DIR Diving Blog

After a conversation with Jarrod at the GUE conference and a lot of thought I find myself sitting in Florida, contemplating diving a rebreather for the first time.

The rebreather in question is a Halcyon RB80, the course is GUE Rebreather and the students are Clare, Steve Shultz from Canada and me. All of us are Tech 2 and Cave 2.

Clare

I suppose the first question that most will ask, is why. Well it is not cost – the unit will never pay for itself in gas savings, even though it is less expensive than some commercially available units any gas savings will only dent the investment we had to make to move over.

My plans for 2008 included some pretty long/deep dives and my buddy Clare was contemplating an RB80. I don’t think I’ve entirely reached the limit of OC but accepting that it will take a year to get up to speed on the RB I decided that this was a good a year as any.

It is worth pointing out that you don’t just decide to buy an RB80. GUE Tech 2 is the minimum requirement for training but meeting this pre-requisite is not enough on its own. GUE and Halcyon really don’t like making them, don’t like running courses and don’t want people to dive them. A decision to move over to the unit is therefore not merely the students, it is one owned by the community – if you are judged to be wanting one for the wrong reasons, or not have the skill level or the right attitude to take on the challenges of the unit, they simply will not agree to manufacture a unit for you or provide training. If training is provided and the student is found not to have reached the level required, they will not be permitted to take the RB80 away with them – one of the gambles that you make when you sign up to purchase a unit. Out of 17 people who took the course last year – all were GUE trained at the highest levels – and only three received a pass. GUE are serious when they say that they really don’t want people diving these things and the course, the standards, and the instructor attitude during training reflects that.

Five days, four of which are spent diving, where we will be riding a vertical learning curve taking us from our first rebreather dive on day two, up to three bottles on day five.

Day one is an all day classroom day where we strip down the unit to component parts. Bear in mind that I made this move reluctantly, and you will understand that I approach the unit with some apprehension. Halcyon have built a rebreather just for training so that students can play with it in the classroom, tearing it down and building it up again to gain through understanding.

It looks complicated at first but it is intuitive and assembly/disassembly, cleaning, servicing are all user friendly and possible in the field. David’s knowledge as a WKPP exploration diver who has been diving the unit since it was first developed, as well as being Mr Scubapro who trains their service technicians, assists us greatly in deftly picking the unit apart so we can really understand how it works and fits together.

The unit’s individual characteristics are discussed in depth. The pros and cons of the unit, why certain decisions have been made in its design, how dive plans can be built, what issues to look out for when diving it although classroom work here will be compounded in the water many times over before the end of the week. This unit is a tool for a job and at every stage we are reminded that we take an increased risk when we dive the unit rather than open circuit and the best dive of all will be one where we don’t have to use it.

Finally, our new units arrive from Halcyon and we sit there reconfiguring regulators, attaching drive hoses and switch blocks, checking we have all that we need to go diving tomorrow. Nerves for all three of us are increasing as none of us have been on a rebreather before – even for 5 minutes in a pool.

We arrive at Blue Grotto early the following day. Units are to be packed with lime and David shows us a few tips on how to do this.

With the unit assembled and in the rack, we connect regs and finally top off with wings and backplates. The kit now looks familiar – all my normal clips, regs, my familiar wing and the same backplate are there. Just this new bit in the middle, the RB, and the switch block to worry about.

We are to jump in, descend open circuit to 6 metres, and then one by one switch to rebreather mode – a process which simply means flipping a lever on the mouthpiece. I go first and its an odd sensation. I feel like I’m suffocating but I can still breathe. The bubbles have stopped but I stay flat and don’t notice a big change in buoyancy – I do have to make several fine adjustments. Then Steve switches to rebreather – with the same results. Followed by Clare, who looks immediately uncomfortable and switches back to OC. She perserves and tries again and seems OK. No-one is hitting the bottom, no-one is hitting the surface, we are just working slightly harder than normal to stay still.

