Vobster, 16 June 2013

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No DMT activity this weekend (well I’m sure there was, I just didn’t sign up for it), because I had planned to go to Vobster with my girlfriend for just some diving, something I hadn’t done in a while! She wanted to try out her brand new drysuit, I wanted to explore some features without a gaggle of students in tow and we both wanted to refresh some of the OHE skills we had picked up doing the Cavern Diver course in Mexico last January. Unfortunately we arrived later than I had planned and only had time for two dives, but still it was an excellent daytrip.

Dive Max/Avg Depth Min Temp Time Consumption SAC
1 (Aircraft) 13.1m/ 9.8m 13℃ 40 mins 120bar/ 1440ℓ 18ℓ/min
2 (Tunnel) 21.3m/ 12.2m 10℃ 19 mins 74bar/ 888ℓ 21ℓ/min

Higher SAC on the colder, deeper dive that involved an OHE, still close enough to my benchmark of 20L/min. Only kit change was the addition of an old-model Uwatec digital depth gauge, bought on eBay. I had been concerned about having replaced my traditional console with a Suunto Cobra, if it suffered a failure I would be without not only contents gauge, but depth and time (and less importantly, temperature and max depth, but still), so I wanted a backup. Very nice piece of kit, clear display and easy to use. Only problem was it didn’t sit properly on my wrist and adjusting it in the water made my drysuit leak a little. My drysuit has a retainer for wrist instruments, but only on the left. I’ll probably upgrade it to the current version when the non-replaceable (!) battery runs out, with a bungee mount rather than a buckle strap.

Back to DMT next weekend…

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 🙂

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!

Compressor Operator + Nitrox Blender, 28 January/8 May 2013

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Yesterday I completed the BSAC Compressor Operator and Nitrox Blender courses.  These were very challenging, not so much in terms of the contents, which are straightforward enough, but the logistics to actually make it happen. It took – literally – months after doing the theory session to organize a date for the practical work, which we agreed three weeks before, then on the day, it turned out that only I could make it! Special thanks to NI CY for going ahead with just me, but as he said, the tanks needed filling either way.

To be a good blender requires a lot of experience with a particular setup, for example on the equipment we used, no-one knows the actual fill rate, the only way to tell is with a stopwatch and an analogue gauge, and we checked temperatures with our hands and the cylinders were either “warm” or “cool’. Getting an accurate blend means just knowing that on compressor W in ambient condition X, over/underfill the O2 by Y bar, then the air by Z bar, and it’ll all turn out right when the temperature stabilizes. Doing it every day you would quickly develop a feel for it. For now I’ll leave it to the professionals but if at some point I’m diving enough, or in a remote enough location, that getting a J of  O2 and a small compressor is worthwhile, I’ll have that option.

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…