Take Your Family on Exciting Underwater Exploration. Like we did.

15.06.2020
Family holiday

Exciting underwater exploration sounds like a very good vacation idea and is something you must try? We know it is! Last summer, a couple of us from CTC Team met in Vodice, one of the major tourist hub spots on the Adriatic coast. And just as we were about to order some food, 10-year-old Frank excitingly yelled, “Look, Mom, a submarine!”

There it was, a small, red glass boat in the shape of a submarine, slowly passing right in front of our eyes, ready to drop the anchor. The moment we finished our pizzas at Toni’s, quite a famous place in the town, by the way, we jumped on board the sub. It was 4 pm under the scorching Adriatic sun so a nice, slow sail among the islands of Kornati National Park was just the right thing to do.

It’s really hard to describe the feeling when you are under the water, observing marine life and the underwater landscape from a dry and cozy place under the deck of the boat. Something you definitely need to experience in your lifetime.

The next day, we decided to crank it up a notch!

Croatia has something in abundance and in every, even the smallest coastline place, that’s scuba diving centers.However, we didn’t want to take any chances since the youngest member of our motley crew was just 10 so I called my longtime friend, an ex-SWAT member, a certified 4-star diving instructor.

This guy always carries his diving gear in the trunk of his car, can you believe that? The men dive in some of the deepest underwater archeological sites in the world so who’s better to give you directions and information, right? Two hours later, he arrived from Zadar and introduced us to one of his colleagues, the owner of the local diving center.

EXPLORE ZADAR

For the next couple of days, we didn’t do anything else besides eating, sleeping, and diving.

And none of us had any previous experience with it. That’s how good these guys are. It came to the point where our Franko didn’t want to get out of the suit and water. The poor kid developed an acute addiction to the underwater scenery.

How do these diving schools work?

Every major diving center in Croatia holds a multi-level course. One of the most popular is obtaining the OWD certificate or the Open Water Diver license.

This means that a diver successfully passed the theory and diving techniques with autonomous diving gear. A diver with an OWD certificate is qualified for safe diving and first aid.

The course itself consists of 5-6 theoretical lessons, 4-6 practical lessons (either in a pool or controlled shallows in the sea), and finally, 5-6 practical lessons in the open sea. All that time, the candidate is diving in pairs with the instructor up to depths of 18 meters.

Now, here’s the pickle. The minimum age to receive an OWD license is 12 years old. Our Franko was 2 years short but demonstrated some rarely seen persistence when he saw us getting in wet suits. He wanted one and was extremely loud about that. So loud, as a matter of fact, that the poor instructor finally caved in and found him suitable gear. I’ve never seen such a small kid so worked up about something.