Posts Tagged ‘how to be a scuba instructor’

Catalina Island Scuba Instructor Blog

Monday, July 5th, 2010

I have been living and working on Catalina Island again, now for a month and a half. I am getting settled in to my new lifestyle of working part time at The Avalon Hotel and part time as a Scuba Instructor and snorkeling and scuba tour guide.  Catalina Island gets a Carnival cruise ship every Tuesday and one of the dive shops that I Work for has the contract to take people from the ship diving and snorkeling.  I have been working exclusively on the snorkeling tours both from shore and off the Scuba Cat dive boat.  Snorkeling tours have been great.  It is very fun diving down and bringing up critters for the snorkelers to see and touch.  We usually can bring up a variety of shell fish, sea stars, sea cucumbers, lobster, octopus, horn sharks, sea hares and much more.

When there is not a cruise ship I do diving tours and Discover scuba tours in the Avalon dive park.  I have done around 500 dives in the dive park so I have a good knowledge of the best features of the dive park so that I can give my customers a great tour.  I really love seeing people get to see a bat ray or a giant black sea bass for the first time.

Come over and check out the Avalon Dive park, it is one of the best shore dives in the country.

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Scuba goals for 2010

Thursday, January 14th, 2010

The new year has begun and it is looking good! Last year had some great moments and although there were tough times it ended on a high note.  I decided a couple of years ago to step away from teaching scuba full time for a while due to personal and economic reasons. I planned to work for UPS and make a bunch of money and get my finances in order and use the excellent health benefits to catch up on routine health care.  Well, I have been struggling for 2 and 1/2 years barely getting by on an average of less than 10 days of work per month. Of course I am not complaining much about that because many people fared much worse than I did through the whole economic crisis.  Now things are really looking up, I made some good moves in 2009 to set the stage for what hopefully will be a triumphant return to the scuba business.  For example, first and most important I got married to Laurie, my best friend and that is the best thing I have done ever. Second, I sold my house so now I have the freedom to make a move back to a diving destination to get back on the front line of the scuba industry, and third, I got a second job that will help me get on tract to pay off the small remainder of debt that I am carrying. 

Now, I just have to decide where I will start teaching again? My first choice is to go right back to Catalina Island, I love it there.  But I do not plan on making a move until around June so I want to research some other spots as well.  Possibilities?  Well, perhaps I can give the U.S. Virgin Islands another shot; the last time I tried to work there I gave up too easily and maybe I was wrong to do so.  Perhaps I will give a look at Florida and Hawaii too. I heard working conditions in Florida in the Scuba industry are not very good, but I should research that further.  I heard work was good in Hawaii but it is hard to live there, well it is hard to live on Catalina Island too, but it was worth it.

Meanwhile I want to take some good dive trips and write some reviews, articles and blogs that will spark some interest for some people and I want to work on my Internet business so that I can have a side income when I start teaching again.  My first stop; back to Catalina Island in March for a little lobster hunting and maybe to teach a class or two. Next stop; Florida Keys and diving in Key Largo, Islamorada and Key West. After that, La Paz, Mexico in October to play with the sea lions and hopefully the hammerhead sharks. 

So, it looks like 2010 will be a good year with many excellent scuba adventures and fun with good friends.

Tim Sanchez www.vistasbelow.com

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Scuba instructor finds new hobby; learns to play guitar

Sunday, November 15th, 2009

Before I became a scuba instructor, I had a regular full time 9 to 5 job as a sales manager at a national newspaper; my escape from the rat race was to go scuba diving.  When I went down to Laguna Beach near my home in Orange County California, I would get in the water and hover around the reefs and I would just relax and really unwind.  After I started scuba diving for a living, since I did 3 to 5 dives a day for work I needed to find a new hobby.  That is why I decided to buy a guitar. I was always interested in music and wanted my whole life to learn to play the guitar.  I messed around with guitars a few times over the years and knew how to play a few chords but I never really applied myself to really learning how to play, so that is what I did.

 Trying to learn to play guitar was a struggle at first, I bought a couple of guitar books and videos and they helped a bit, but after going through them all I could do is play a few more chords and a handful of chord progressions and riffs. I was not able to get past just playing the intros to a few songs and some cool riffs and it was embarrassing. People would say “Oh, you play guitar? Play something for me.” And that is all I had, a few riffs and chord progressions. 