We’ve all held horizontal trim too which will assist with team diving later on, back kick and helicopter turns are vitally important in a RB which is the size of a small car without the manoeuvrability.

Me

Valve drills are next. Familiarity of procedure and kit is challenged due to the new elements but we all cope relatively well once we each work out where the valves are and how best to get to them. I find myself wondering when it is all going to get difficult as whilst it is uncomfortable due to being different it’s not that bad at the moment.

Now S drills. There is an extra step here, getting rid of the loop with the left hand whilst unclipping the long hose with the right ready to donate as soon as the loop is clear. Anyone who has to use two hands to unclip a regulator will struggle with this procedure, the new step slowed things down but again each of us coped OK.

Finally, we swim around a circuit that David has laid which runs from 3 metres down to 9 metres. At 6 and above we are to be on open circuit, at 6 and below we are to be running on the RB to get used to switching backwards and forwards as well as coping with the buoyancy shifts on the RB which makes lung control useless. Then we ascend for a debrief. My first dive on an RB is over.

Team buoyancy, trim and basic skills are pronounced as sound which David sees as encouraging for the course ahead as it means we can already start to progress.

We drop down again for another hour, where after drills; we head round the circuit where David will cut off the supply of gas to the rebreather through the switchblocks so we can start to pick up those intuitive alarms which we need to dial into to confirm that the unit is working efficiently. When an RB80 stops injecting gas you effectively run out of gas – slowly – with each breath getting a little tighter. If you are not sure whether the unit is injecting, a deep breath will force the injectors to fire, something you can hear and grow to feel.

Round and round we went, dealing with the challenge of ever changing buoyancy and the switchblock was never far from David’s fingers. It started to become familiar both in sensation and in procedure and when three of us experienced failures at the same time we simply switched to OC and took it in turns to identify the failure and fix it. One thing was becoming clear, on a RB with such a simple OC bailout mechanism; there is simply no need to hurry. Switch, signal the team, ID the problem and resolve if possible. Round and round, memories being built and rewired, until an unresolvable failure meant that the team thumbed the dive. David was pleased – we were delighted as we had all prepared for the worst and it had been far from that. Early in the week though – tomorrow we would move to Forty Fathom Grotto and stages.

Wednesday was raining and we arrived at the Grotto early to prep kit. Two stages each were carried down to the quayside many steps below, followed by the units.

For our first dive we were to dive again without stages, to confirm our skills on the unit when directly driven, albeit through the switchblock. More drills followed by a drop to 20 metres into the murk of the grotto where we laid line midwater to ensure that we were not using the bottom as a prop to mask poor buoyancy. We did OK so picked up a stage each and dropped down again.

The switching procedure is simple, IDing gas the way we have been trained, routing the stage hose under the longhose and the light cable so as not to get hung up or foul anything on the dive. The switchblock is very sharp when new and news filing down to avoid many cuts to the fingers. Unfortunately we failed to return to High Springs any day in time to get to the shops before the closed so a file was never available. Our hands show the scars still.

This dive, number four, was when things really started to warm up. Clare and I had happily permitted our buddy to switch to a 70 bottle – forgetting that in the US that is the equivalent of 21 metres. The floor of our dive was 20 metres but David sought to force us below this to try to get Steve to breach the label of his gas (all stages were filled with 32 per cent) at one stage physically seeking to push us below the MOD. He failed to do this but only because we had set the floor before the dive – we were unaware that Steve’s gas markings meant that he was potentially on the wrong gas.

We were deservedly torn off a strip for this as a team, as well as other poor/missing markings on bottles. Rental tanks or not, imperial/metric or not, this had to be sorted out before we dived again. We returned back to our hotel angry at ourselves for not coming better prepared to the water and stripped down the units, cleaning and checking every aspect of it ready for the next day’s diving.

