Assistant Instructor

Shark Scuba – Colchester, UK March 2005

We decided over the Xmas period that we would take a break from training as we wanted a bit of time with the kids and time away from the pool.  However Keith was soon in his sales mode and had other ideas, we soon found ourselves signed up for our Assistant Instructor (AI) course and no more weekends free for the foreseeable future!

Doing this course straight after the DM is a good idea especially for the exams as the information is very fresh.  We were lucky in so much as Shark Scuba had trained us towards being an Instructor since we first started out as Divemaster’s; we hadn’t realised this at the time.

Moving up to the next level gives you more responsibility and respect in the diving community, which is not always evident.

More weekends and diving in the cold lakes of the UK, one benefit (!?) of this time of year is that the visibility is a lot better even if it is very cold.  January passed into February and into March, and again there were the final exams looming; why do we keep putting ourselves through all this agony, we don’t know.  We had passed all the Confined and Open Water work and now had the exams again to do.  With much anguish we sat down and went through them all and once again were successful.

So the end of March sees us both as Assistant Instructors and this time we would have a break, as it was time for a well-earned holiday.

April 2005

On holiday finds us back in Tenerife, where Charlotte completes her Advanced Open Water(AOW) course.  We were really enjoying the diving here and quickly coming round to the idea that we wanted to move here to live and work; the big question was how?  Towards this dream we decided that we would work towards being Instructors and attend the Instructor Development Course (IDC)in November.

What we had not told the children was that we had made up our mind and we would be moving next year; we wanted them to come but there was a lot to go through and plan before this could happen.

May 2005

Theresa fly’s off with a party from Shark Scuba to the Red Sea; this is an “ease of conscience” trip agreed to by Richard.  Theresa’s enjoyed it more for the experience of leading dives; teaching and rescue work for real than the diving itself.  However nice it was to get a break she missed Richard during this time, it being the first time away without each other.

July 2005

Richard fly’s off by himself for his prize; on arriving in Egypt it turns out to be real.  The next week passes very quickly with continues diving and even a shipwreck (another Dive boat that sank!).  However it’s not the same alone and both Richard and Theresa would not want to go away without each other again.

August 2005

We were due to go to Lanzarote for a holiday without the children, but around May we both decided that if we were going to move to Tenerife then we needed to go back and research a lot more.

We therefore changed the destination to Tenerife and spent the holiday doing some diving, even leading some try dives to help out the dive centre, but mostly seeing the different areas to decide where we would like to live.  In the end we ended up buying a house “off-plan”, which was a very impetuous thing to do but was not a rash decision.

There was still a lot to do to get here.