February 16 - Australia: Cairns, Queensland

PADI Instructor Exam - Day #2!

At 8:30 this morning, we picked up Tom and went to DSDD to load air tanks and weight belts into the truck.  We had to be at the Palm Royale at 9:30 for our Confined Water presentation.  While there are about 40 candidates in the English-speaking section, they have separated us into groups between two instructors.  All 10 of us DSDD students are in the "Yellow" group.  10 is a pretty big group, so we wondered how one examiner was going to manage with all of us.

We went to the lap pool to set up our gear.  There was a group of English-speaking students and a group of Japanese-speaking in the pool already, as the examiners had begun Confined Water sessions with other groups at 8:00AM.  Our examiner - Young Hee is her name - told us that she would take "the first five students" first.  We were each assigned a number last night, and myself, Jon, Tom, UK Jon, and Chloe are the last five.  So we watched as the other group went in and knew we had a good hour and a half to wait.  So we hopped in the water and practiced our skills.

David, Jon, Chloe, Ray, Jamie, and Yoshi Before their Confined Water Presentations

Just before we got into the pool, one of the candidates from the previous English-speaking group came over and told us that we needed to be careful with our belongings.  They had left their stuff by the edge of the pool and - while they were underwater - some of their wallets had been stolen.  This is SO  not a four-star hotel.

Confined Water Presentations

We finally got started on the "second five" Confined Water Presentations around 11:30 or so.  This pool was absolutely FOUL.  It looked as though this is the pool man's year off.  The filter wasn't working and I don't even know if they have a pool vacuum.  The visibility was even worse than our dive the other day.  And that's nothing compared to the disgusting things we saw floating in the water.  There's nothing worse than being in a dirty pool with a mask on.  Nasty!

Jon's Confined Water presentation was "Regulator Recovery" and mine was "Remove and Replace Scuba Unit Underwater".  We realized immediately that this was going to be a breeze.  Young Hee was incredibly generous with her points.  Of course, we knew this because everyone told us that "the IE is a piece of cake compared to the IDC class!".  So I guess all the butt-kicking we've had from Vic and Chookie has really paid off.  How about that?

We really, really had to work hard to fail.

After our presentations, Jon, Tom, UK Jon and I went to Hungry Jack's to celebrate our successes.

Knowledge Development Classroom Presentations

We (students 6-10) were told to be back that Palm Royale at 4:00 for our classroom presentations.  But we didn't actually get started until 5:00 because students 1-5 (Ray, Jamie, Elli, Yoshi, and David) were running late.  So we did our presentations and - again - all passed with flying colors. 

UK Jon Preparing his Presentation

We left about 6:30 and drove the guys back home.

Pizza for Dinner

We enjoyed our evening at home by ordering pizza and watching "The Fifth Element" on TV.  We also worked on our Open Water presentations for tomorrow.