Thursday was up at 5:30am for a swim test at the Gainesville Health and Fitness Centre and then straight to Forty Fathom Grotto again where the units needed to be checked and repacked.

Two stages today in water, and David ramped up the failures to a point that I described the course as Tech 2 on steroids. Failure after failure led to stress levels rising and skills being seriously challenged. All of us made the sort of errors that we would not make when stressed, checks missed, miscommunication, attention to detail running below normal levels as we maxed out capacity. I was well outside my comfort level on the second dive, with David riding my manifold whooping all the way to the surface having blown both my valves and continuing the failure during the ascent – alternating between sitting on me during ascent and letting go – with the resulting buoyancy swings. Stress levels rose remarkably – and I let it show which is unacceptable.

We returned home in a sombre mood. Tomorrow was make or break day but the main enemy was not David or the RB itself – the main enemy would be stress.

On Friday the team were given a late start by David as we had all pretty much reached exhaustion point, but we decided to turn up early and get the units built so we could maximise the in water time that day. Each of us would have to carry three stages today, so bottles were marked, checked, regs attached (each with rebreather cheater) and carried down the numerous steps to the water. We were all nearing completion of the unit assembly when David arrived and he was clearly cheered by the timetable gain that this would permit.

The plan that day would be four dives. Two with multiple stages and failures and two short ones to follow on – more of that later.

We jumped in and Clare happened to be leading the dive so headed down the shot line after completing drills at 9, settling out at 30 metres. It is very disconcerting laying line in midwater as we did all week. Forty Fathom Grotto has various up lines which loom out of the gloom from time to time allowing you to tie off, but in the main there is simply no reference at all in black water. Laying the line, seeking to maintain compass heading and depth, as well as monitor team for the inevitable failures is challenging although I was sort of getting used to it by the end of the week. There is no reason every to do this in real life but again is used to increase stress levels to see what breaks.

Failure after failure was thrown. First fixable ones where a valve was found to be off or a switchblock hose had popped out etc etc. Then came the non fixable failures. First I lost my left post. We reached the bottom of the shotline and those of us who could switched off the drive bottles. I remained on mine as it was driving the rebreather through the cheater. A short ascent to 24 was made very entertaining by David stealing both Steve’s deco gasses – to the accompanying Steve yelling of ‘Son of a b***h!’ which of course we could now hear.

On arriving at 21 Clare switched to 50% and donated the OC deco reg off the same bottle to Steve having established supply through the RB and cheater. I lost my right post removing the last of my backgas regs so I had to manage a stage to stage switch from the RB bottom gas to the OC reg from my 50 percent bottle. I was then able to tidy away the bottom stage plug the 50 into the RB and switch back to SCR.
At 9, Clare switched off the 21 metre bottle and on to back gas through the RB. She grabbed her leash and brought it forward to unclip the O2 and drop off the 50. Leaning out to balance, Steve thought she was passing her bottles to him and took the leash which would have been helpful indeed if it had not been both a surprise and very heavy with two full 80s of nitrox on it. He and Clare rapidly parted company – one down and one up – although within acceptable levels. David said after it looked like Clare said ‘You want to breath my gas – you can carry the damn bottles then’ but they quickly settled back down and relaxed.

I then had to manage a switch to the OC reg on the 50 bottle, clean up the 50% cheater, juggle bottles, plug in 02 and get back onto the RB. Meanwhile Clare managed the switch to O2 for Steve and herself.

Clare’s mask then disappeared, quickly followed by her backup which was taken from her hands. We stabilised as a team before I pressed my backup into her hands whilst Steve gave the all important feedback through touch contact.

And then the surface. We didn’t need to be told we had done well in water that dive. Each hint, comment and criticism that David had given us had been taken on board, acted upon and our performance had improved accordingly.

‘Good dive’ may not be a lot of praise but it was hard won and each of us felt that we had given a good account of ourselves. The final decision as to whether we should be set free with the units was to be David’s but we all agreed that we felt we could have done no more.