 Hiring a guitar teacher was not an option. With my lifestyle it is difficult to make that kind of rigid commitment to meet with a teacher at a set time and place.  I had to learn on my own schedule.  That is when I discovered that there are amazing instructional programs that I could download on my computer so I can learn and practice at my leisure.  With those programs I went from playing a few chords to playing complete songs from beginning to end and singing too.  Now playing guitar is a pleasure for me. Now I can pick up a guitar and sit and play several complete songs and really unwind and relax; and I am not too embarrassed when someone asks me to play something (except for my lousy singing voice, but that is a whole other story). 

 I encourage anyone I talk with to pursue their dreams. If you can do what I did and turn your hobby into your way of life then I applaud you, but when your hobby becomes your job, you need to find a new way to unwind.  For me, playing guitar is a perfect hobby to go along with my scuba instructor lifestyle. Perhaps for you it is landscaping, fishing, coin collecting, model airplanes or aquariums; whatever it is, go after your dreams and live your life, it is never too late to start.

Posted Tim Sanchez

http://www.vistasbelow.com

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My life as a scuba instructor

Monday, October 5th, 2009

Working as a scuba instructor is the most rewarding and enjoyable job I have ever had. Being a scuba instructor at a resort location adds the perma-vacation lifestyle to the mix that makes the whole deal perfect, almost surreal.  The instructor job in a mainland dive retail center is a pretty good job, it is great to be involved in the diving community and it is rewarding to help others to enjoy scuba diving. You usually will work in the shop doing typical retail sales work and you schedule dive activities and of course teach classes.  For me, however, I like a little more adventure and variety.  Working at a resort dive center is just the ticket.  At Catalina divers supply I worked in the shop a little bit, especially when business was slow for tours and classes, but most of the time I was either the dive-master on the dive boat or I was teaching Discover Scuba Diving and leading scuba or snorkeling tours in the dive park.  It is really enjoyable most of the time, of course you are still dealing with the public and sometimes people can be a little less than cooperative, but it is all worth worth it anyway.  In the high season (July – September) all the instructors would spend the day at the dive park where we had a small dive shop make out of a large utility trailer. The shop was equipped with a ton of rental gear and had a compressor to fill scuba tanks. There was also a storage room inside the world famous Casino building, we had our own private entrance to this room that we aptly call the dungeon.  What we would do was just wait there while the main shop on the pier prepared the students / customers for the dive by handling all of the necessary paperwork and collecting their money, then they would send them over to us.  In the case of the Discover Scuba diving classes, we would provide the lessons on a bench, then we would gear up and go into the dive park and take them on a dive.  There is a stairway leading down to water and we had a buoy with a descent line set in about 18 feet of water, give or take a couple of feet based on the tide.  There is nothing more fulfilling and enjoyable than to see the excitement in the face of someone who just finished their first scuba dive in the ocean, and they did it in one of the best dive sites in the world.  Every day I would feel like I was living my first dive over and over.  Does it get old?  Well, maybe a little bit sometimes, but overall it is just awesome.  Some people ask me if I get tired of diving the same dive site over and over again.  Absolutely not.  The Avalon dive park has so much to see and it is big enough that I had 10 or more different tour routes that I can take and it never gets old.  Even on my days off, I would go diving in the dive park just for fun, I just love it. So, if anyone reading this that loves scuba diving and feels compelled to be an instructor but is not sure if it is worth it;  I say yes it is worth it.  It is not a job to get rich or to live an expensive lifestyle, but you can travel all over the world and teach scuba if you want.  You can keep your belly full and get rich on experiences and friendships and it is well worth it.

