31 Aug - I´m now an Instructor!

Hi all,
Sorry for the silence over the last couple of weeks... it´s been pretty busy in the classroom, the pool and out on the dive sites around Utila.

But it´s all been worth it. On Wednesday we finished two days worth of our IE, Instructor Examination, and I´m now a CPR Primary/Secondary Care Instructor and a PADI OPEN WATER SCUBA INSTRUCTOR!

The Instructor Development Course - IDC

I´d like to give a big plug for Utila Dive Centre and the Mango Inn. A comfortable, clean place to stay and a professional outfit to dive with. The Instructors at UDC are fun to work with, and there´s a palpable pride and outward enthusiasm in those working at UDC.

My hat´s off to Andy Phillips and Neil Ross who are the Course Directors. They provided the professionalism you expect, the content and quality you need, and the diving and fun that you want!

They took us through everything from PADI Business to making sure your students have fun at the weekly BBQ - actually the BBQ and PADI Business are not that far apart!

The course itself covered a variety of topics, from teaching the Open Water, Advanced, Rescue and Divemaster courses to Specialties which we can now teach, and also the other legal, quality and risk management aspects of the diving industry. The confined water (pool/dock) and open water sessions were always interesting, always more to learn about giving briefings and making sure student divers concentrate on the positives as well as solving the problems that might crop up.

I also have to say thanks to Andy for the try-dive with a Closed Circuit Rebreather, many thanks, it´s confirmed for me the direction I want my diving to go. I´ll see you back in Utila with a CCR of my own.

The Instructor Examination - IE
Two guys from PADI Americas came down and on Tuesday we did the written exams, covering Standards, Physics, Physiology, Equipment, Environment and Decompression Theory. Then on Wednesday we had a VERY full day.

In the morning
- Out for the Open Water and teach two skills, and
- Conduct a Rescue on an unresponsive diver, providing rescue breaths every 5 seconds while removing tank and equipment then towing them to the boat.

Then in the afternoon
- Teach a confined water skill
- Demonstrate 5 out of the 20 skills needed for Open Water students
- In the classroom and do a presentation on an aspect of one of the dive courses.

That was the whole thing!!! We´d all qualified, and were about to be set loose on the diving industry!

That night Neil and Andy treated us to dinner at a local Italian restaurant, La Piccola, where one of the Staff Instructors, Angel, introduced us to providing teaching-quality demonstrations of how to drink Tequila Slammers by licking the salt from the neck of the girl sitting next to you... (No, Karen, I didn´t!)

The People
I´ve had a brilliant time in Utila. The sole reason is the people I had the good fortune to work with. My IDC Crew included (in no particular order):

Manuel - a funny, smart ex-pat Spaniard, who is a qualified pilot, was an engineer on the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, and is now a Scuba Instructor also! With an open-door policy at his place, you always know you´re welcome to visit, just hang out or do whatever.
Lionel (Jacques Mayol) - A bloody good guy who I´ve been having breath-holding competitions with.... I got up to 3 mins 30 secs, but Lionel reached 3 mins 54 secs. Email me when you break 4 mins! I´ll be training too... the competition continues!
Roberto - ¨El Presidente¨. A Honduran business dynamo. Either he or one of his brothers will be President of Honduras one day. His pride and joy were his new fins, which we managed to steal off him during a dive at about 35m deep the other day!!
Annie - The incredibly motivated one of our team! An intelligent, funny person who´ll be going home to be a lawyer, but I reckon will find some reason to get back to Utila before long.... oh, and don´t let her get anywhere near Piña Coladas!
Damien - The only other Aussie on our team, a piss-funny world traveller from Sydney who has had the luck to get to Antarctica... I´m bloody jealous. He´s staying in Utila to work for a while... stay in touch mate!
Brandy and Morgan - The hilarious Colorado couple who began travelling Central America, landed in Utila, and 3-4 months later had investing everything in becoming Rescue divers, Divemasters, then Assistant Instructors, and now Instructors.
Cyril and Pauline - the Swiss couple, most of us were blinded by being forced to see Cyril walk around in Speedos the whole time!
Maurizio, Felipe, Pablo, Pepe - The bloody funny Spanish Speaking crew who did their IDC with Angel, the Spanish Instructor... they had us all in fits of laughter, if not tears most of the time.

A quick note to everyone above, stay in touch, and if you ever find yourself heading to Australia, you´ll always have a home.