Category Archives: Tec

GUE Tech 1, Malta, March 2015

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The first thing I should say before going any further is not to read too many blogs and writeups about T1. Going into the course with preconceptions, will only slow you down getting where you need to be. You should probably stop reading now.

The story begins in October last year when JK mentioned on his Facebook that he would be teaching at Techwise in Malta again the following March. Within hours a team had formed for Tech 1, GUE’s equivalent of Normoxic Trimix. I began preparing soon afterwards, taking advantage of my GUE membership to download the course materials, got my Fundies upgraded to Tech pass, did a dive trip to the Red Sea. Why T1 given that I already have ART which takes me to 48m and 15 mins deco? Isn’t this an expensive way to get another 3m? Not if you see your diving future as diving with GUE teams and participating in GUE projects. Then it makes perfect sense.

I am not going to write too much about the course; all 3 of us got Provisional ratings for reasons that JK explained in the debriefing that were entirely fair and accurate. A number of things conspired against us such as unseasonably bad weather in Malta that greatly restricted our choice of sites and blew us out altogether for 2 days; would that have made a difference to the end result? Well an extra 6 or 8 hours in the water couldn’t have hurt, but there is no point wondering what-if. We all have detailed plans going forwards to upgrade to full passes which I hope we will all manage in less than the 6 months allowed by GUE. We learnt all the skills, it will just take a little time to bed them in and get fluent in operating as a team. In the meantime we all have Rec3 cards (which allow 40m max depth, 21/35 backgas and a 32% stage for deco).

I will say tho’ that the gap between Fundies exit point and T1 entry point was much bigger than I expected; the 25 dives between courses that GUE requires, really do need to be in comparable conditions to the next course, and maybe should be 50 dives. Speaking for myself only, I did most of mine in the bright clear water of the Red Sea, where visual references for depth and natural navigation were plentiful, and I struggled with the task loading of executing the new skills “in the blue” with limited viz. It is actually surprisingly hard to use a teammate (+ gauge + compass) as visual reference, especially in a current, what tends to happen is vertical and directional oscillations ensue as each individual diver overcorrects. That too will come with time and a few more dives.

For future reference, the water was around 14℃, I wore merino baselayer and my Santi BZ200 undersuit, with 3Kg of v-weight. I started out with a lightweight hood and 1.5mm gloves but was glad I’d also brought a 5mm hood on the longer (2-3 hr) in-water times, near the end of which I was getting quite cold. Also very glad of my p-valve…

Rec → Tech, 02 November 2014

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Since achieving only a recreational pass at GUE Fundamentals in April I have been meeting up with people from the GUE UK Facebook group over the summer at Vobster for skills’n’drills (and thrills and spills!) with a view to upgrading to a technical pass. Looking back over the logs, this amounted to 14 dives and 585 minutes in the water practicing, in addition to all the other diving I was doing which would have generally helped with in-water comfort. Finally a couple of us felt we were ready so we booked a day with GUE instructor James Sanderson aka Badger.

The format of the day was to spend the morning as a coaching session, with video feedback in the surface interval, then the actual evaluation in the afternoon. I am glad we did it this way rather than jumping straight into the evaluation as I had a couple of things to brush up; my backkick had gotten a bit sloppy, and having just gotten back from the Red Sea I was quite unprepared to do mask-off drills in water of 12℃ and lost buoyancy control 😦 Fortunately I was able to knock both these problems on the head in time for the afternoon, where we took it in turns running a gas-sharing ascent from depth with stops every 3 metres, deploying a DSMB on the way, in addition to valve drills and simulated lost-mask exits, and dealing with a casualty on the surface (basically a repeat of the last dive of the full course). This went swimmingly and I achieved the technical pass I have been coveting 😀 Unfortunately it didn’t go so well for my teammate; he was having an off-day as usually his skills are better than mine. He just couldn’t get into trim, which meant neither valve drills nor backkick would work. I will help him practice more and it will come in due course.

A few videos that helped me to prepare were this DSMB deployment, this s-drill and this valve drill. And remember: slow is smooth and smooth is fast. My advice for anyone who stumbles across this who is also trying for an upgrade, is first just to practice getting into the trim position and remaining still, not doing anything. When you can do this for a minute, start adding in simple skills, like 1 and 2 of the Basic 5, and flow check. Work your way up to the full 5 and a valve drill, and finally DSMB deployment. All the while try to maintain team awareness. Don’t worry about any skills before you have “the platform”, you will just waste valuable practice time.

This all took place at Stoney Cove, the first time I had been there, and hopefully the last. Compared to Vobster I was somewhat underwhelmed:

  • No kitting-up benches, which is especially a pain using a twinset, several people had brought folding DIY benches, which was a very good idea
  • No Nitrox, only air. Not such a big deal for shallow skills dives, but it meant I couldn’t get a fill afterwards, I like to keep my gear ready to dive at all times. Right now I have about 100 bar of “EANx25” in my twinset. What am I supposed to do with that?
  • Air fills cost more than Vobster, £7 for a twinset versus about £5.
  • No indoor facilities to review video, we used the back of Badger’s car
  • Closed at 3pm, tho’ to be fair they let us stay in the water a little longer
  • It costs more in entry fee than Vobster, and they even charge members to reserve parking!
  • Vobster’s catering is better too
  • It has a reputation for things getting stolen if left unattended even for a moment, that was just one more thing to worry about which was distracting.

Basically if you go there, be completely self-sufficient as if you were diving in the middle of nowhere, because you might as well be. Other than that it was a very successful day, it was good to meet Badger, and I look forward to diving with him some more. Plans are now afoot for Tech 1…

TEKcamp, July 2014

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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…

Why Tech?

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Someone asked me recently, why are you doing all this techy stuff? The answer for me is very simple: because I couldn’t do the dives I want to do at the level I was at. Still can’t, actually, but now I have a way to get there.

Consider the wrecks of Scapa Flow, which lie in 35-50m of water, just as one example, there are many more. I’d love to see them. So what are my options? I could use my PADI Deep Diver cert, to 40m, and have a quick look on a single 15ℓ tank of air while staying within no-deco limits (9 minutes on the RDP). Or I could crossover my PADI DM to BSAC Dive Leader and go down to 50m, again on a single, and risk a little deco on the notorious BSAC 88s. Or I could just go and do the dives regardless; there are no dive police lurking at the recreational limit (tho’ I might have some explaining to do back on the boat!) and surely my trusty Suunto Mosquito could run the deco for me. None of these options are particularly appealing. At least one of them is downright stupid. Then there is the issue of gas narcosis. I have done enough dives below 30m to have a first-hand understanding of this. I have seen people do some improbable things, and I have done (or been told I have done) some some myself. And I’ve reviewed the photos I’ve taken or the video I’ve shot after the dive and realized I couldn’t actually remember seeing alot of what’s on the camera. Seems pointless to spend time and money on some big dives and not even have the memories to show for it! And then there’s caves… I can’t deny the allure. For this I need to get the training and build experience gradually.

So so far I have taken two baby steps into the technical realm, IANTD ART, which takes me down up to 48m, with enough helium to reduce the narcosis to half that, and accelerated deco, and GUE Fundamentals, to hone the basic skills and give me a way into GUE training. I achieved only a Recreational pass at the latter, so my next step is to refine my skills to Technical pass level and book an instructor for the upgrade. I hope to do that over the next few months. Then either GUE Tech 1 or IANTD Normoxic, and then I will be ready to begin phase II of my diving career. Now that I know a bit about what’s out there, this is even more exciting than learning to dive the first time ’round was!

IANTD ART, 26-29 September 2013

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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…