Diving, running, sailing, travel… and stuff

Gaius' Adventures

2013 In Diving

Posted on December 31, 2013 by Gaius

2013 has been a good year for diving. In January B and I went to Mexico for 2 weeks on a trip organized by LSD, we dived a few days in Cozumel, saw some bull sharks and lots of coral, one day locally in Playa Del Carmen, and the rest in the world famous cenotes with Aurelien Naudinat as guide and instructor for the PADI Cavern Diver cert.

On that trip I met a few more LSD people, including some instructors, and was inspired when I got back to sign up for Divemaster at LSD, starting in March and finishing in July, doing almost every weekend. My experiences of that are chronicled in this blog, but in summary I found it a very rewarding experience, and got to meet lots of interesting people, esp. my fellow DMTs. I did some work for LSD so am officially a professional diver. I added another pro qualification later in the year, EFR Instructor, in October.

August was a busy month, with a week’s holiday in the West Country with B, diving at Vobster in the mornings and visiting National Trust properties in the afternoons. While there we dipped a toe into the mysterious world of GUE taking the Primer course. Also in August, again with LSD we dived for a few days in the Farne Islands, with the seals. This was my first time in the North Sea, and B’s first in the UK, apart from inland. The following month in September, I added IANTD ART, the first step into technical diving. Unfortunately 2 dive weekends planned in October to exercise these new skills were both blown out, so I still have a twinset of 32/15 that I need to use! I have also located a local source for fills.

Now for the bad news, I had planned to continue diving all throughout the winter, but in November at Wraysbury I slipped on the ramp and ended up breaking my leg in two places. At first I thought it was just a sprain and tried to “walk it off”, then went to the pub, but it wasn’t getting any better and so B drove me to A&E where an x-ray showed what had happened. Weirdly, I couldn’t even feel one of the breaks. Next month hopefully I will be getting the screws out then can properly heal, and insh’Allah will have enough strength and mobility in my ankle to manhandle a twinset on land and on deck, and do a back kick! Otherwise it might need to be sidemounts.

This has been quite a training-heavy year, but I feel that my diving has come on leaps and bounds, next year we have GUE Fundamentals in April in Malta and Tekcamp but I want to get a lot more “just diving” in, and perhaps a nice easy Red Sea trip with my regular dive gang the Sons of Narky (Red Sea Original), which I missed this year due to a scheduling clash.

OW Completion, 7/8 September 2013

Posted on September 10, 2013 by Gaius

This was my first outing as a full DM, I am now officially a professional diver! To be honest it was not especially different from the later stages of the training, apart from the added responsibility, so that’s proof that the internship works. Instructors AB and RG, 2 DMTs CD and JD, 4 OW students and myself spent 2 days at Wraysbury doing the 4 dives† of the OW completion. Depending on how you count DMTs we had more staff than students! This was a quiet weekend at the dive centre, only this course, an OW referral with 2 students and an EFR course also with two students, back at LSD. I drove the van on the Saturday. The weather oscillated between bright sunshine and black clouds pouring with rain, but the water was 21℃, so no need for hood or gloves, and all the students could wear wetsuits.

I wore my GUE equipment configuration and took the opportunity to practice buoyancy & trim while watching the students and others kneel on the platforms. Vis was 1-2 metres, and I can report that my new Light Monkey 26W primary light cuts through the murk like a lightsaber. RG described the effect as “mesmerising” 🙂 I’ll get one for B as soon as we figure out how to make it work with ACB, ’til then she can use my 9W LM, which is still an excellent piece of kit.

† PADI teaches a buoyancy skill on dive 4, which is usually done starting from a kneeling position and goes to hovering in a “buddha” position, but I am sure that it could be taught from the “fin pivot” position with knees bent, and hover horizontally, there’s nothing in the standards that says otherwise. Hmm…

Vobster/GUE Primer, 5-9 August 2013

Posted on August 12, 2013 by Gaius

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.

Advice For Those Considering Divemaster

Posted on August 1, 2013 by Gaius

While I obviously can’t claim (yet!) to be an expert DM, I have recently qualified, so I do feel something of an expert on the process of qualifying 😉 Here are just a few random thoughts:

