While diving at Pulau Tenggol in August I learned a few things that I think are worth sharing.
1) If you haven’t used your equipment in a long time, check it out with a pool dive first. The first dive my dive buddy was a lady who had not used her equipment in several years. As soon as she got in the water we realised the seal around where her inflator hose attached to the BCD was cracked and bad. I got to finish the dive but she had to go back to the boat and then rent for the rest of the weekend.2) Bring an extra mask. I am a real idiot sometimes and I did a big step entry from the boat without holding onto my mask. Oops! There it went, off my head and down into the depths. No one else had brought an extra mask, so I was forced to abort the dive and rent a mask the rest of the weekend. Next time I will have a cheap backup in the dive bag.
3) Get it right, then go! One of the ladies in our group had just bought a new BCD. Although it didn’t malfunction like my dive buddy’s did, she was not familiar with it. She struggled through three dives or more before finally settling in and getting comfortable with the new equipment. I would rather dive in the pool or perhaps just a simple dive to get used to it rather than going to a great place to dive and missing lots of interesting sights because I was fiddling with my BCD. Get it right and then go! is my new philosophy.
4) Buy a sausage. I remember in university my housemate took a course on diving for university credit. He came home telling me that a dive knife was required equipment and you should never dive without one. That stuck in my head for years and even now I struggle to shed it. For me, the sausage is more important. A sausage is an inflatable buoy that divers often use to mark the spot they are doing a safety stop. They are usually about 2 meters tall once fully inflated. Twice in Tenggol divers were separated from our group and swept away from the dive site by strong currents. Once, they were swept 2 kilometers away within 20 minutes. We only found them because they both had their sausages fully inflated. After seeing that I vowed never to dive again without a sausage.
