And the Dream Came to Reality...

Five months ago, I decided suddently to learn diving. In the middle of a dark and cold december, I passed my first qualification in a confortable pool heated at 28°C. I trained then methodically and physically in a diving association, still in closed waters. In juanuary, I imagined my first open water experience somewhere in May or June, during the fair days. I dreamed of my first open water dives that should logically somewhere on the nearest mediteranean French shores. On Thursday, May 17 at 3 pm the dream came to reality here :


In front of the Golden Island and Dramont beach (where the allied forces debarked on august 15, 1944 during the "Anvil Dragoon" operation) at the feet of Esterel massif, Var, France.


Quite shaked first by a strong wind in the little pneumatic boat for 20 divers, headed to the dive spot, I'm in complete confidence near my dive supervisor and my named guide for today.

It's now. Go Marc, go!

Picture credit : Plongée Plaisir 1 & 2, A. Foret, P. Torres, Editions GAP, 2005

God! What a shock! It's blue, it's green, it's salty and we are shaked by the waves. My experienced dive guide is Rosie, 32 and I dive with Aurélie, 23, first dive in open water too. We flush the air in the buoyancy jacket. Due to the stress, immersion is a bit tedious, but finally 2m, forward rotation, we go straight using our fins, 6m, 10 m. I compensate the pressure in the hears. Now we fall without the use of our fins. 15m, 20m, we now stabilize by reinflating gently the jacket to get a neutral buoyancy. Temperature 19°C. we are stable and everything is OK. I feel just perfect. I see now the landscape, the rocks, the green posidonea (the common mediteranean algae) meadows . The "saupes" fishes seem to laugh : "Hey did you see that guy with his new brand hardware??"

Photo © Claude Ruff

An enormous emotion that my guide clearly percepted through the mask. She was so happy to see us charmed...we are now explorating the site. We ascend effortless the rocks, explore extraordinary walls full of life, jump over the peak to fall with fluidity again on the other side. We are flying! It's magical. It's marvellous!

On the left wrist is my Suunto Vyper computer recording every dive parameters each 20s storing them in a database for offline analysis. On the right wrist is my fetish watch just repaired but Peter Maier the Vostok Europe N1 . My watch is shinning in the diffuse blue light of the deep water.



40 minutes after, we climb in a controled manner, slowly, and very slowly in the last 3m, controling any possible danger or obstacle that couls arise and we surface to the fresh air.

5 extra other dives followed until sunday with optimal weather conditions (2 dives per day separated by 5-6 hours to desaturate nitrogen dissoved by our organisms). In the last dive (total 43 min) we went for 5 min at 26 meters, one extra meter than the largest limitation for my present diving certification, with aspecial agreement of our guide, just to say hello to a kind murena (Murena helena) common in the Mediterranean sea.

Credit to Pony 33406 . Licence

The VE N1 resisted perfectly and worked remarkbly. Returned home, I just left it overnight in soft water to extract any residues of salt.

Sorry, I could not take underwater pictures during that session. I had already a lot of parameters to manage. But promised I will return soon with an adapted camera !!!

Here the dive profile of my 6th dive extracted from my Suunto Vyper computer that recorded every parameters every 20s of each dives.



Just arrived at 24m, we add to practice how to empty a flooded mask. Our instructor asked to remove our mask, put it on back , and to empty it just by inflating the mask using the nose. It an easy exercise but it needs to control correctly the breathing. Aurélie dislikes that practise and she inflated to much her lungs causing an ascent of ca 10m. I had to respect the coherence of the group and to follow on the side. This the peak recorded on the left. After its only the normal exploration and the final ascending.