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…

Farne Islands, 24-26 August 2013

Posted on August 29, 2013 by Gaius

For the bank holiday weekend, a group of 7 of us from Club LSD went up to the Farne Islands to dive with the friendly seals, with skipper Paul Walker, as salty a sea-dog as I’ve ever sailed with, on the Farne Discovery. This was my first time diving in the North Sea (and B’s first sea diving in the UK), and we were keen to put into practice some of the GUE style of diving we have been learning for real dives. The first thing I discovered is that it’s a lot colder than the PADI style, in water of 13-15℃ I was cold in the same kit I would be comfortable in in water 5℃ colder! In the end I wore the PBB+ under my 5mm neoprene drysuit that I wore in water fully 10℃ colder in March, and was comfortable. This, plus saltwater, meant 5Kg in my weight belt, over and above my 6mm backplate and weighted STA (7.5Kg). I found getting out of my harness to pass it up onto the RIB straightforward, but it was a struggle to operate boltsnaps in 5mm gloves. Here I must confess that I actually attached my SPG to my LPI hose so it wouldn’t dangle but I could still check it without clipping on and off 😦 I am sure it will come with practice, or bigger boltsnaps, or both. I could do my primary hose, but only if I didn’t think about it and used pure muscle memory, once I did it became impossible.

We did 6 dives over 3 days, at a variety of locations chosen by Paul based on his local knowledge and consultations with other skippers. Seal sighting varied from “1 in the distance” to more seals than you could count (B referred to this as being sealbombed :-)), with plenty of crabs and lobsters too. For the final dive we considered doing the Coryton but the sea conditions weren’t right for it, so we did a repeat of the first dive, along a wall with lots of soft corals. The seals aren’t very deep (they can obviously, but not just to play), we averaged <10m depth for all but one of the dives, so one cylinder was sufficient for both dives, tho’ we brought two each. On days 2 and 3, early fog meant that we didn’t set off ’til 10am, which made a nice change from the “crack of dawn” which is most UK diving. At the end of each dive I deployed my DSMB on a spool, which went mostly well, apart from one time it just – inexplicably – got completely stuck in its pouch on my left leg. I struggled with it for several minutes committing multiple Rule 6 violations when in retrospect I should obviously just have left it and either got B to do it, or lend me hers. By sheer coincidence there is a good article on DSMB deployment in the current issue of Quest which popped through my letterbox this morning!

All in all I would definitely recommend a trip up there. It was about a 7 hour drive from London → Seahouses, with the boat setting out from Beadnell Bay which was about a 5 minute drive from there. We took everything with us including cylinders and weights and got fills at Sovereign Diving, from their dive centre, it didn’t look like there was much rental of kit. I will possibly organize a trip like this myself with some friends, now that we have scouted it out.

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!

Rescue Diver, 13/14 July 2013

Posted on July 15, 2013 by Gaius

I always enjoy the Rescue courses. With OW and even AOW, you have to watch the students like a hawk and help them with basic skills, but by Rescue time everyone a) has a bit of experience and b) it’s a self-selecting group of people who have the attitude of wanting to improve and a willingness to take responsibility for their team. So you can relax and have a bit more fun, even tho’ the course is very intense, and there is plenty of opportunity for hamming it up in the rescue scenarios. We were a large group, instructor TB and DM GL, both of whom I have worked with before several times, new DM HD, my frequent DMT-buddy SB and 7 students. Also at Wraysbury that weekend from LSD were an OW Completion, a total of 25 people (meaning £450 in entrance fees alone, plus fills, food & drink etc, probably easily over a grand in total).

The first day we spent working on the skills, such as search patterns, CBLs, the O₂ kit, rescue management and the second we did ever more elaborate and far-fetched scenarios, making use of all of us LSD people and a few random people that we knew, as victims, interfering members of the public, etc. There are a few photos on LSD’s Facebook page. The students handled it with aplomb, they quickly gelled as a team, they were easily one of the best groups I have worked with over the last few months. When we returned to the dive centre the OW Referrals were still running (2 × 1 instructor + 6 students, no assistants, alternating between the pool and the classroom) so I jumped on the panel and refilled some tanks for them, only to 150 bar but that’s all there was in the banks.