Two final dives beckoned – both of which are done to assist in that intuitive development and build confidence in the unit. First we were to try to flood it. We dropped down popped the loop out of our mouths in the open position and sat there. We were encouraged to wave it around a bit, jiggle it and see if we could get as much water in it as possible and then go back on to the loop – in OC mode if we chose before switching to RB.
The unit is designed to route water away from the scrubber material and after three minutes or so waving an open loop around I switched back on to it cautiously. Nothing – a bit of gurgling but not much else and no cocktail of nasty stuff. We exited the water and examined the scrubbers. It was completely dry. I understand this is pretty unique to RB80s and clones, and helpful for building confidence in the unit.

As the scrubbers were now empty, we would rebuild our kit and get back into the water with no scrubber material in place to see what a CO2 hit felt like. I am aware that there is some question as to the validity of this test as hits can take different forms, but it was useful to sit there for a couple of minutes, feeling the body try to stretch gradually for breath, in controlled circumstances where someone was looking out for us. Stopping the test was up to each of us, when we felt we had enough we switched to OC and David hauled us out of the water. I felt a bit off so took a couple of painkillers before a C02 headache appeared in force.
Back to EE for debriefs, we were told individually that we had fully passed the course and could take the RBs home.

Team photo – Steve, David, me and Clare.

It felt good, it felt earned, it felt daunting as well. GUE’s prerequisites mean that each of us hit the ground running at the start of the course and because all the deco, gas switching process, dive planning etc was all covered in previous classes this class is just about how to apply the RB. David ensured that the pace continued throughout the week! A road map of how to get used to the units and build up to currents diving levels as well as beyond was discussed and agreed with each student.

The unit itself? Well it’s OK. It’s a tool which I can already see has benefits but like most things in life benefits also come with costs and I don’t underestimate them. The day after the course was over I took a scooter, a set of doubles, a stage and some O2 and hit the water in Ginnie – nothing like going cave diving.

Spent the weekend helping Clare and John on a fundamentals class. It was a group of 5 divers, 4 doubles & 1 single. Everyone seemed to enjoy the class albeit with the usual slightly downcast expression now and again when people were learning new skills.

Had fun with the video at times as the vis was a bit murky, but the footage was definitely useable. Overall did the usual 4 and bit dives over the weekend.

Just finished two days of helping out on a fundamentals course as the video diver. Had a lot of fun being on the other side of the camera and helping out. Chatted to a guy named Richard who’d done lots of cave diving in the past and we talked about people he’d met and dives he’d done.

Richard Lundgren was over visiting the UK to teach a couple of courses and myself and Fraser arranged for our Tech-2 resit. Since the course last August I’d done 67 dives bringing my skills along a bit. I’d like to have done more the the PFO discovery restricted my diving for a while.

We met Richard at the NDAC and basically had one dive to do to show we could manage the ascent and stage switches smoothly. It all went to plan and at 6m Richard shook our hands and wrote a wetnote congratulating us on becoming Tech-2 divers. It was not the slickest ascent I’ve ever done but buoyancy control was good and we stuck to time so it did what it had to.

Passing the course was a great relief as it had been preying on mind for some time. I’m very glad we did Tech-2 as it really did show us what we needed to strive to acheive.

I spent today acting as a video diver for Clare Gledhill as she completed the last day of the GUE fundamentals course. The two students Rich and Matty had come on a line laying workshop I’d done at the last DIR-X gig so I knew the pair of them and it was nice to see them again. Dive 1 and I was there for video work first while the boys did valve drills and s-drills, they then moved onto a toxing diver rescue where I got to play the body. Listening to Clare teach the course was fascinating – its been a long time since I did fundies and its odd the little titbits you pick up. After I’d played dead several times we swam off for a dive. The guys both demo’d deploying backup lights and then an ascent.

