A very intense weekend comprising one day at Wraysbury and one further afield at Vobster Quay, my first time at the latter (as I have mainly dived in the sea). I was very impressed by Vobster, it is much better equipped and run than many “real” dive operations. The group comprised instructor AD, DM GL, 5 students and two DMTs, myself and JK, who just had a few things to get signed off for his DM. AOW as taught by LSD includes PPB, navigation, drysuit, deep and wreck, the latter two done at Vobster where it goes down to below the OW limit of 18m, 5 dives in total, of which I did 4. The surface of Wraysbury had warmed up as far as 9°C, but below the thermocline at Vobster it was still 4-5°C.  My repaired drysuit wrist seal held and apart from a bit of dampness from perspiration, I was nice and warm and dry.

Altho’ we started early on Saturday, it took us a while to get into the water due to logistical difficulties: with several other courses running, and the students needing to borrow almost all their equipment, it took a lot of time for people to try things on and get comfortable, at least as comfortable as you can in a borrowed drysuit, which is very unlikely to be a perfect  fit. We were really pushed for time, exiting the water last at Wraysbury. I am not sure what we could have done differently to make that quicker. That is one thing that is very different about the UK from where I did my training up to Rescue Diver in Egypt – in a hot climate, there is no issue with popping in and out of the water, whereas in cold conditions, we need to shuffle things around to minimize the transitions, even when doing pool work.

Sunday was an even earlier start but proceeded smoothly, we met at 5:30am at LSD, loaded up the van with the previous day’s kit and set off, arriving at Vobster just before the gates opened, and parking in a reserved spot very close to the water. I did surface support for the first dive and went in for the second, the wreck dive on the aircraft, buddied with one of the students, who had hoovered through 160 bar in an instant on the first dive. I watched her and her gauges like a hawk, but there were no issues this time, due no doubt to my reassuring presence! I used 114 bar from a 12L tank in 34 mins at an average depth of 8.8m giving a SAC of 21L/min, which was slightly better than last time. I still need to do more work to improve it, especially with the maneuvering and task loading of monitoring student divers. One student did not complete this time; she was unhappy on the – to be fair – very cold and dark deep dive, and sat out the wreck dive. It’s good that we are training students with the self-confidence to call a dive, even having spent the money, traveled a long way, and potentially peer pressure to do it (not that there was any of that this time, that I could see).

The conventional wisdom is to only change, or introduce one new piece of kit per dive, but I bent that slightly this weekend, with mixed results.

• Switched my Scubapro split fins for Hollis F1s.  These are great fins, very powerful, very suitable for frog kick. Unfortunately size XL is slightly too small for my rock boots, and size 2XL slightly too wide. I’m going to solve this by getting slightly bulkier boots I think, as I like the fins. But even more unfortunately, with an undersuit on, in my drysuit I don’t have enough flexibility in my hips to do a proper frog kick anyway! Nor would I to reach valves for a shutdown drill. That is going to be an expensive problem to solve 😦
• Switched my conventional 5mm gloves for Waterproof 3-finger mittens, which GL had been raving about. This was a great success. Much easier to don and doff, much warmer, actually minimal loss of dexterity. You do need to remember that you’re wearing them for some hand signals tho’.
• Switched my 3mm hood for a 5mm from Fourth Element. Warmer and more comfortable than the Scubapro, but I can’t hear a thing while wearing it! Despite that I had no problems equalizing.
• Semi-retired my trusty Scubapro Nova torch, which has accompanied me on many adventures, to backup status and introduced a Light Monkey on a  Goodman handle as primary, on my left hand. This was also a great success, and altho’ it wasn’t dark at all, the staff having our lights on made a huge difference in the turbid conditions, often the light would be visible when even the bright yellow tanks were not. When I move up to a BP/W setup, LM will be my first choice as a canister light. Closer the time I might badger Deep Ideas to start importing LM wings too 🙂
• Dropped from 12kg to 11kg weight. I thought I needed 10kg to be neutral, and added a little more so I could help students with buoyancy problems if necessary (it was), but this weekend I felt a lot more negative. Perhaps it is just because I am more comfortable in my drysuit now (I have only a couple of dozen drysuits dives myself, if that) but some of it will be the different fins. Next time I will just go for 10kg or perhaps even less. The formula off the top of my head is something like 7% of bodyweight + 3kg for the tank contents, which matches at my current (far from Marathon-fit :-/) bodyweight. I should be able to fit that into my BCD integrated weights/cam band trim pockets, and do away with a weight belt altogether. That will help with drysuit buoyancy too, partly because of the weight location relative to CoG but also because it impeded air migration to and from the lower half of my body.

Hmm, 4/5 of those changes involve replacing Scubapro with something else. Certainly not my intent, there’s nothing actually wrong with any of it and I am still a fan of the brand, just that I am diverging a little from the style of diving of their head of product development…