Читать книгу Into the Abyss. Diving to Adventure in the Liquid World онлайн

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My initial training covered endurance swimming tests to determine if I was physically fit enough. From there I moved on to the delights of practical tests - like duck diving to recover a rubber brick from the bottom of the 15 foot diving pool.

After some basic training and theory it was time to be introduced to the diving tool that would be with me through my life, the aqualung. I didn’t, at this stage, truly understand how marvelous an idea it was nor how it worked. I just knew that if you fitted the 1st Stage clamp of the aqualung onto the pillar valve on the top of a compressed air tank, and stuck the breathing regulator, the 2nd Stage, into your mouth, it gave you whatever air you needed - whenever you needed it.

Like practically every other novice diver in the world, my first experience of the aqualung was in a pool. Wearing just a T-shirt and swimming trunks I sat down at the side of Peterhead pool and pulled on with great relish my new wet suit boots and the incredibly robust black rubber Jet fins of the time. They have proved to be truly indestructible - and are the only piece of my original dive equipment that I still have and use, twenty years later.