Tag Archives: Vobster

Tekcamp, July 2015

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We are just back from another amazing TEKCamp. I didn’t take as detailed notes as last time but had some great dives with Paul Toomer, Rich Walker, John Kendall, Mark Powell and Phil Short and attended some fascinating and inspiring talks. We also visited Fourth Element‘s underwater shop! Thanks to everyone involved and to the Vobster crew for organizing and hosting it!

One thing I will say tho’ – sure if a wreck is on the seabed, eventually it will be reclaimed by the sea and no-one will be able to see it, but that might take 50 or 100 years. If you nick the bell and the maker’s plate from the boiler and the portholes and stash them in your shed, then definitely no-one will see it and in 50 years your next-of-kin will probably sell them to a scrap merchant to be melted down. There was one speaker who bragged about his collection, then complained all the wrecks near the coast were “dived out”. The only negative thing about an otherwise brilliant event.

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…

Back in Black, 10 March 2014

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This was my first time back in the water since breaking my leg and my ankle last year. B and I drove down to Vobster the evening before and stayed in our usual place, the Oakhill Inn. I can report that I can basically dive again, but the lack of mobility in my right ankle seems to have slowed down my frog kick somewhat. We got in two leisurely dives:

Dive Max/Avg Depth Temp Runtime Consumption SAC
1 18m / 10m 7℃ 21 mins 50bar/ 1200ℓ† 28ℓ/min
2 12m / 8.8m 6℃ 31 mins 60bar/ 1440ℓ† 24ℓ/min

I have put on about a stone in weight with my forced few months of inactivity, and that is on top of thinking before that I could stand to lose a stone :-/ The lack of fitness really shows in the SAC, my usual benchmark is 20ℓ/min

I made a lot of kit changes too, all the changes I had planned to make over the winter, in one go. Most of these come out of ART but also in preparation for Fundies next month.

  • Switched my neoprene drysuit for a membrane, a Fourth Element Argonaut with silicone neck and wrists, neoprene socks and drygloves.
    • As a consequence of that, switched my size 10 Northern Diver combat rockboots for size 11 Hollis rockboots‡. These are paradoxically bigger on the inside but smaller on the outside, so I dropped my Hollis F1 fins from 2XL to XL‡ which fit perfectly. They also give less support but more mobility for the ankle.
    • As a further consequence of that, wore my O3 PBB Extreme undersuit instead of the PBB+ I would wear under neoprene in these conditions. On the first dive I was perfectly OK but on the second, I was starting to feel the cold.
  • Switched my 6mm, 5.1Kg Agir backplate for a 3mm 2.2Kg by Light Monkey.

On ART with the neoprene suit, twinset and 6mm backplate I felt overweighted however with the membrane suit and the 3mm backplate (and no additional weights) I definitely felt underweighted, the undersuit presumably making all of the difference. So I can assume that my buoyancy works out the same for an equivalent level of thermal protection, which means I will go back to the 6mm (remains to be seen how this works out for traveling). OR in warmer water, with the lighter undersuit, the 3mm backplate might be perfect, hmm. There is plenty of flexibility in the membrane suit compared to the neoprene, but I need to re-learn the finer points of buoyancy control in it. The drygloves are very nice, but fiddly to get on and off, and I am wondering how much I dare trim off the neck seal to get it perfect. It’s quick change, and I have a spare, in case! All in all it was a successful mission and infinitely better than showing up to Fundies in completely unfamiliar kit. But there is still a long way to go before I am happy.


†Twinset
‡Bought at the Vobster shop on the day.