We had a surface interval where the guys then planned their next dive. I was to play more of an active role in this one acting as a team member. We did valve and s-drills and then went for a swim. Clare stole number 3 and checked the boys spotted they then had a succession of backup light failures and out of gas which was reset, followed by me running out of gas. The guys then ascended with me as the OOG diver.

I had a really good day and was delighted to see both Rich and Matty pass. I’d definitely plan to sit in on another fundies course in the not too distant future.

Well as per the title this was a big course with a fair amount of pressure. We’d organised a joint course with Jarrod and Richard Lundgren co-teaching two teams of divers. We also had Andy Kerslake interning on the course as he’s working towards teaching Tech-2. We’d booked the course to run from Monday to Friday with both instructors flying in the Friday beforehand for their HSE medicals. As luck would have it the biggest terrorist alert in the UK since the July bombings kicks off and flights and customs for UK travel gets interesting! Luckily both make it into the country and reach their medical in time.

We kick off on Sunday evening with the whole gang getting together. Must admit to being a little wowed meeting Jarrod but he managed to put us all at ease. We did a little bit of classroom work with introductions and form filling followed by a meal out at a local Indian. Just to cover a few misconceptions Jarrod and Richard talked about how the Tech-2 course was evolving. The 9 bottle drill we’d read about has been dropped as it has little practical value and the emphasis now is on problem solving and ascents.

Monday morning and we find ourselves at Vobster with rather a lot of cylinders. One of the challenges we’d had organising the course was sorting the logistics of gas fills so we’d all got two sets of doubles and 6 stage cylinders for all 6 students and 3 instructors. Add in a number of spares and we had 20+ doubles and 60+ stages! We sorted kit out and got sorted for our first dive. Clare, Fraser and I all felt nervous as we dropped down with 3 stage cylinders clipped on. We carried out a full valve-drill and S-drill before descending down for the dive. What followed was a fairly typical Tech-1 training diving, valve failures both fixable and non-fixable followed by us turning the dive. We made our way back to the start point where we carried out the 10m ascent drill. This consists of deploying SMB, switching to 50%, moving the bottom stage and 100% bottle around, switching back to back gas, switching to 100 and surfacing. Throughout perfect buoyancy control is required and accurate communication, situational awareness etc. Our first attempt was definitely scrappy – it didn’t help that the other team started ascending below us. Their exhaust bubbles threw our buoyancy control somewhat and earnt them the nickname “Team Jacuzzi”.

Given the less than perfect first attempt we did the same dive twice more that day. Each time we’d do our valve drill in clear water with no visual reference before going through all manner of failures and dramas. Essentially the failures were like Tech-1 with the loss of masks, OOG, valve failures, line entanglements etc. We fared well on the failures and Jarrod was happy with our problem management, communication and team order after failures. I felt our recent cave class with Chris in Mexico had really upped our game on problem management – he’d definitely sharpened our skills up. However it wasn’t all good news Jarrod wasn’t happy that our buoyancy window was tight enough when we had a number of failures going on. We got some guidance on what we needed to work on and how we could improve our performance.

Monday night and we did some classroom work and quizzes. One of the interesting changes from Tech-1 is that you are expected to be much more of a thinking diver by Tech-2. Discussions around topics such as oxygen talked about what Jarrod and Richard had done in the past and what they did now and why. One of Jarrod’s explanations was that he wanted GUE to create divers who would still be doing great dives in years to come so he always specified the conservative nature of GUE training. An example of this is if you were using your 50% as a travel gas if your bottom mix is hypoxic then you’d switch off it and onto bottom gas at 6m after the bubble check rather than push the 50% and the PPO2. At every point it’s about what’s going to give you a good level of safety. We broke up the discussion for dinner and briefly resumed afterwards before we finished at around 11.30pm having been on the go since 7am so it really was a long day.