Still remaining on my DM:

Divemaster Conducted Programmes:
- Scuba Review

The weekend was a bit of a disaster in terms of lost kit, with 4 masks being lost to the mud at the bottom of the lake. SB found one and rightly earned her S&R module signed off!

AOW, 29/30 June 2013

Posted on July 3, 2013 by Gaius

This weekend was busy not just for one or two groups as usual but for the entire dive centre, with 30 students doing OWR, OWC, AOW, EFR and Rescue courses. Fortunately the weather smiled on us and most of the students could be in wetsuits, which we have plenty of! We took basically every piece of kit from the stores to Wraysbury on the Saturday in 3 vans, with more people coming by car. All LSD people were instructed that we would need to provide all of our own kit this weekend including tanks and weights, which I didn’t mind at all as it meant I could breathe Nitrox on the deep dives 🙂

I was with the group doing AOW, with instructor AD, DM GL, 4 students and fellow DMT DB. As usual we did one day at Wraysbury (PPB and Drysuit 1 and 2) and one day at Vobster (Deep, Wreck and Navigation). Also this weekend I got signed off for Search & Recovery and Discover Local Diving, both at Vobster. The former I did in a buddy pair with DB, locating (search patterns) and raising a 12kg weight belt using a lift bag, managing a controlled ascent by bleeding air from the dump valve. I had hoped to do the latter on the aircraft at Vobster, which I know quite well by now, but instead did it in an unfamiliar part of the lake based on a verbal briefing from AD of “show them X, Y and Z”. The statistics for that dive showed that my SAC was a bit up with the task loading of navigating and also shepherding the students. The lesson learnt here is to allow a margin in gas planning (over and above reserves like 50 bar/rule-of-thirds) for dives with a “mission”. I think with a bit more experience I will get guiding back down to my usual 20ℓ/min.

Dive	Max/Avg Depth	Min Temp	Time	Consumption	SAC
1 (DLD)	22.3m / 14.6m	7℃	28 mins	136bar/ 1632ℓ	23ℓ/min

GL brought up the rear and once again it was very clear (no pun intended) how valuable powerful lights are in lo-vis conditions even if it’s not actually dark; even tho’ I couldn’t see him and possibly at times the second buddy pair of students couldn’t see me, everyone could easily see both the lights casting beams in the particulates. I tried a slightly DIR-style configuration with a compass on my left and the Uwatec bottom timer on my right wrist and as usual my Light Monkey on a Goodman handle on my left hand – this made the compass awkward to use, I think both on right wrist would have been easier. Hmm.

Still outstanding on my DM are:

400m swim

Divemaster Conducted Programmes:

Scuba Review
DSD: OW dive

Just the last lap to go, and then I’m done!

DSD/OW Referral, 22/23 June 2013

Posted on June 24, 2013 by Gaius

This weekend was very busy at LSD, on the Saturday I was in the pool from 9-11am doing a DSD with instructor MM and 5 students, then from about 12-2pm with instructor ES and 5 students for Confined Water dives, 1-3, then from 4-7pm with instructor RR and his 5 students to do CW 1-2! In between all this, I managed to complete a couple of things for DMT, so I certainly got what I came for out of the weekend, and I think all the students did too, many eager to sign up for classes and trips. Sunday was a little quieter, I could have done an Express Referral (CW 1-5 back-to-back) with MM and 2 students, but instead opted to stay with ES’ OW class. The most interesting thing of the weekend was working with one student who had only one arm; he was a strong swimmer, managed all the skills and even impressed me with his underwater kit remove-and-replace, it was much better than mine was at that stage! I wish him the best of luck, some of his techniques may be difficult to apply in gloves/boots or on the deck of a diveboat but I’m confident he’ll figure out techniques that work for him, and he had his buddy with him on the course too. Diving is for everyone, it’s the PADI way 🙂

Specific advice for the skills circuit: do it veeeryy schloowly, like they brew the Grolsch. Watch you don’t speed up to normal halfway through the skill too. Bad advice for diving in general, but for “showing off” it helps to be overweighted for stability (the skills are demonstrated as they would be in a class, so kneeling).

