Scuba refresher in Crete

Anyone certified who has not been underwater for long enough that the details have gone soft. The rule of thumb most instructors use is about a year without diving, sooner if you only have a handful of dives logged. There is no shame in it. Most people who learned on a holiday dive on holidays, and a year goes quickly.

It is also for divers who stopped because something went wrong: a bad dive, a panicky ascent, an ear that would not clear. Coming back in calm, shallow water with one instructor who knows why you are there is the easiest way to find out that the problem was the day, not you.

Send us your certification level, roughly how many dives you have and when the last one was. That tells us where to start. SSI calls its refresher programme Scuba Skills Update; what we run here for returning divers is a guided refresher dive built on the same idea, and we fit it to how much you remember rather than to a fixed script.

It begins on land, with the kit. You assemble it yourself, with Giannis watching rather than doing it for you, because setting up your own equipment is the first thing that comes back and the thing that makes the rest feel familiar. Then a short talk through planning, signals and the numbers you have forgotten.

Then shallow water, standing depth, and the skills one by one. When they are smooth, we swim on from the same entry and turn the session into a real, easy dive over the reef. You leave with the skills fresh and a dive in your log, not a morning spent kneeling on sand.

Mask clearing, including taking it off and putting it back on, which is the one people dread and the one that most needs doing. Losing and recovering the regulator. Sharing air with a buddy from the alternate source. Controlled ascents and the safety stop.

Buoyancy gets the most time, because it is what fades first and what spoils a dive most when it goes. Weighting is usually wrong after a break, so we check it in the water rather than guessing from the last holiday. By the end you should be hovering, not paddling.

Once the skills are back, you are a diver on holiday again. Shore dives at Schinaria, Damnoni and Peristerovolakas most days, and the boat for the sites you cannot walk to. We start you on the easier profiles and move to walls and the cave as your diving settles, which usually happens faster than people expect.

If buoyancy was never comfortable, even before the break, a refresher will bring you back to where you were, and that may not be where you want to be. SSI Perfect Buoyancy is a short specialty that fixes it properly. And if you are thinking of Advanced Open Water, say so: after a long break we usually do one refresher dive first, and the course then starts from solid ground.