Scuba diving has been an exciting adventure for me for years. But everything had to start somehow. I was not exactly born as a diving instructor.

The beginning

It all started in a boring vacation on Sri Lanka. At that time I was still working as a management consultant and used to long working days. And then you arrive to Sri Lanka ... tea plantations, hotel pool, hotel beach and that's it. After only 2 days I was annoyed not having taken my laptop with me. My girlfriend Ines was an enthusiastic diver. She kept trying to persuade me to give it a try. My excuses were varied - no time - uninteresting - if I want to see fish, I go to my favorite restaurant, etc. I think I was just scared. And now stranded on Sri Lanka, I discovered a sign of a diving center at the hotel pool: "Free trial diving". I had to wait 2 days, but then it actually happened. An English diving instructor went with me to the hotel pool. Submerged to a merciless depth of 1.50 meters, I could see for the first time how dirty the hotel pool really was, wow. Unfortunately the fun was over after about 5 minutes, I would have preferred to stay forever, but it was just a try dive. Now it was confirmed: diving is dangerous. It had infected me faster than the corona virus would ever have. The PADI Open Water course started the very next day. My instructor said it is going to be easy. What can I say, I think I have pushed these four course days out of my memory. To sum it up - if at some point I see my two diving instructors, they will get a box of beer from me. Because only after working as a diving instructor myself, I was able to see how students can be. And I was certainly not better, but the well-trained diving instructors always had only praising words. One of the professional skills taught by PADI in their instructor courses. I still remember, I always had huge problems descending. Pressure equalization was almost impossible and after two days I had an otitis media due to a squeeze. But that didn't stop me from taking the PADI Advanced Open Water Diver course right afterwards. Hey man, after six days and a total of 9 dives, I was an advanced diver. Incredible. It was probably this overconfidence that I headed the dive center chief, Cpt. Eddy Ruprecht, to ask for the earnings of a diving instructor ... Clearly not enough.

I got my PADI licenses, beautiful, colorful plastic cards, straight to my home. Back in Germany it started straight away, buying "good" diving equipment. Ines accompanied me and we ended up in a dive shop in Bochum. The owner was very happy to sell me expensive diving equipment. As an "advanced" diver, I was now in possession of a DUI wing jacket that I was never really able to handle, a regulator, a Camaro Moniteur diving suit (two-piece and 7 mm thickness), fins, mask and very importantly, a huge diving knife.

And so we went to a closeby lake at the weekend. It was early April, it was cold, it was an insane drag. After a so-called buddy check we went under water with two friends. After twenty minutes the fun ended for me. The compressed air tank was completely empty. Our friends continued diving for about an hour. Now I knew what Advanced Diver means. I had progressive air consumption and was immediately nicknamed "Air-Junkie". So, I went straight to the next dive shop, bought a very big tank and a lot of lead, because I needed a lot of that too.

The start was difficult, I could not keep buoyancy, but diving was a lot of fun.

Many thanks to everyone who helped me with this start. Next step in my plan - getting DIvemaster -> click here to continue

Some facts:

All logged open water dives are calculated for your experience.

PADI Open Water Diver - 5 confined water or pool pool dives plus 4 Open Water dives (ocean or lake or any water deeper than 5 meters) with a minimum of 20 minutes dive time 

PADI Advanced Open Water Diver: Minimum 5 open water adventure dives with a minimum of 20 minutes each dive.

Total minimum experience as PADI Advanced Open Water Diver: 180 minutes or 3 hrs. Would you call a  truck driver with 3 hours experience an Advancd Truck  Driver?