Category Archives: pool

DSD/OW Referral, 22/23 June 2013

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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

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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 🙂

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.

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 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.