Choose a busy dive centre. The DM programme is experience-based, so you will need two things: for activities to be happening that you can do, and for people around who you can at first assist or shadow, and who can then sign you off. The centre I chose I already knew having done my Drysuit Spec there, and then when B wanted to do her OW and AOW she went there, so it was the logical choice – and that turned out to be the correct one, as it’s a CDC, so there are lots and lots of instructors around.
Be aware how much it will cost. First there is approximately £450 to enrol on the programme. Then there is another £150 for the Crewpak and an eRDPML. Entry to Wraysbury is £9 and Vobster £16 or pay £35 membership and it’s £11 (looking back over this blog, that’s 13×9 + 3×16 → £165). Air fills are £3 at Wraysbury and £3.75 at Vobster, you will need at least one per weekend, more for AOW. Mostly I got a ride in the van to the sites, but occasionally I drove, so there was some cost of petrol, and getting to and from the dive centre with all my gear, some cost of petrol and some of taxis, which I didn’t keep track of, but still needs to be considered. After qualifying there is another £120 for the HSE Preliminary, €270 for professional level insurance, and finally £80 for membership of PADI. Those last three are payable annually. So that’s a budget of at least £1300 you will need, in the first year, assuming you already have all of your own equipment. It will be a long time working as DM to make it pay. I don’t want to discourage anyone, but this is something you do need to understand.
Also it will take a lot of time. Many people take over a year; to do it in 5 months like I did took 2-3 weekends and a few evenings per month. That’s why I say travel costs also need to be considered!
Do the skills circuit slowly. Slower than that. Now slow it down some more. And do it early on as it’s useful on several subsequent modules. The water skills can easily be done in a surface interval while waiting for a tank fill and everyone offgassing.
It really helps to have your own equipment, especially a drysuit. I already owned everything, bought over a few years, apart from a tank (£180 from Mike’s next door) and some weights (£70 I think). Students and instructors get priority over the school’s kit. There were a few weekends where if I hadn’t been personally fully equipped, I couldn’t have dived. And drysuits aren’t cheap, so factor that into the budget. There is a very limited window in the UK when you can get away with wearing a wetsuit, especially doing many repetitive dives. It’s possible to do it in all school kit, but it wouldn’t be easy and you might need to split it over two summers. Budget for a full set of UK kit? Maybe another £1000, maybe more
Never miss an opportunity to dry something or charge something, you don’t know when you might need them in a hurry!
Get to know everyone – fellow DMTs, qualified DMs, all the way up to the exalted Course Directors. The more people you know the more experiences you have to draw on and the more you will learn, the more opportunities you will have to progress, and last but not least, meeting new people is the PADI way 🙂 But at the same time, understand that you will not be shepherded through DM like a conventional PADI course. You must use your own initiative and manage your rate of progress yourself. I found every instructor more than willing to help if I just asked, can we get this signed off today please? when I felt ready, subject obviously to what the actual class being run was. It helps a lot to build up a store of “good karma” by doing chores like Surface Support or inventorying the kit or bringing in donuts, that you can draw on when needed. Under no circumstances, despite you technically being a paying customer, should you stamp your feet and make demands. It’s not professional.
I regularly dive with people who have hundreds or even thousands more dives than me, so I am humble and always trying to learn. It is only after 100 dives that you understand how little you really know. But to a student, there is no difference between and DMT and a DM, and you are supposed to exemplify the qualities of the ideal diver. If you make an effort to do so, everything from how you set up your gear, to your buoyancy and trim in the water, it will feed back into a genuine improvement in your skills when you are not “acting”. That is the real secret to how DM makes you a better diver.

I enjoyed the course a great deal and think I got a lot out of it, and I’m planning to do the odd weekend here and there as a pro DM. I’d encourage anyone who wanted to understand diving beyond the purely consumer aspect of it to consider enrolling. Think of being in the audience vs being one of the cast (in the circus a DM is not a ringmaster, more of a clown). When I dived purely recreationally, someone else had made the plan, sorted the kit, knew where we were going, knew their way around there, could help anyone having problems, had figured out what to do if it all went hatstand, had checked the O₂ and First Aid kits and knew how to use them, etc etc etc. I wanted to take a bit more ownership of my diving experience, and I found that I enjoyed working with new divers and showing them a whole new world. But now it is time to do a bit of my own diving, the IDC can wait until next year at the very earliest…

Finished!

Posted on July 30, 2013 by Gaius

I finished my DM last week†, and I already have my PADI number: 329842. Fittingly the instructor supervising the Scuba Review was KM, who was also the instructor on my very first DMT experience back in March. Thanks are due to in no particular order her and instructors ES, AD, TB and KT, and of course my girlfriend B for putting up with all my weekends, or so it felt, being booked up. On the other hand, she gets a personal Divemaster on every dive now 🙂

I have been meaning to put together a few thoughts for other prospective DMs, that will follow. And I will keep writing this blog to chronicle my further escapades…

† It was supposed to be the week before but the SR class was cancelled at the last minute! Glad to get it done before we go on a trip next week!