DSD, 8 June 2013

Posted on June 9, 2013 by Gaius

This weekend I shadowed a DSD, commonly known as a “try dive” with instructor ES and 5 students. This is a non-certification course that allows someone to try the kit, and most importantly equalizing and breathing underwater, before committing to a course such as the OW Referral. We started in the classroom, working through the quiz, which is about teaching some basic background information as opposed to an intimidating exam. After that, we introduced the basic kit, the regulator set and the BCD, pointing out the primary regulator from which the student would breathe, the gauges (which we would monitor for them!) and the inflation and deflation buttons on the LPI hose. Finally in the classroom, a few hand signals such as OK, problem, ascend. After that it was down to the pool, where we had pre-assembled the students kit for them with 10L tanks, for fitting with masks and fins, then into the water, where the students kitted up and had their first experience of breathing from a cylinder. Next, we demonstrated the inflation and deflation buttons, and one by one did a kneeling buoyancy check on each one, a couple of them required an extra couple of kilos – but in most cases, with no exposure suit and a steel tank, people require no weighting in the pool. Then the students experienced equalizing by lying on the bottom of the 1.2m end of the pool. Once everyone was comfortable, we took them for a lap of the pool under water one at a time, then down to the deep end, at 3.2m. They were then free to swim around and play with the various toys in the pool such as the frisbee, ES watched from above and I swum with them where I could peek at contents gauges. When the time was up, none of them had used much air anyway, but it’s good to be sure! After that a short debrief and a chat about what else we could offer them at LSD but with no pressure to sign up for anything. All in all it took about 2 hours. For DM I need to be able to run one of these, under the supervision of an instructor, and I am pretty confident that I could do it; now just need to contact my Lead and find out when we can schedule one in.

Still outstanding I have:

400m swim
Skills circuit
Search and recovery scenario
Divemaster Conducted Programmes

I don’t want to underestimate any of these but if I can keep the momentum going, I should be a DM before too much longer 🙂

AOW, 25/26 May 2013

Posted on May 30, 2013 by Gaius

Another extremely busy weekend, with instructor ES, DM GL, myself and 4 AOW students, 3 of whom were also doing the Drysuit Spec, and 1 student doing an OW Completion. We were at Wraysbury one day for Buoyancy, Drysuit and Navigation, and Vobster the next, for Deep and Wreck adventure dives, and the optional second drysuit dive to complete the certification, 6 dives in total of which I did 5. Not much to say about this one, it all went like clockwork, the sun was shining and all the students had their acts generally together, their own transport and most of their own equipment, so the logistics were very easy. It was strange how empty the van looked compared to how it usually is! We stopped off for icecream on the way back from Vobster and were still in the pub an hour before the team who had been teaching an OW Referral!

We did the deep dive on the Jacquin II in the middle of the quarry, and the wreck dive on the aircraft again. Even in good vis, it was very apparent how useful powerful lights are for signalling. On the deep dive I used 80bar from a 12L tank in 22mins at an average depth of 12.2metres, giving a SAC of 19.6L/min. I am reasonably confident now in using 20L/min as the basis for gas calculations. It will be even more conservative in warm water gear. No kit changes this week, as while it was warm on the surface, I still expected it to be cold below the thermocline. The OW student was in a 4mm steamer with a 4mm shortie over the top, and did feel the cold at even 10m depth. On the DMT sign-offs front, I completed the 800m swim scoring a 4, and completed the surveying for my mapping project, which I will submit in a few days. Fellow DMT SB and I keep trying to get a few hours in the pool at LSD to practice our skills circuit, which I plan to video on my little Canon S95 with an UW housing for feedback, but slots are few and far between, and we both have busy lives too! So we shall have to see.