Dive Centre Day

If you are lucky enough, you will spend at least a week of your precious summer holidays diving or even better get the other half involved and make it a two week trip. If you have any sense at all you will have taken a bit of time out on the computer and planned where and who you want to dive with, this makes a lot of sense and takes the slog out of going from dive centre to centre trying to get the best deals.

There is not a diver out there who when arriving at there chosen dive centre has not thought ‘Lucky sods’ I would love to do there job and have here lifestyle.
Well I have just spent time with a dive school in Costa Teguise on the island of Lanzarote.

They are called Daivoon Dive Centre and run by Goetz Schafer and his partner Michaela Jedinger.

Goetz, is 32 from Germany, he is fluent in German, English and very passable Spanish. SSI Master Instructor, SSI Divecon Instructor, CMAS Instructor**, Re- Breather Instructor and has a speciality in Handicapped Instruction along with Child Instructor.

He started diving at the age of 10years and has a passion for diving which is very infectious. He has also done a stint at commercial diving working in various parts of the world.

Michi, as she is always called is 27 from Austria; again fluent in German and English and passable Spanish, she is the brains behind the outfit, dealing with web design, accounts and paperwork and basically runs the school while Goetz is out teaching and diving.

CMAS Instructor*, Padi Divemaster, Children’s Instructor, Equipment Technician and on top of this she is finishing a degree in Psychology.

The shop is open everyday from 08.30am until 18.00 and sometimes later when night dives are planned.

My day started at 08.30 to the smells of wet suit and freshly brewed coffee which is a staple diet. Goetz is already getting things together for the day and Michi along with making coffee is checking emails and talking on the phone.

At 09.00 our students arrive, Thomas & Lisa both from Hamburg, Germany and thankfully for me both fluent in English.

Thomas is a diver, who like most people only gets to dive when on holiday and I was going to be his buddy for the day.

Lisa, on the other hand was in the final stages of doing her Open Water course and we would all be diving together for her final day.

While Goetz, Thomas & Lisa are getting there equipment together, Michi has a group of people arrive ready to do a try dive. The dive school is very lucky to be right opposite a super bay where try dives are great fun and realistic with the added bonus of often seeing Rays, Angel sharks and sometimes seen small blue sharks.

So by now the school is a hive of ordered activity.

While myself and Thomas get the dive bus loaded with cylinders and equipment, Goetz and Lisa are going through what she will be required to do during our dives together and by 10.00am we are ready for the off.

It’s been decided that we will dive at Charco del Palo a popular destination and always a good dive.

On arrival we walk to the dive site, Goetz gives a comprehensive diving brief in German as well as English for my benefit and then back to the bus and get kitted up.

The dive bus is also fitted with Emergency mobile phone, plus of course Oxygen and First aid equipment

It’s now 11am and the morning is going fast, we are all kitted up and after the obligatory buddy checks its down the steps to the site.

After a further quick check with Lisa, they both enter the water followed by Thomas and myself.

Then its down to the bottom, buoyancy check, all systems go and off.

One thing we are blessed with today is very calm conditions and there is hardly any movement at all in the water and at this time of year we are also doubly blessed with Sting Rays and I mean lots of them. Within minutes we are at what is locally called Christmas Tree Cave, and inside and out are dozens of Rays just slightly hidden under a layer of sand.

To Lisa this was an amazing sight and you could see in her eyes that she was blown away by the numbers and also the fact that some of the Rays started swimming about very close to us. Then a couple of large Trumpet fish put in an appearance, this dive just got better by the minute.

While Goetz and Lisa finish off there exercises to complete the course you can see from her whole attitude that she has nailed everything and is now let loose just to dive and enjoy herself.

One thing that did impress me was Goetz attention to detail and if he was not happy with what had been done, he said do it again until it was perfect.

I was not at the beginning of Lisa’s course so I am not sure how he teaches it but remembering that this was her 6th dive, her buoyancy was superb, and when after 45minutes we did an air check and she gave the 100bar sign and she only using a 10ltr cylinder, what can you say other than excellent.

After making our way back past many more Rays we finally finished an excellent dive, and as soon as we were back on dry land Goetz formally congratulated Lisa on passing her SSI Open Water Diver.

I have to be honest here, I know many a diver even after a lot more dives than Lisa struggle and use more air in 20 minutes than she did in an hour and I did do a sneaky look at her contents gauge.

After a quick change and a cup of Goetz’s excuse for what he calls tea, we finally head back to the dive centre with a very happy newly qualified diver. Where Michi is on hand with better tea and biscuits.

Unload the bus, and get the kit washed out, priority number 1, get things hung up, and cylinders ready for filling, now sort out the paperwork.

It has been a great privilege to be able to spend the day like this and when you see the enthusiasm and excitement that Lisa has shown, you know well that she and her partner Thomas are going to enjoy many hours exploring the undersea world and it’s thanks to good teaching and diving practices.

But that’s not the end of the day, after a quick bite to eat Goetz and myself are off to a large holiday complex and to see if he can get some people interested to try diving and hopefully sign up for a course. This is a common way to drum up business with holiday makers. After an hour of splashing around mainly with younger kids and today no takers for courses we head back to the centre for a well deserved coffee and a chat about the day.

It seems while we were out Michi who has taken several people into the bay for try dives has a young woman coming back the following day to start on an Open Water Course.

Goetz & Michi are about to open a new centre only 50mtrs from there shop now but with the advantages of more space, a better teaching area plus a larger and better wet room for all the equipment.

I am thinking that’s it for the day but now Goetz has the job of filling cylinders and making sure all the equipment used today is in good order and drying out.
The idea of running a dive school especially when you live on a warm sunny island is probably a dream many of us have but I can assure you its hard work, very demanding and you need to be on the top of your game every day. Would I like to do it full time, no way, I love my diving but on my terms, but I have great respect for the Instructors out there who do this job day in day out.

But as Goetz said to me as I was leaving, when you do a job well and you have a customer that’s satisfied with a course or just dive guiding that’s what makes his job one of the best in the world. Lisa is a great example of what’s great about our sport, she loved everything about the whole experience, she and Thomas flew home the following night and her last words to me were, we are coming back next year and we want to do a lot more diving. Good schools, Good Instructors = Good Divers.

I had a great day with Goetz and Michi, they are very professional people who rightly take everything to do with diving seriously, but they are also extremely nice people always willing to help and lay on crazy diving days for some of us locals. The new dive school should be up and running within the next 2 months so if any of you are planning a trip and want to hire gear, dive with a reputable company and meet nice people along the way then give them a call. Web site www.daivoon.com

Email daivoon@daivoon.com Telephone: 0034 928346803 Mobile: 0034 608647281