Safety Stop. Sea Bees Diving stories:

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ep.1 – Open Water Divers Andy + Olga

These are some dry times for all scuba divers. We miss diving badly, but for now we can only dive a little bit into the past and remember together some of the good times we had underwater this past season. We will talk to some of you who dove with Sea Bees Diving this past season and maybe in many other seasons too but also to some of the Sea Bees diving instructors and colleagues .

So let’s take a giant stride together into some of the past dives and celebrate together our passion for the ocean and exploring the underwater world.

We’re starting off with Olga and Andy, a lovely couple from Germany who visited Phuket a few months back. They spent some of their holiday in Palm Garden Resort and left Thailand not only with beautiful memories, but also with an Open Water Certificate. We wanted to learn a little bit about themselves since their Instagram profile is so awesome and they love to share their life experiences.

Olga and Andy live in the beautiful City Nuremberg in Bavaria, Germany and they have a lot in common which may be the secret of their zero fights in 10 years of relationship.

“We are best friends/best diving buddies / best sports buddies / perfect partners for life. We love photography / videography (Andy) and picture designing and editing (Olga). We love to travel and love good food. We will travel much more in the future for sure. Diving is our new love 😍 and being on the ocean or IN the ocean is for us the total fulfillment😍 :). We are looking forward to dive in every single place, where we will travel … this thought makes us soo happy. We love to be creative in all parts in our lives and share the results with everyone. Motivating and inspiring people is our greatest passion.”

 

Source: https://www.instagram.com/ovenas/

 

When did you dive for the first time?

Andy: We dived for the first time in Egypt, Marsa Alam. It was last year in September. We were there for 2 weeks and for Olga it was even the first time she snorkeled.

She was super scared of the deep. But after enjoying lying on the surface and looking at the beauty of the deep, she instantly fell in love with that.

After two days of snorkeling, I decided to find out what a “try dive” will cost. For Olga it took only 2 hours of thinking 😳 to be onboard with the idea.
So we decided to go together for a try dive course

How did the idea of taking a course and getting a diving certification appear? Was it you Andy or was it you Olga? 

After falling in love with diving on the try dive course there were no doubts we needed to get our diving certification. The next question was just “when and where” 🤗

So you choose Sea Bees Diving… how come? 

We have a good friend named “Oliver Kargus” and he recommended your diving school with all his heart. So after doing a little research we liked the Homepage and your social Media channel very much and everything looked (and still does :P) super professional. After contacting you and the communication with the handsome Hilla it wasn’t hard at all to make the decision 🙂

What did you like most from your course? 

It was well structured and profesionel procedure / very good online learning content / perfect diving locations / super friendly people and the best was:
– As vegans we got extra food .. that was just super awesome from you 😍

Who was your instructor? What did you like the most about the way he took you through the course? 

Our instructor was the awesome “Marc Messiaen”. We liked his training style “its not an exam its an experience and a vacation – so take your time to understand everything”
So we haven’t been under pressure and learnt everything as good as possible.

Did you take any learnings for your diving certification that you think are quite useful even when you don’t dive? 

So actually our greatest learning was: Get out of your comfort zone to see the greatest things in life. Diving deep down to 18m can scare you as a beginner, but thanks to Sea Bees Diving we did it and saw some of the greatest beauty of our planet ♥

Source: https://www.instagram.com/ovenas/

 

Let’s take a moment and reminisce about your first dive in the ocean. How did it feel? 

After getting used to breathing and being underwater, the feeling of being weightless and looking around all the beauty .. was one of the greatest experience of our lives .. we just didn’t want to leave the water anymore 😂.

Where did you dive during the course? 

We have dived in the following places close to Phuket:
– Racha Yai / Bay 3
– Bugalow Bay
– Koh Bida Nok
– Palong Wall
– Shark Point
– Banana Bay
– Camera Bay Racha Noi

Do you remember what marine life you encountered? Any favourites? 

We have encountered a lot of marine life of course.
A lot of moray eels, Octopus – a very huge one, Stone fish, nudibranchs. But the absolute highlight was a Leopard Shark and for a very short moment a blacktip reef shark 
😍

What do you like most about diving? 

Definitely the weightlessness .. just floating around and enjoying the beauty as long as you can, as loong as the air tank lasts 😂

How was it to share this experience as a couple? 

It was just the best experience. Since we are a dream team we always work perfect in every situation.
So we studied together, we passed the exam together we shared all the experience together.
A dream team over land and underwater 
😋.

For Olga it was much easier to feel comfortable to have someone with her, who understands her completely and knows her fears. So in case of emergency, Andy will always understand her the most.

 

Source: https://www.instagram.com/ovenas/

 

Now that you have your certification and your logbook, there must be a wishlist? Where to next? 

So our wishlist is:
– definitely the Maldives (but 2021 after our wedding :))
– Again Thailand and maybe Bali this year (December or something, we would like to spend our Christmas and New Year somewhere in the beautiful Asia :))
There are sooo many spots we would like to dive
– I would definitely go back to diving in the Red Sea as a certified diver
– in Iceland in the silfra .. looks super amazing and a very wide view
– Mexico
– and for sure the Great Barrier Reef
actually .. we would like to dive everywhere 😀 but these spots are on the main wish list for now 
😋

What are you doing during this period, how did you adapt to all the new norms and recommendations to stay in, to social distance, the travel restrictions and all that? 

Luckily Olga is a project manager and myself (Andy) am an engineer, so we both have the option to work from home. So we make home office and try to do the best out of it. After work, we have a lot of time to grow our own business and work a lot on Social Media. So no matter how hard the situation is, you need to make the best out of it. So we have adapted really quick and love to have so much time together :).

Do you have some feel good tips and workarounds that helped you adjust? 

The best feel good tips are:
– make enough sport at home or go for a walk if the government allows it
– find things you really love to do and try to learn them to a professional level
– eat clean and stay healthy so your mind will adjust much faster to this new life style 🙂