OW Completion, 7/8 September 2013

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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

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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.

Diver’s Cove, 18 August 2013

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Yesterday B and I went to reconnoitre Diver’s Cove, a recently opened inland site. Operating on the principle that choice and competition are usually good for the consumer (individual divers and dive schools in this context) we wanted to see if it was a viable alternative to Wraysbury, who have held a monopoly on the South East for many years. I really, really wanted to like it, but unfortunately these hopes were premature. Some of the reasons are general, some are only applicable to some, but in no particular order:

  • There isn’t much parking and it’s a long way from the water, which is down a gravel slope. It would be a pain to unload kit for 20 divers, and even more so to load it back up. To their credit, trolleys are provided.
  • The kitting up area is quite small. You could have one operation the size of LSD there, max. There is only one entry platform.
  • Getting a fill would require going back up the gravel slope to a filling station that didn’t look like it could cope with high demand. I know I am banging on a lot about distances, but logistics are important, and we are often tight-pressed for time. We didn’t try the food, but the catering there would struggle with some demand too.
  • It’s simply further away. It would be worth it logistically if it had 18+m depth, much as I love Vobster, LSD can’t justify going there for anything other than depth, but at 9m it doesn’t offer any deeper than Wraysbury
  • The changing rooms are better than Wraysbury’s but the toilets – astonishingly – are worse
  • Some divers we spoke to there, and our own observations from the surface, were that the vis was worse than Wraysbury too. And on that day at Wraysbury, you couldn’t see from end of a training platform to the other!

Some of these things are structural, while the kitting-up area could be enlarged (a bit) it will always be at the bottom of a slope. Some of them, like the filling station, could be sorted out just by a little investment. All in all tho’, unless you happened to be based in Surrey (and there were some dive schools there) Wraysbury is still the least-worst near the M25. Personally I say just go to Vobster or the sea 🙂

Vobster/GUE Primer, 5-9 August 2013

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I am just back from a week in the West Country with B. Our plan was to get in a couple of dives in the mornings at Vobster practicing with our new wings (hers Halcyon, mine Light Monkey on an Agir backplate) and visit National Trust sites in the afternoons, making good use of this year’s membership before it expires at the end of the month. I’d like to say again what a well run operation Vobster is, and a very different experience in the week from the frenzy of weekends, very chilled out. Martin and Amy made us feel very welcome and gave us lots of advice. And I highly recommend a visit to Stourhead House, the grounds are spectacular.

While there we also took the GUE Primer with John Kendall. This was among the best training I have ever done, almost as transformative as learning to dive in the first place! Before getting into any agency wars, as a DM let me say that PADI does things a certain way because that makes perfect sense for the type of diving the average PADI-trained diver does – relatively shallow dives in warm clear water for 1 or maybe 2 weeks a year, in rented equipment, at a price that competes with any other sort of holiday. It worked well enough for me when that was me. However the GUE way is to “start with the end in mind” – you might not want to be a DPV-propelled rebreather-breathing deco-stopping cave explorer, but the system scales with you from basic open water all the way there with no unlearning and retraining required, e.g. everyone starts with a backplate and wing, a long hose (primary donate), skills neutrally buoyant, non-silting kicks, etc. In the PADI system, this kind of equipment isn’t introduced until Tec 45, or frog kick not until Cavern Diver, both of which are optional courses. Another example would be drysuits – most holiday divers will never, ever wear one, so Drysuit Diver is an optional course in the PADI system.

We started with an introduction to the GUE organization and moved onto equipment configuration and Rule 6, we were both most of the way there, but there was still plenty of sighing and head-shaking, much to the amusement of Martin who had set up much of it for us 🙂 For all the changes John made to our kit, there was a good, logical reason for them. The really mindblowing bit, and what sold me on GUE is when a minor adjustment to my shoulder D-rings made clipping and unclipping effortless! They really have thought of everything!

Eventually we got into the water, and for the 3 dives over 2 days, all we did was work on buoyancy and trim and 3 kicks (frog, modified flutter and back). This was all videoed by Steph (thanks Steph!), acting as GUE-equivalent of DM, and practicing her own Documentation Diver skills. John had warned us that his feedback would be brutally honest, but it was always constructive and it was incredibly valuable to get the insight of someone who has trained many students and has a way to correct common problems (e.g. “sharking”) efficiently. I spend a lot of time with people who have “demonstration quality” skills, indeed I am such a person myself and have a card to prove it, but the gap between me and the GUE divers was, err, gaping. I definitely want what they have. I think both B and I learnt a great deal, and made a quantum leap in in-water skills in even that short time, even if only in terms of knowing what we can aspire to, and we have a lot to think about and practice. Roll on Fundamentals! And I need to think about a way to subtly feed this back into PADI training…

Only fly in the ointment was discovering when I came to get a Nitrox fill that my new “yes it’s oxygen clean” tank from Mike’s a) is missing the sticker that says so and b) isn’t as new as I thought. So I will need to be having a word with them about that.

