Divemaster at Wicked Diving

My name is Henrik and I would like to tell you about my experience of becoming a Divemaster (DM).
Back in Sweden I’m an Electrical Engineer and I took 6 month off to try something totally different.
The main reason I wanted to become a DM was to be able to stay in a lovely country like Thailand for a long time and still be able to earn some money. Of course I also wanted to improve my diving skills and what better way to do it than to do a course where you learn so much?!
I decided to do my Divemaster Training (DMT) in Khao Lak and the Similans, the best diving in Thailand! I contacted different companies and tried to get an idea where I wanted to do my DMT. The choice was easy after the good contact and all the detailed e-mails I got from Wicked Diving. When I showed up here in Khao Lak the 29th of October I knew I had chosen the right place to do my DMT! I really felt welcomed and it didn’t take long before I felt like a part of the Wicked family.

I started my DMT in the beginning of November together with Erik, Paul and Mauela who directly became good friends of mine.
Our instructor for the DMT was Marcel and who turned out to be a really good mentor for all of us.
Only after 1-2 weeks of the DMT I had changed my thoughts about working as a diver. Now I’m thinking about becoming an Instructor when I have gained more experience as a DM. Before I got here my plans was to work as a DM this season and then go back to Sweden again. This is going to be a great experience and a memory for life, but now this might even be my future carrier. =)

Now how was the course and what did I learn from it?
First of all you get to do a lot of dives. Here at Wicked Diving you get to do a lot of liveaboards and it’s awesome.
You do a lot of theory which is really interesting and it really helps you to answer the customers questions later on, and believe me, you WILL get a lot of questions.
I had expected this part of the course but what I didn’t expect was the assisting on courses and demonstration of skills to the students during an assist. We where practicing the skills in different skills circuits until we felt comfortable and we even got scored on it from our instructor. It was during the skill circuits I started to think about becoming an Instructor later on. I enjoy teaching people the skills and see the improvements all the people does during the course.
Another part of the DMT was the mapping. This is where you should do an underwater map of a certain dive site. I would say that you need a lot more time on the dive site to do a proper map, but I really got to know the dive site Boonsung Wreck and I love to guide people there now.
Briefing the dive and dive site is a big part of the work of a DM. We got to practice it and always got good advice how to do it better and what to think about during a briefing.
As a professional diver you should be a good swimmer so of course there are some swimtests. =) Hard ones but we all made it and I promise you it feels good once you were done.

A part that many DMT fears is the “stress test”. The goal of the test is to exchange all the equipment with another diver, BCD, wightbelt, fins and mask. The thing is that you can only use 1 of the tanks which means you have to body-breath during all of the exchange. I did the test twice, the second time the “Wicked way”. =) This is when the Instructor (Marcel) messes up everything. Throw sand at me, rip my mask of, release my wightbelt and so on. I have to admit I got panicked at on point but I didn’t give up and it was a fun test!
As a final exam all the DMT´s were running a liveaboard. Everything from sort out the equipment for the costumers, arrange taxis to the boat, make a trip schedule and do all the briefings. We all got to lead a couple of dives and got to know how it feels like to work as a DM.
This was so far the best liveaboard I ever done. I got to this together with my good DMT friends (now DM) and the awesome instructors Marcel, Filip and Robyn from Wicked Diving.
I can’t think of a better way to get prepared to work as a DM and feel comfortable to guide costumers in the future.

I’m so happy that I decided to become a Divemaster! I got to know new friends for life, I really improved my skills as a diver and now I have the opportunity to work as a diver! =)

I would like to thank all the people on Wicked Diving: Aoy, Church, Filip, Karin, Marcel, Paul, Poy, Ricky, Robyn and Tuk.
Thank for making this a wonderful time and I hope to work more with you guys this season.

Best regards,
Henrik Schöffel