Presently I have stepped aside from teaching scuba full time due to financial and other reasons, but I am on the road to getting back to it again little by little.  I took time off to, among other things, get married and re-build my bank account so I can take my career to the next level.  If it all works out I can work independently and make a good living with the health insurance that is highly necessary and so hard to find in the industry.  As I work toward that goal I am going to start working more and more to maintain my skills and involvement in the business by doing more teaching and promoting diving vacations on a part time basis while I also work part time for UPS.  I will be blogging about my progress and sharing photo’s, stories and reviews of our adventures.  You can find out about our scuba travel plans on my website www.vistasbelow.com

Posted by Tim Sanchez

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Baby steps

Sunday, September 13th, 2009

Now I have a goal, not just a dream.  I know it can be done I just have to plan it out, consider what sacrifices I must make and start working toward my goal step by step.  Fortunately I had already begun one of the most important steps of working toward my scuba instructor certification.  I started diving in 1992 while on vacation in Tahiti.  As a kid I, like many kids those days, loved to watch the undersea world of Jaques Cousteau and National Geographic and any other shows on TV that featured nature and animals and especially underwater.  I have always loved the water, when I went to the pool you could not get me out of the water and most of the time I was underwater swimming around like a seal holding my breath forever.  Living in Southern California I surfed a little bit and  went snorkeling and did body surfing and body boarding or anything that involved me being in the ocean. So my friend Toby and I were there at this beautiful beach resort on the island of Moorea snorkeling for hours just amazed at the beautiful coral and colorful fish and the warm clear water.  Then one evening we were approached by a scuba instructor who with his broken English and heavy French accent, asked us if we would like to learn to scuba.  We looked at each other and said absolutely Yes.  So for the next 3 days we took scuba lessons and we got certified by CMAS, we went diving and got totally hooked.  When we returned from our vacation I bought a set of scuba gear and started diving whenever I could.  I had a bit of difficulty finding active, reliable dive Buddy’s so I joined a dive club called the Santa Monica Blue Fins, a group of older very experienced divers that often booked dive boats to go dive the channel islands.  I learned so much from hanging around those folks and got some great diving experience and learned how to be very self reliant in my diving as most of the Blue Fins were solo divers.  My love for scuba just grew and grew and I really wanted to share my passion with everybody I knew.  I also started traveling to scuba resort destinations so I can experience different types of diving other than the cold water kelp forest diving of Southern California.  I visited Cancun, Cozumel and Kauai on my family vacations and did a bunch of diving.  Eventually the Blue fins started to fizzle out and they were posting fewer trips and my interests were changing anyway, so I was looking for another dive club to join.  While I was working one day I passed by a dive shop in Orange California called Pacific Wilderness so I popped in to check the place out.  They had a great listing of classes to take and dive club activities to participate in so I signed up for an Advanced Open Water class through PADI and I joined the dive club.  After my advanced class I started going on the club trips to La Paz, Mexico and Wow!, I found a new favorite place to dive.  La Paz and the Sea of Cortez are amazing! I returned again and again and had some awesome experiences that I can talk about for days, but those are stories that I will tell later on my website and my travel blog. (both currently under construction) Meanwhile, while diving with the club I found that I really enjoyed sharing my experiences with other people and answering questions that they have about diving.  This made me feel like I would enjoy teaching scuba diving to others.  So I started taking the necessary classes to become, first a Divemaster and later an Open Water Scuba Instructor.  After going through the rescue class and the Emergency First Response first aid class and the Dan Oxygen class I started the Divemaster class.  The Divemaster class usually takes about 3 or 4 months maybe a little more but I had an instructor that seems to like to have a lot of free help with her classes, so she kept me as an intern for a few years.  This turned out to be a blessing in disguise because I really developed my skills with helping others learn to dive over a long period of time.  I assisted her as an intern or divemaster in training, for many many Open Water, Advanced, and Rescue classes.  I loved it and I did not care that I was not finishing the class quickly because at the time I had a full time job and a family, I just wanted to be involved and get a few free weekend boat diving trips throughout the year.  This brings me back to how I started to work toward my dream.  I turned my dream into a goal somewhere around December of 2003.  I had all this experience already under my belt so it was relatively easy to finish my certifications to become an Open Water Scuba Instructor with PADI.  Just to make sure I was going to be the best I can be,  I started the Divemaster class from the beginning with a new instructor and went straight into the Instructor Development Class immediately afterward.  I was finally certified in May of 2005 and started teaching scuba through Pacific Wilderness part time, right away.  That was step number one toward my new life of doing what I love for a living.  My next blog post will be about what I did next to reach my goal.

Tim Sanchez

www.vistasbelow.com

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