Advice For Those Considering Divemaster

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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!

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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

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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

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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!

    Dive Planning with Surface Air Consumption

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    PADI teaches that a diver should be on the surface with 50 bar in the tank, that being the reserve for emergencies. It’s a good rule for no-stop diving in open water; while rule-of-thirds is the least conservative method for OHE, the 50 bar rule is a good balance between safety and practicality. But one thing that is not taught at OW, and I think could be grasped by anyone who can handle repetitive diving with the RDP, is SAC. I’ll run through a calculation based on a recent dive of mine and show how it could be used for planning another dive†. First, you need some good data. I get this very precisely from my air-integrated Suunto Cobra, but anything will do that gives you pressure in bars, the time, and the average depth (this could be done on any dive where you simply stay at 10m for 10 mins and write down the pressures on a slate, but the more data the better, and it doesn’t have to be exact, nearest metre or 10 bar will do).

    1. Firstly, start thinking about gas consumption not just in bar, but in litres (ℓ). This is easy to work out, pressure in bars × tank size in litres (since normal atmosphere is 1 bar). So if I have used 120 bar from a 12ℓ tank, I have breathed 1440ℓ of gas.
    2. Secondly, if I have been down for 40 minutes, then I am breathing at a rate of 1440ℓ ÷ 40 mins = 36ℓ/min.
    3. As every diver knows, pressure increases with depth at a constant rate, 1 bar per 10m. If my average depth for this dive was 9.8m, then the average pressure was 1.98 bar
    4. Putting all these numbers together, my equivalent breathing rate at the surface was 36ℓ/min ÷ 1.98 bar = 18.2ℓ/min. I’ll round this up to 20 for conservatism.

    Now that we have this number‡, what do we do with it? Let’s assume I want to do a 30m dive, and work backwards from the end of the dive.

    1. I start with 210 bar, a normal fill, in my 12ℓ tank. 210 – 50 = 160 bar that I can actually use. 160 bar × 12ℓ gives me 1920ℓ.
    2. I want to ascend from 30m at 10m/minute. Some would say that’s a bit quick and I wouldn’t argue, but for the sake of the calculation, that means spending 3 minutes at an average depth of 15m, assuming a constant ascent rate. 3 mins × 20ℓ/min × 2.5 bar = 150ℓ. That leaves 1770ℓ.
    3. I want to do a 3 minute safety stop at 5m. So that’s 3 minutes × 20 ℓ/min × 1.5 bar = 90ℓ. This leaves 1680ℓ.
    4. Let’s say it takes 2 minutes to do the descent to 30m, the average will be 15m for that time. 2 minutes × 20 × ℓ/min × 2.5 bar = 100ℓ, leaving 1580ℓ for the main part of the dive.
    5. How long will 1580ℓ last me at 30m? 1580ℓ ÷ 4 bar ÷ 20ℓ/min = 19¾ minutes. But there are still two more factors to consider: what’s my no-stop time for this dive, if I am diving repetitively, and what’s my buddy’s SAC rate? We go with the most conservative numbers.

    As we can see from this, a planned ascent on this dive uses a total of 150ℓ + 90ℓ = 240ℓ which in a 12ℓ tank is 20 bar, so I should start to ascend at 70 bar at the latest. With a 50 bar reserve, I can comfortably bring my buddy up from the deepest part of the dive, even with a “panicked” breathing rate (but why panic if your buddy’s in arm’s length? That’s what we train for). Knowing this very simple calculation takes the guesswork out and makes diving safer and hence more fun 🙂 In fact, you only really need to calculate the starting pressure and the gas needed for the ascent, and make that your ascent pressure and not bother with steps 4 and 5. Once again, all divers in a buddy team should do this, and the team ascends when the first person reaches their ascent pressure.

    In practice I may want to breathe some at the surface, I will need some for my BCD and maybe for an SMB, so I’d start to ascend at 80 bar, regardless of time. That’ll still give me a decent dive, especially if I am planning repetitive dives on the same site and racking up the nitrogen. Any more and we’re into deco territory anyway, twinset and stage bottle.

    As an aside, I believe in the US the equivalent rule is on the surface with 500psi, which equates to ~35 bar. In Mexico in January, the DMs would brief to start the ascent on 500psi/50bar which suggests that something was lost in translation. It also means you should trust your own common sense, regardless of what you might be told!

    † If you don’t have data, assume 24ℓ/min as it makes the maths easy. With a 12ℓ tank, 2 bar/min on the surface, 4 bar/min at 10m and so on.
    ‡ Which don’t forget really only applies to similar conditions and work rate; the more data the better. SAC will go up if it’s cold, if you are finning against a current, if you are task loaded/stressed in any way, etc etc.

    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).