Diving, running, sailing, travel… and stuff

Gaius' Adventures

Drygloves

Posted on March 8, 2015 by Gaius

I have been trying a few configurations of my SiTech Antares system over the last few months, trying to find the right balance of warmth and dexterity. Of course it doesn’t matter how much dexterity a glove has on the surface, if your hands get too cold you lost it all anyway! These are the results of my experiments.

Option 1: Showa 660 size 9 with silk glove liners. I tried these on several dives in water between 7-9℃. This was a pretty good solution, the gloves are surprisingly warm considering how thin they are, with the size 9 gloves they fit my hands closely. The big disadvantage of this option is that the gloves are delicate, basically one touch of velcro will destroy them, so care must be taken in the order of kitting up and de-kitting. On longer dives in colder water tho’ I was starting to feel numb.
Option 2
Option 3
Option 4: Perhaps next winter I will try Santi heated gloves!

Another lesson is, the warmth of your hands makes a significant difference to your overall comfort. With option 3, I was far more comfortable for longer than with option 2, with all other kit being the same. I will need to swap out the rings to try to fix the slow leak before doing any more serious cold water diving tho’… I much prefer diving without gloves at all.

Isle of Man, 4-7 September 2014

Posted on September 13, 2014 by Gaius

I am recently back from the Isle of Man diving with Clidive and Isle of Man Diving Charters, skipper Mike and his hardboat with diver lift, who also provided the accommodation. We traveled from London City Airport with BA – it is drivable via the ferry terminal in Liverpool, but the ferry runs at odd hours. However this meant I couldn’t bring my twinset or the heavy backplate I usually use for singles. There were 5 of us, so we dived as a 2 and a 3, which according to BSAC meant at least one of us would surely have died, but actually it was fine and there were no incidents (which was good as we hadn’t brought the right forms to fill in if there had been!) Another group of 5 was booked on but didn’t show up, so there was plenty of space on the boat.

We did 8 dives over 4 days, returning to port between dives:

Dive	Description	Max/Avg depth (m)	Runtime (min)
1	Drinking Dragon (reef named for shape of rock formations above) / The Burroo	21/14	54
2	Clan McMaster (wreck)/Calf Sound(fast drift)	23/13	45
3	Citrine (wreck)	15/13	54
4	Thracian (wreck)	33/23	29
5	Seal Cove, lots of friendly seals!	6/4	60
6	Drinking Dragon	23/16	44
7	Sugarloaf Cave (cavern dive, with air above at all times). Wish I’d brought my camera.	15/9	65
8	Creggy Jeggy (reef)	19/9	54
	Total runtime		405

Equipment-wise, I used GUE single-tank configuration with my 28lb Light Monkey wing and 2.2Kg STA, plus 7.2Kg (made of 2lb and 4lb weights) on a belt, BZ200 undersuit, was well weighted as far as I could tell (which probably means I could have lost a kilo or two), and fairly comfortable in water of 14℃ apart from on the last dive when I started to feel the cold. I wore a 3mm hood and altho’ I brought my drygloves I didn’t wear them. Any colder and I’d want a BZ400 under my Argonaut. SAC overall was 17-18ℓ/min which is back to normal for me. I used a single 12ℓ tank, the others used 15ℓs, but my gas was never the constraining factor in the dive, either time e.g. 50 mins or NDL.

Some great diving, good viz (10-15m), good skipper and boat, certainly stands up to Channel diving. I will certainly be back to that part of the world, tho’ perhaps Pembrokeshire is next rather than going straight back. The only problem was the lack of availability of Nitrox, we only used it for the dive on the Thracian, at £10/fill from Discover Diving. Compare that to £5.85 member’s price at Vobster or £5 at Underwater Explorers! Speaking of Vobster, I have been a bit of a quarrior recently, doing about one weekend a month on skills’n’drills (and thrills and spills!) and of course Tekcamp, so it was good to get out and do some real diving for a change. Next trip planned is Egypt in October with Red Sea Explorers, I can’t wait!

TEKcamp, July 2014

Posted on August 16, 2014 by Gaius

Where to begin talking about TEKCamp? It really is an experience like no other – mentoring and coaching from some of the world’s truly pioneering divers, eager to pass on their knowledge and experience to divers even more eager to soak it up. I had booked B and myself onto the 9-dive package, which was incredible value for money, tho’ we didn’t actually dive together during the week, we both got loads out of it. I’ll run through a quick summary of the dives and talks according to my notes, but really, no-one can be told about TEKCamp, you have to experience it for yourself.

