Category Archives: PADI

AOW, 25/26 May 2013

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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.

OW Completion, 18/19 May 2013

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The water at Wraysbury this weekend was a balmy 11-13°C, at the surface a full 10°C warmer than my first dives there this year! The next dive I will try in just merino baselayer rather than the PBB, of which I only wore the farmer john and in which I was rather warm. This might mean dropping a little more weight. No kit changes this week.

My new skill this time was driving the van, which apparently doesn’t get anything signed off for DM, but it should 🙂 This weekend it was instructor KT who I have worked with several times before, fellow DMT JP, 3 students and myself. The logistics were super-smooth and both days we were finished around lunchtime, then back to the dive centre for debriefs and paperwork. All students passed, but one had brought her boyfriend, an already qualified diver, with her. I did have to ask him not to keep helping her; this is a class after all. And everyone makes mistakes – if he inadvertently makes her a “dependent diver” at this early stage, then it’s his buddy check that’s going to be skipped, with potential consequences if he say forgets to turn his air on…

As of right now, the things I have outstanding are:

  • 400m and 800m swims
  • Skills circuit
  • Search-and-recovery and mapping project
  • All the Divemaster Conducted Programmes

From next month, I will be concentrating on filling in these gaps.

Oh, and one bizarre thing I spotted this weekend, on several divers presumably from the same club or school, it’s bad enough strapping a knife to the outside of your leg, being an entanglement hazard and hard to reach if you need it, but then attaching it to its sheath with a lanyard – what are these people thinking?!

Rescue Diver, 11/12 May 2013

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Someone said to me when I started, but the Divemaster course won’t make you a better diver. My response to that is, it entirely depends on what you mean by “better”. A good diver has, among other characteristics:

  • Good situational awareness
  • An ability to handle a bit of task loading
  • The ability to look after themselves and a helpless buddy if necessary
  • Has actually practiced rescue skills, since taking the Rescue Diver course
  • Takes a preventative, pro-active approach to safety
  • …

The DM course teaches all of this, or requires that you learn it yourself in order to progress. Better means more than “deeper”…

I had the rather dubious honour of being first in the water at Wraysbury on the Sunday, the vis was better than the Saturday but still pretty poor due to algæ, I would estimate 2-3m, tho’ of course that depends what you’re looking at. I spent much of the weekend being a victim/patient (these words have specific meanings in the PADI system) assisting instructors RR and ES with 3 students, but also got the chance to practice the skills myself. Happy to say that there was little rust on them, and I have been signed off for performing a “demonstration quality” rescue. This puts me roughly halfway through all the required sign offs. Most of the rest aren’t internship, they are all assessments of specific skills, so I just need to organize getting them done.

Kit configuration changes this week:

  • Moved 4Kg to trim pockets on my upper tank cambands, with 6Kg in my BCD’s integrated weight pockets. This is a much more comfortable configuration. I can descend very easily and have good buoyancy control in the 0-5m range but still feel too negative at around 8m. Perhaps I could drop even more weight. I still wore a weight belt tho’, empty, in order to conform with PADI standards for the course!
  • Swapped the default rockboots that came with my drysuit for a pair of Northern Diver Rock Swim Boots. These are the same boots that are issued to UK military divers. I see this question being asked all over the Internet, so for the benefit of the wider diving community, these boots in size 10 fit perfectly the Hollis F1 fins in size 2XL. They are slightly buoyant and that in combination with the weight change are making me flatter in the water, tho’ without any weight in the belt to inhibit air migration, I was a little worried a couple of times about the dreaded floaty feet. I’ll stick with this configuration for a few more dives to get a proper feel for it.
  • It was a bit warmer in the water, around 9°C, so I risked removing the top half of my undersuit, wearing just the farmer john over a wicking t-shirt. Got a bit cold waiting to be rescued, playing the “unresponsive diver on the bottom” while the students faffed around, but should be able to reach valves for a shutdown drill, using the head forward, wrist on back of head, head back method. A great relief to know I won’t need a new drysuit when I start diving a twinset!

OW Referral, 4/5 May 2013

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This weekend I DMT’d another OW Referral, with instructors TB and BM, fellow DMT OB, and 9 students. TB and I took 4 of them, alternating the groups between the pool and the classroom. It all went smoothly tho’ inevitably there is some waiting around when sharing facilities like that. One thing I am noticing is that there is a lot packed into the videos at OW level that isn’t introduced until much later in the PADI system, such as CBLs and SMBs. Interesting.

