Why walk when you can dive? This past weekend at Lake Phoenix in Rawlings, Virginia, seven brand-new divers took their very first breaths underwater in open water — and they crushed it.
Checkout weekends are always a wild card. In the pool, skills feel controlled and predictable. But real water is different — it has personality, quirks, and sometimes a mean streak. And Lake Phoenix had plenty of that on display. Surface temps hovered in the mid-70s — a comfortable 76°F down to about 30 feet — but below that? Students got their first icy handshake with a thermocline. The kind of chill that sneaks into your wetsuit and makes you instantly aware
of every square inch of exposed skin. One student surfaced and simply said, “Wow… so that’s a thermocline.” Welcome to the club.
Visibility? Let’s just say it was “challenging” this weekend. Quarry diving sometimes means you’re less Jacques Cousteau and more Jedi-in-a-fog-machine. But that’s part of the experience — learning to stay calm, trust your buddy, and find joy in the adventure no matter what the water throws at you.
And as if to test their mettle, Saturday brought sheets of rain. Tanks dripped, wetsuits clung, and everyone wondered if the sky had forgotten about Virginia. But by Sunday, the clouds relented. The rain stopped, the sun broke through, and Lake Phoenix glistened like a reward. It felt like the universe was saying, “You’ve handled the hard part. Now here’s a glimpse of the beautiful diving that awaits.”
That first giant stride into open water is always the moment of truth. Trepidation rides high — doubts, anxiety, “what ifs.” But one by one, the fears melted away. By dive two, those nerves had transformed into excitement, curiosity, and grins behind every regulator. Students went from tentative fin kicks to full-on exploration mode, discovering that magical feeling of being weightless in a brand-new world.
Mask clears? Nailed. Reg recoveries? Smooth. Buoyancy control? Hard-won, but improving dive by dive. By the time we hit the platforms, you could see it click: these weren’t “students” anymore. They were divers.
And of course, no certification at Lake Phoenix is complete without tradition. After the final dive, each of the seven proudly rang the bell — a resounding clang that echoed across the quarry. A declaration for all to hear: a new scuba diver has arrived.
So let’s make it official: congratulations to PADI’s seven newest Open Water Scuba Divers! You battled the cold, pushed through the rain, conquered the thermocline, and proved you’ve got the right stuff to join the tribe.
You’ve earned your fins — and I can’t wait to hear where your adventures take you next. Reefs, wrecks, kelp forests, maybe even sharks the size of a bus. The underwater world is wide open now.
Let’s do some diving!
— Frank