Day	Session	With	Notes
1	Dive 1	Rich Walker	A warmup dive, 90 minutes on the 6m platform with teammates Clare and Ben and safety diver Dave H, who we had met while doing Fundies in Malta and stayed in touch with. Propulsion, v- and s-drills, DSMB deployment, etc.
1	Talk 1	Mark Powell	The author of Deco For Divers on various myths that surround deco diving. I asked him why Staying Alive hadn’t been called Disco for Divers 😉
1	Talk 2	Garry Dallas	“Sidemount Bob” on his exploration of caves in Mexico, sponsored by Apeks
1	Dive 2	John Kendall	Practicing ascents, up and down in 1m increments from the entrance to the tunnel. Teammate Toni and safety diver Greg.
1	Talk 3	Paul Toomer	Diving Bikini Atoll, where a fleet of warships left over from WW2 were sunk for early nuclear weapons trials. A fascinating talk about penetrating the aircraft carrier Saratoga and the treats to be found therein. £8k for the trip. Hmm…
2	Dive 1	Mike Potts	Trydive on a Sentinel. The first thing to know is that failure at the beginning of Sanctum is actually perfectly survivable on a Sentinel, you just switch the BOV to OC, no need for trying buddy breathing in a FFM! I achieved neutral buoyancy easily enough, the benefit of GUE training, but I wasn’t comfortable, the tightness at the end of a breath running minimum loop volume, the bulk of the loop cutting off peripheral vision. I still see a Sentinel in my future, but it will take some getting used to. Teammate Giles, safety diver Tom.
2	Talk 1	Kieran Hatton	Scapa Flow “in depth”
2	Talk 2	Graham Blackmore	Cave diving in the Philippines and China
2	Dive 2	Rich Walker	Stage handling and lost deco gas procedures. Teammate Heather, safety diver Greg
2	Talk 3	Martin Robson	A mind blowing tale of deep cave exploration in Russia, the Blue Lake project. Soon to be a book but not available yet for pre-order on Amazon. He suffered a spine bend and spent 9 days in the pot being looked after personally by an Admiral in the Russian Navy!
3	Dive 1	Ian France	Equipment failures, rescue and lost-line drills, teammates Paul and Luke (who “died” so many times it became a running joke for the rest of TEKcamp 🙂 ), safety diver Xavier. Absolutely fascinating to watch myself on the video later attempting to locate the line with a blackout mask on – what you think you are doing is often very different from what you actually do! I am looking forward to joining Ian for some mine diving after I have done C1.
3	Talk 1	Mark Powell	A lecture on dive computers, in summary 10 years ago they weren’t very good, nowadays they’re a lot better!
3	Talk 2	Adam Wood	Filming sharks and wrecks off the North Carolina coast with the BBC
3	Dive 2	Paul Toomer	A dive simply entitled Brown Hawk Down based on a particularly hairy dive Paul and safety diver Alex had done on the Black Hawk. Paul mentioned in the briefing “I don’t think we’re going to have too much by way of reliable equipment on this dive” 🙂 Blackout masks, line following, stage handling, shutdowns, air-sharing all followed. At one point I had 3 stages clipped on and a spool and DSMB in each hand! A 60 minute dive that seemed like 6 minutes. Awesome fun 🙂
3	Talk 3	Dr Duncan Price	A visit to Wookey Hole for a guided tour and to hear a talk from the man who has dived furthest in there.
4	Dive 1	Graham Blackmore	Trydive on Suex DPVs, excellent fun, I think GUE have successfully sold me another course, whenever I get round to it (C1 being a priority for me). Teammate Stewart, safety diver Dave H.
4	Talk 1	John Kendall	JK talking about the St George cave survey in France
4	Talk 2	Martin Robson	Cave survey techniques
4	Dive 2	Martin Robson	The “practical” session from talk 2, a team of 5 of us surveyed the crushing works, depths, distances, bearings of various features to produce a 3D map. We did one pass to lay a line between the points we wanted to survey, then another pass, at each of the tie-offs, recording depth and bearing to the next, then following the line a metre at a time to record distance. It was eye-opening just how much time such a simple mission took, surveying for real is a massive undertaking for a team of divers!
4	Talk 3	Rich Walker	Croatian wrecks. Another trip to plan… 🙂
5	Dive 1	Rich Walker	A simple mission to retrieve a spool and a reel, tied off “somewhere” past the aircraft. It started very well, we planned exactly what we would do – I would lead on the way in, to the end of the spool, then we would turn and I would be lineman reeling in, and Heather would lead us to the end of the reel, then we would would turn, she would be linegirl, and I would lead us out. Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong, and we all died 🙂 Teammates Heather and Andy, safety diver Alex.
5	Talk 1	Gareth Lock	Learning from others, primarily the military aviation community, on safety, the creation of a “just culture” in which people can talk about accidents and mistakes without fear or stigma.
5	Talk 2	Roz Lunn	A sales pitch for Eurotek. Don’t know if I’ll have the opportunity this year but it looks good.
5	Talk 3	Ian France	A talk on the UK Mine and Cave team. I am really excited about joining these guys when I am ready
5	Talk 4	Kieran Hatton	Wrecks of Norway

