I am just back from a week in the West Country with B. Our plan was to get in a couple of dives in the mornings at Vobster practicing with our new wings (hers Halcyon, mine Light Monkey on an Agir backplate) and visit National Trust sites in the afternoons, making good use of this year’s membership before it expires at the end of the month. I’d like to say again what a well run operation Vobster is, and a very different experience in the week from the frenzy of weekends, very chilled out. Martin and Amy made us feel very welcome and gave us lots of advice. And I highly recommend a visit to Stourhead House, the grounds are spectacular.

While there we also took the GUE Primer with John Kendall. This was among the best training I have ever done, almost as transformative as learning to dive in the first place! Before getting into any agency wars, as a DM let me say that PADI does things a certain way because that makes perfect sense for the type of diving the average PADI-trained diver does – relatively shallow dives in warm clear water for 1 or maybe 2 weeks a year, in rented equipment, at a price that competes with any other sort of holiday. It worked well enough for me when that was me. However the GUE way is to “start with the end in mind” – you might not want to be a DPV-propelled rebreather-breathing deco-stopping cave explorer, but the system scales with you from basic open water all the way there with no unlearning and retraining required, e.g. everyone starts with a backplate and wing, a long hose (primary donate), skills neutrally buoyant, non-silting kicks, etc. In the PADI system, this kind of equipment isn’t introduced until Tec 45, or frog kick not until Cavern Diver, both of which are optional courses. Another example would be drysuits – most holiday divers will never, ever wear one, so Drysuit Diver is an optional course in the PADI system.

We started with an introduction to the GUE organization and moved onto equipment configuration and Rule 6, we were both most of the way there, but there was still plenty of sighing and head-shaking, much to the amusement of Martin who had set up much of it for us 🙂 For all the changes John made to our kit, there was a good, logical reason for them. The really mindblowing bit, and what sold me on GUE is when a minor adjustment to my shoulder D-rings made clipping and unclipping effortless! They really have thought of everything!

Eventually we got into the water, and for the 3 dives over 2 days, all we did was work on buoyancy and trim and 3 kicks (frog, modified flutter and back). This was all videoed by Steph (thanks Steph!), acting as GUE-equivalent of DM, and practicing her own Documentation Diver skills. John had warned us that his feedback would be brutally honest, but it was always constructive and it was incredibly valuable to get the insight of someone who has trained many students and has a way to correct common problems (e.g. “sharking”) efficiently. I spend a lot of time with people who have “demonstration quality” skills, indeed I am such a person myself and have a card to prove it, but the gap between me and the GUE divers was, err, gaping. I definitely want what they have. I think both B and I learnt a great deal, and made a quantum leap in in-water skills in even that short time, even if only in terms of knowing what we can aspire to, and we have a lot to think about and practice. Roll on Fundamentals! And I need to think about a way to subtly feed this back into PADI training…

Only fly in the ointment was discovering when I came to get a Nitrox fill that my new “yes it’s oxygen clean” tank from Mike’s a) is missing the sticker that says so and b) isn’t as new as I thought. So I will need to be having a word with them about that.