One student didn’t complete this time, tho’ a careful reading of the syllabus reveals that actually, the two things she couldn’t manage (the 200m swim and the 10min float) don’t have to be done during the Referral, just prior to finishing the Completion, so she was signed off for everything else, which she had no problems with. I can’t remember if she planned to complete with us, or on her upcoming trip. And the student who hadn’t completed the last OW Referral I assisted on returned on Sunday, and did Dive 3 successfully this time, and went through the exam. Good for him! He can go onto PADI Scuba Diver now, with two open water dives, which he could do in one day. The “instructors creed” in the PADI instructors manual may be a bit cheesy, but it’s completely true. I am not privy to the commercials, but as far as I know, since we were running the course anyway, he was simply able to join in rather than paying for a new course. I don’t sense that there is any pressure to rubberstamp students at LSD; we work with them until they are able to meet the performance standards. That puts paid to quite a bit of criticism of “the PADI way” that I have seen online.

Speaking of sign-offs, I am collecting the required signatures gradually; with any luck by the end of the month I will be about halfway to completing the DM course. Neither particularly quickly nor particularly slowly as these things go. From next month I plan to focus more intently on filling in the gaps, choosing what I intern on with that in mind, as up ’til now I have just been doing a bit of everything to build general experience. I’d also like to get some time with my Lead Instructor LC to do/get signed off on specific skills.

AOW, 27/28 April 2013

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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…

OW Referral, 20/21 April 2013

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The weekend saw us at LSD for another OW Referral, TD OWSI, 5 students and myself assisting as DMT. It went swimmingly and I have this module signed off now. One eye opening experience was demonstrating some of the skills myself (tired diver tow/push, OOA drill, and breathing from a free-flowing reg). I had assumed since I could do all these things easily myself, doing them to “demonstration quality” would just be a matter of doing them slowly, but it is quite different when all eyes are on you and you are thinking about have you done everything and in the right order and made it clear enough, paused in the right places to point something out, and so on. That is something I will need to practice, to make it look smooth and natural, I’ll do at least one more OW Referral as DMT to see if I can pick up any tips from the OWSI.

One student failed to complete the course, halfway through dive 3 he simply stopped and said “this isn’t for me”. Fair enough, as divers we have have the saying, anyone can call the dive, for any reason (DIR types I believe call this “option 1”). However since the beginning, when asked to do any skill, he would say “are you serious? I can’t do that” and had to be cajoled into trying, and usually actually could do it. I guess he just talked himself out of it, which was strange because he’d studied the manual intensively, and therefore knew what to expect. There is always the cheaper, quicker DSD if anyone isn’t sure, tho’ an OW Referral is only one weekend, it is not a major commitment, like going on holiday with a group of friends, to a resort where there is only diving, and having to sit it out while they qualify and then go off on a boat! Which happened to one guy when I did my own OW in Sharm, and I’ve heard similar stories from other divers.

Also, I collected my repaired drysuit, which I will probably need next weekend…

OW Completion, 6/7 April 2013

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During the week I had hastily “repaired” my drysuit’s right wrist seal by slathering on the Aquaseal, in the process discovering, where it seeped through, that the leak wasn’t where I thought it was at all! Or rather, that the seal in general was in quite bad shape. There were lots of cuts at funny angles through the neoprene.  As I have only a dozen or so dives in this suit, I can only assume that it was actually damaged by people with long nails or sharp jewelry trying it on in the shop, and had deteriorated in use. Next time, if I don’t go custom, I’ll buy one shrink-wrapped from the Internet – and feel no guilt whatsoever about going back to that shop and trying on drysuits there first. I hope tho’ that needing to buy a new one is years in the future. My repair seemed to do the job when I tested in the bath, so I have added a tube of Aquaseal to my kit. And I got a 5mm hood too.

However all this turned out to be unnecessary as I found myself on surface support all weekend, for an OW Completion at Wraysbury, two groups of three students, my group having OWSI KT, DM GL in the water as safety diver, and myself. Keen not to repeat the lead shortage of last week, we checked out everything apart from the kitchen sink from the stores, then found ourselves assigned parking for the van as far as it is possible to get from the water at Wraysbury! The whole weekend was pretty uneventful, involving making sure all the logistics ran smoothly, which I think I have a handle on now. I would have liked to have gotten at least one dive in, but I fully understand that this is “work”, and it’s still valuable experience, and better to get it out of the way and ticked off while it’s cold, and we’re at a murky pond rather that somewhere that’s a better dive anyway! I took advantage of the situation by dropping the drysuit at Mike’s for a proper wrist seal replacement and a fly zip fitting, which Christian there assures me can be ready before my next foray into cold water, currently scheduled for the end of the month. Eventually I will want a p-valve too, I expect. Later in the pub, I got some good advice from Lead Instructor AD, on needing to actively manage my own rate of progress through the DMT programme. It was good to meet some other DMTs too.