All in all an incredible, action packed week in which I learnt alot and met a bunch of cool new people to dive with 🙂 I cannot wait for next year’s…

Back in Black, 10 March 2014

Posted on March 11, 2014 by Gaius

This was my first time back in the water since breaking my leg and my ankle last year. B and I drove down to Vobster the evening before and stayed in our usual place, the Oakhill Inn. I can report that I can basically dive again, but the lack of mobility in my right ankle seems to have slowed down my frog kick somewhat. We got in two leisurely dives:

Dive	Max/Avg Depth	Temp	Runtime	Consumption	SAC
1	18m / 10m	7℃	21 mins	50bar/ 1200ℓ†	28ℓ/min
2	12m / 8.8m	6℃	31 mins	60bar/ 1440ℓ†	24ℓ/min

I have put on about a stone in weight with my forced few months of inactivity, and that is on top of thinking before that I could stand to lose a stone The lack of fitness really shows in the SAC, my usual benchmark is 20ℓ/min

I made a lot of kit changes too, all the changes I had planned to make over the winter, in one go. Most of these come out of ART but also in preparation for Fundies next month.

Switched my neoprene drysuit for a membrane, a Fourth Element Argonaut with silicone neck and wrists, neoprene socks and drygloves.

As a consequence of that, switched my size 10 Northern Diver combat rockboots for size 11 Hollis rockboots‡. These are paradoxically bigger on the inside but smaller on the outside, so I dropped my Hollis F1 fins from 2XL to XL‡ which fit perfectly. They also give less support but more mobility for the ankle.
As a further consequence of that, wore my O3 PBB Extreme undersuit instead of the PBB+ I would wear under neoprene in these conditions. On the first dive I was perfectly OK but on the second, I was starting to feel the cold.

Switched my 6mm, 5.1Kg Agir backplate for a 3mm 2.2Kg by Light Monkey.

On ART with the neoprene suit, twinset and 6mm backplate I felt overweighted however with the membrane suit and the 3mm backplate (and no additional weights) I definitely felt underweighted, the undersuit presumably making all of the difference. So I can assume that my buoyancy works out the same for an equivalent level of thermal protection, which means I will go back to the 6mm (remains to be seen how this works out for traveling). OR in warmer water, with the lighter undersuit, the 3mm backplate might be perfect, hmm. There is plenty of flexibility in the membrane suit compared to the neoprene, but I need to re-learn the finer points of buoyancy control in it. The drygloves are very nice, but fiddly to get on and off, and I am wondering how much I dare trim off the neck seal to get it perfect. It’s quick change, and I have a spare, in case! All in all it was a successful mission and infinitely better than showing up to Fundies in completely unfamiliar kit. But there is still a long way to go before I am happy.

†Twinset
‡Bought at the Vobster shop on the day.

IANTD ART, 26-29 September 2013

Posted on October 3, 2013 by Gaius

I booked onto the Advanced Recreational Trimix (ART) course at Vobster Quay on the spur of the moment, but I have been looking to add skills in this range to my repertoire for a little while now, as a lot of UK diving involves wrecks in the 30-40m range, and I’d like to be able to stay long enough – safely – to have a proper nose around. I had considered PADI’s Tec40 → Tec45 → Tmx45 route, as I am deeply into the PADI system already, but I couldn’t find anywhere to teach it straight through, and besides there are a couple of major shortcomings to that path: it limits you to 20% He, and you have to do the “deep air” Tec50 to progress, after which you can do Tmx50 but there’s no point, as you could then go onto Trimix 65 anyway. The latter looks like a good course, but I specifically wanted to avoid deep air in cold, low-vis UK waters. Another option was TDI’s Advanced Nitrox + Helitrox but that again comes with the 20% He limit. IANTD express their limits not in terms of percentages but in terms of equivalent narcotic depth, which to me indicates that they get the point of Trimix at this level of training. Finally there was BSAC’s Sports Mixed Gas. That was a total non-starter. My last experience of BSAC training meant that it would take a long, and completely unpredictable, amount of time to make happen, including the prereqs such as the buoyancy workshop. Months between a theory session and the associated practical seems the norm for them. In PADI you pay your money, in BSAC you pay your dues (and your money). And to be brutally honest, you would not want to learn real deco from people who think the BSAC88 tables† are safe!

