Rescue Diver course.

If you are a rescue diver who’s First Aid course was over 2 years ago, you will need to do an update, so why not join us on the next E.F.R course.

Our next Emergency First Response course will be running on Sunday 24th February.

Call a member of the team, or email us to secure your space, click on the picture to take you to our dedicated Rescue diver Page with further details.

The Team at Ocean View Diving

We are running our next PADI Basic Freediver Course on Sunday 20th October.

Taking course is your first step toward discovering why freediving is becoming a popular way to explore beneath the waves. Freediving is about inward power, discipline and control. If you’ve always wanted to enter the underwater world quietly, on your own terms, staying as long as your breath allows, then freediving is for you.

To enroll in the PADI Basic Freediver course you must be 12 years old or older. You need adequate swimming skills and need to be in good physical health. No prior experience with snorkeling, skin diving or freediving is required.

If you’ve always wanted to enter the underwater world quietly, on your own terms, staying as long as your breath allows, then freediving is for you.

Taking the course is your first step toward discovering why freediving is becoming a popular way to explore beneath the waves.

The course includes:

• Knowledge development about freediving principles through independent study with PADI Freediver eLearning.
• Confined water session to learn breathhold techniques as well as static and dynamic apnea.
  Goal – static apnea of 90 seconds and dynamic apnea of 25 metres.

Find out more about this course…

As part of our PADI Specialty of the Month programme in 2019, we will be running the PADI Drysuit Diver course on Sunday 13th October.

The pool orientation date is to be confirmed.

Extend your diving season! If you want to stay warm and toasty, feeling comfortable in cooler water, you will want to dive in a dry suit.

Unlike a wetsuit, a dry suit seals you off from the outside water and that keeps you warm! Even in surprisingly cold water.

You will need to do a small amount of home study before the course, then come to us for half a day at the centre to learn how to use the Drysuit in the pool, shortly before we go to the open water qualifying dives.

Find out more about this course…

PADI Freediver Instructor Camp at Y-40

We were offered the opportunity to head off to the fantastic Y-40 Pool in the beautiful surroundings of the Euganean Hills Thermal Park in Italy, 40 minutes out of Venice to be part of the PADI Freediver Instructor Camp.

PADI were running a Freediving Camp, with a view to get a few of us certified as Freedivers, and hopefully as Freediving Instructors by the end of the camp.

We decided we wanted to give this a go, what a fantastic opportunity.

As the weeks went by before the trip we had the home study to complete, and I started to get myself ready by working on my CO2 tolerance with breath hold exercises at home. Pash has been Freediving for a couple of years now, so has already got a lot of the skills needed to get through the courses, as a newbie, I wasn’t sure I was up to the task, but I wanted to give it my best.

Off we go…

Finally the day came to head off to the airport on our new adventure, it was an early start so it wasn’t quite bright eyed an bushy tailed!

Due to a flight cancellation, we had a bit of an extended journey, via Milan with a train journey across the Italian countryside.

When we turned up to the Hotel Terme Millepini we were tired from a long journey (thanks Easy Jet!) so we were really happy to see how lovely the hotel is. After a quick change it was straight out to the thermal swimming pool to meet the rest of the group, and catch up with our PADI Regional Manager Emma.

We all met up that evening for our first part of the course, our Quick Review to check that all that home study had actually gone in and was stored in the grey matter.

We moved onto proper breathing techniques and relaxation techniques, and the very important equalisation techniques needed for Freediving.

Our orientation of the course showed that we were in for an intensive few days. No slacking for the next four days.

Training began

Day One: The camp started off early with the Basic Freediver and the Freediver course, this covers the fundamental skills needed for Free Diving. The PADI
Basic Freediver course is a subset of the PADI Freediver course. It’s a great first step for developing solid freediving skills. You learn basic freediving principles and focus on practicing breath-hold techniques in a pool, and rescue techniques.

After a “light” breakfast we were off to the pool for the first time, Wow! The pool is amazing!
It’s a toasty 33˚ and beautifully clear, we were excited before we even got into the pool.

The day went really well, we were put through our paces learning the Basic Freediver course skills. This includes working on Static Apnea – breath-hold whist laying still ‘static’ face down, Dynamic Apnea – breathold whilst swimming horizontally, proper body positioning, and shallow water rescue skills.

We progressed onto the rest of the Freediver course in the afternoon, learning proper breath-up techniques, buddy skills for depth, and breathing at the end of each dive. Over the day we built up to get a Static hold of at least 90 seconds, and a Dynamic Apnea swim of 25m, and several dives to at least 10m, we build up to the deeper dives to prepare the body.

For me the hardest part of this first day was concentrating on quieting my mind to get into the correct mind-set for this very calm and quiet sport. Learning how to relax your body and mind is extremely important to move forward in this sport.

We were allowed to play in the pool, and enjoy the facilities of the hotel pools, I think it’s safe to say Pash and I were like prunes by the end of the day. After a relaxing dinner with the rest of the group, we were ready for an early night.

Day Two: Building on day one, we were now to do some deeper dives, going for longer breath-holds and longer distances, with further rescue skills and buddy techniques. We were moving onto the Advanced course. By the end of the day, we had managed to achieve a breathe-hold of 2 mins:30 seconds, with a Dynamic swim of 50 metres.

Over the day we practiced lots of new skills, swimming up from 10m with only one fin, returning from 10m to the surface without a mask, and rescuing a diver from 10m. During this skill our instructor Kostas put us through our paces, during my rescue dive with him, he made it pretty hard, pretending to convulse three times on the way up, given that he is over 6’2” and built with muscles it was not an easy rescue simulation. However for me this was a great way to learn, just like the Rescue Diver course this prepares you for situations we hope never happen.

This side of the sport needs to be taken seriously and prepared for. We knew we were in really safe hands with the teaching team, we had 2 Instructor Trainers, Kostas and Rich, 2 Territory Directors with PADI UK, Jonas and Rich, and 3 Regional Managers, Emma, Emily and Mika, so we had lots of support.
(No pressure though… 😉  )

Our results

It was hard-work for sure on this second day, but every bit of it was great, overcoming my own fears of not being able to do the deep dive was my biggest block. After a couple of warm-up dives I managed to get to 20.3m, and Pash managed to smash it at 22.8m!! Fantastic!

I didn’t think I was going to do it as I cut short the first attempt and turned back up at 17m. After a good talking to my self, and some relaxation breaths, I was determined to reach the required 20m.

I think it is safe to say that after the end of the second day, we were all pretty tired, but very happy with what we’d achieved. That evening we had a really entertaining dinner, what happened in Italy stays in Italy!!

Assessment Day

Day Three: Today was the day for our teaching assessments, I was so nervous!
This was an important part of the PADI Freediver Instructor Camp. But we had nothing to worry about. The training team were great, they took us through the Instructor training with support and care. After our assessments we all had our individual meetings with the instructors, we were all thrilled to have passed our Instructor courses.

A few of us celebrated by getting to the bottom of the 40m section of the Y-40 pool… on scuba, which was great fun.

That evening we were lucky enough to be given a guided tour of the Y-40 facility by Giovanni Boaretto, the Executive Manager of Y-40, and the son of the Architect and owner of Y-40. We were fortunate to get an insight into how the pool was built, and how his dream of building the pool became a reality.

All in all, Pash and I had a great week, and are now ready to start teaching the Basic and the Freediver courses.

To find out how you could start your own Freediving adventure, take a look at our Freediving page