Learning to dive is a family affair

Eileen Ogintz -

On Grand Turk, the reef is just 500 yards offshore, which means there are no long boat rides for divers to get there. Relax and breathe !

That could be the mantra for de-stressing everyday life. But here on tiny Grand Turk Island in the Turks and Caicos, where many believe Columbus first made landfall in the New World, the words are a dive instructor’s directions to my 19-year-old daughter, Melanie.

Melanie is preparing to do her first of four open-water dives that will lead to her certification as a scuba diver, joining her dad, brother and me, and some 18 million PADI divers around the world. We’ve come to the 16-room Bohio Resort so that Mel can complete the course she started online at www.Padi.com. PADI, the largest dive organization in the world, gives people the option of taking the $120 online course and completing it at a resort or signing up for a classroom course — typically more expensive — that could also include the confined and even open-water portions of the instruction.

That we’re getting a few days of just mom-and-daughter time is a bonus.

We meet best friends Emily Needham and Carla Kadzin, two young women from Long Island, who took such a class before they arrived. Needham said she spent last summer, “with a textbook in my hand rather than a drink. It was more intense than we thought and that made it more interesting.”

They took the course courtesy of Emily’s dad, John Needham, a diver who wanted to encourage his daughters to embrace a sport he enjoys. Over the next four days, his older daughter, Catherine Brigham, and her husband, Harry, are completing their course along with my daughter, learning how to manage their scuba gear and get water out of their masks without surfacing. They practice skills, like sharing air and replacing their mask, towing another diver in the pool or off the beach. The course costs roughly $450.

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