On Day 1 I drove to Vobster from home in Hertfordshire, setting off at about 6am and arriving at about 8:30am where I met our instructor for the week Tim Clements. The first thing I did was buy a twinset, which was promptly filled for me with EANx32, all gas included in the price of the course. Not having any prior experience with manifolds, I didn’t notice at the time how stiff the valves were. Then it was upstairs to meet the rest of the team. There were a total of 6 of us, two re-sitting the written exam, one who was feeling ill so only doing the theory, 2 other “full” students such as myself, instructor Tim and instructor intern Jay of Diving Matrix. The first morning was taken up with gas planning, including accelerated deco and on backgas in case of lost deco gas. That afternoon we got in the water and practiced stage handling, such as dropping and picking up whilst on the move. That was actually the longest dive I had ever done at 1¼ hours, tho’ we spent most of it on the 6m platform. It was then that the stiffness of the valves became apparent – while I could reach them, I simply couldn’t turn them underwater and in gloves. That was incredibly frustrating and at the end of the dive I wondered if I would be able to continue with the course. Martin to the rescue, cleaning the old Crystolube out and replacing it with Tribolube. The difference was like night and day, after that the shutdown drill was a joy to do! We also practiced OOA drills, including no-mask no-reg swims.

Day 2 was all diving, more shutdown drills, more OOA practice, more stage handling including exchanging stages with a buddy while neutrally buoyant. Fun! Like air-to-air refueling for divers 🙂 Then we practiced team communication, DSMB deployment and team ascents. After this dive we got out for a debrief, then Dive 3 was exactly the same but this time with more finesse. It was this dive that decided if our in-water skills were up to diving real Trimix at NDAC. Tim is using video feedback like John Kendall of GUE, which is a powerful tool for training. Saturday was all theory, OTUs, the CNS clock, physiology and deco theory, diving at altitude, philosophy and psychology of technical diving, more gas planning, repetitive diving with the IANTD tables, END and best mix and more besides!

On Sunday we were up in Chepstow for the deep dives. Dive 4 was 20 mins @ 40 metres on 28/25 with deco on EANx50, which was amazing. Clear as a bell at that depth, no fuzziness or looming apprehension from narcosis, noticeably less work-of-breathing (WOB). The scenery left a little to be desired being just a rock face (tho’ beautifully illuminated by my Light Monkey) but still I thought it was an excellent dive. Dive 5 was planned for 15 mins @ 30 metres, by this time I was down to about 100 bar in my twinset, so I led this dive, turning it when I hit 70 and it worked out that we returned to the bottom of the shot almost bang on 15 minutes, then another accelerated deco. I had done the exam the night before at the hotel, so I handed that in, and was rewarded with Jay holding up a slate at the first stop saying “Welcome to the Darkside” 🙂 That was a total runtime of 307 minutes over 3 days of diving. Not bad!

I learnt an awful lot in these 4 days, it is an intensive course, but very rewarding, and I am eager to put these new skills into practice and really bed them in. I thought before I begun that afterwards I would be chomping at the bit to do Normoxic, but actually ART has given me a lot of new capabilities, plenty for getting on with. I wholeheartedly recommend it for anyone looking to take their first steps into Tech, and Tim as an instructor. This qualifies me to a maximum depth of 48m‡ (for which best mix for END max 24m would be 24/30, tho’ I would probably go for the GUE standard gas 21/35) and 15 minutes of accelerated deco on EANx50 or higher. There is a lot in the UK in that range.

† A table has to assume that you do your entire bottom time at your max depth, whereas a computer can give you credit for time spent shallower, which means it can give you a longer no-stop time and a shorter deco. That is one of the main reasons computers became popular. But the BSAC88s give you less deco than the computer, and unlike algos like Bühlmann and VPM that are published, BSAC refuse to divulge the research, if any, behind theirs. That might have been OK in the 80s when you weren’t considered bent unless you were convulsing and foaming at the mouth on the dive deck, but the world has moved on since then, the 88s should be abolished.

‡ If it was just depth I was after, I could have crossed over my DM to BSAC Dive Leader and gone to 50m on a single on air…