Drysuit Spec, 30 March 2013

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This Saturday saw us at Wraysbury with a class of 4 students for the Drysuit Specialty course, Duncan OSWI, plus another 4 doing an OW Completion, with an OWSI, another DMT and a recently qualified DM. I did this course myself in 2010. Water temperature 3-4°C, easily the coldest I have dived in (previously that was 9°C at Plymouth last Easter). I was actually fine in my new PBB+ undersuit bought at LIDS, and my neoprene drysuit, apart from that my right wrist seal is leaking, and my head in a 3mm hood was very cold at first. I’ll need to get both of those sorted, urgently, as I am back again next weekend, both days! Also I test-dived the Suunto Cobra I got on eBay for less than half new price. It read my initial tank pressure as 165 bar, which seemed a bit low but was possible, and my gut feel is that it tracked my air consumption correctly (82 bar from a 12L tank used in 24 mins at an average depth of 5.8m gives 25.9L/min SAC which is reasonable considering it was cold and I was swimming constantly). I need to compare it with another gauge, and maybe get it serviced too.

Specific feedback/lessons learned:

  • When doing surface support, kit up. For the first dive, I was the surface support, checking divers in and out of the water (times, air, etc), handing in or taking back weight as people buoyancy checked, keeping an eye on divers still on land or who had returned early. Another DMT had told me not to bother getting my drysuit on, but I did find myself up to my ankles in the aformentioned cold water as the pontoon wasn’t in the greatest shape, then had numb feet for the rest of the day!
  • Double, triple check kit before leaving the dive centre. We arrived on site with what we thought was 20Kg of spare lead; when we came to dive, there was only 4Kg which got used almost immediately, despite each student supposedly having been issued 10Kg at the centre. Even the belt we threaded it on was taken. I had 12Kg from the centre for myself, which vanished before I could use it (as I was surface support for the first dive, and in on the second) In the end I just rented lead to save hassle, but I shouldn’t have had to put my own hand in my pocket for this. I even had to pay to get into Wraysbury! But the DM(T) has to be responsible for everyone else too. It’s Divemaster as in quartermaster.
  • Think about where the students will be, and position accordingly. I think this will just come as I assist on more courses and get a feel for the flow of things. It’s important to be able to see everything, to be in a position to react quickly, and yet be out of the way. This means thinking one step ahead of where the instructor has put the students and what he is doing with them.

Every diver knows how to do a buoyancy check, and every diver knows that if you are overweighted, buoyancy control is a lot harder, since the air you add to be neutral at a given depth changes volume as you ascend and descend†. The really experienced divers with us, the instructors and experienced DM all seemed to be negative enough to hold down a flailing student, yet had great buoyancy control of their own without obviously adjusting their BCDs. I think 10Kg should have been enough weight for me in that kit in freshwater, but I went in with 12Kg for that purpose, yet my own buoyancy was all over the place, or at least it felt that way. How they do that is something that I’m going to have to learn. Another thing to think about is what exactly to do if a student shoots up like a Polaris. On the one hand, we are responsible for them. On the other, in a class like this they are already certified divers and responsible for themselves. Blowing an ascent rate if you only dive once a year is one thing, doing it several times a day, every weekend is bound to take its toll, even if only from 10m, and I want to go on being a healthy diver for a long time!

† When I did the Cavern Specialty in Mexico in January, we learnt one trick cave divers use: 33% of your weight is only needed for descent and to control ascent with depleted tanks, so to ensure perfect neutrality in the confined environment, they simply have some of their weight clipped on, which they leave at the entrance to the cave and pick up on the way out. Why are so many divers overweighted then? Because it makes the descent very easy and they dive a very simple profile that is down, along a reef wall say, then up (and then blow their safety stops!).

OW Referral 9/10 March 2013

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My first experience assisting with a course as a DMT, KM the OWSI, 5 students at LSD. Specific feedback/lessons learned from the weekend:

  • Focus on the other students. The point of having a DM(T) in the class is that the instructor is free to work 1:1 with students, knowing that the rest of the class is supervised and safe, and for another pair of eyes to be checking their air. It is natural I think to pay attention to the same thing the instructor is, but this is the “student mindset” that I should be beyond by now.
  • Don’t teach. If a student is struggling with a particular skill or a piece of kit, it is again natural to try to demonstrate it. But that is the instructor’s job, not least because they have far more experience correcting common problems, and they need to know firsthand how each student is progressing.
  • The paperwork is important. The various forms are legal documents, make sure they are filled in legibly (a real problem for me!) and accurately.

It was fascinating too to see how much I’d forgotten (or that just didn’t sink in, with so much new stuff to learn) from my own OW in 2008, e.g. SORTED, STELLA procedures. That is I think a large part of being a good diver: having the basic stuff as taught on the OW course absolutely perfected, before worrying about anything fancy.

All in all, a good start to the internship part of the DM course I think.