Tuesday and we’re back at Vobster for more of the same. We’d arranged a private opening at Vobster and had a similar set of dives but this time with the ascents starting from 24m rather than the 12m we used yesterday. This now included a switch from the stage onto back gas, 50% switch, moving bottles, back gas break and finally 100% switch. On one of the dives we dived into the pit at Vobster and had really lousy vis maybe 2-3m so they really weren’t inspiring dives – we just swam around waiting for problems to kick in. We had some nasty issues today, I had a genuine fault with my 50% regulator that lost a chunk of my gas so we upped the length of the stops and I spent half of the time on back gas, half on a team member’s 50%. Clare also managed to run out of 50% on the last dive. Overall we improved on the day before and again got constructive comments but we were still struggling to look slick. At the end of the day we sorted the remaining fills and then had to load up the wagons as we were off to the NDAC for the next day. This was one of several opportunities for me to carry a large number of cylinders. David Martin had injured his knee before the course so we all trying to help him out by carrying all the heavy stuff.

We returned to the hotel in Frome for food, lectures and another quiz. Jarrod and Richard did get quite a surprise when Dawn turned up to say hello. She was passing through the UK and Howard Payne very kindly drove her down to meet the guys for dinner. Lots of funny tales abounded my favourite was the description of Jarrod and Richard reaching the hotel Richard had booked for them in advance. It turned out the booking was for Mr and Mrs Jablonski and it was a double bed! Jarrod’s comment – “I ain’t spooning for anyone”. Needless to say the pair were an absolute scream. In the end my team called it a night at about 10.30pm as we were all shattered.

Wednesday and it’s an early start from Frome to get to the NDAC. There we meet David who’s volunteered to act as support staff for the next 3 days and he gives us a hand lugging cylinders around. Jarrod has a look round the quarry and while we think the logistics are a pain he’s pretty relaxed. He tells the tale of a trip to Turkey where it took them a day hiking gear up a mountain to get to the cave entrance! There are quite a few other well-known people wandering about the quarry. Phil Short, Ouroborus instructor stops to chat to Jarrod and Richard. He’s diving one of the new Halcyon CCR wings and the guys seem to have known each other for a while. Jack Ingle is also teaching on-site but he seems to stay out of the way. Jarrod is quite taken with the quarry and jokes that he’d like to giant stride from the top, Andy’s comment “I can see the headline now – world famous explorer dies like a lemming”.

Jarrod gives us a thorough briefing before the dive and talks about what he expects from Tech-2 students. The main goal for us was to improve our ascents while dealing with multiple problems. He was happy with our general problem resolution and ability to keep to time but wanted us to up our level of anticipation. We need to try and anticipate what’s coming and prepare for it, the idea being to use the moments of calm to ensure you are all squared away. We also needed to improve our efficiency on ascents, i.e. starting prepping the bag sooner or move bottles at the right point. Jarrod again asked us to tighten up the buoyancy window on the stops and communicate quickly if one person is drifting off the stop. He wanted to see us at 6.0m not 6.1m or 5.9m but aiming to hold the exact depth. One of the other changes we were finding was the idea that you bag up before the first gas switch and the person running the bag then waits and monitors the other two divers switching before handing the bag over and switching themselves. He also explained how he sees the Tech-2 course working and that for both teams the dives on day-3 would be critical on determining if we do the experience dives or not. Both teams needed to show some improvement if they wanted to be in Plymouth!

We finally get all the gear down to the water and do our first trimix dive with a max depth of 30m. I manage to snag my drysuit on metal spike on the minibus and I’m fairly fed up as I’m sure I’m going to get wet. We get in the water strap on the stages and start our dive. Valve drill and s-drill kick off and as I’m doing my valve drill I’m desperate not to change depth and screw up the valve drill and end up out of gas and having to get Clare to donate before I start over – not exactly what I had in mind. We finally get sorted out and then descend to depth. Needless to say we have problems again and thumb the dive and carry out our ascent dealing with numerous issues from 02 bottles failing, OOG etc. The ascent is ok but not particularly polished. We repeat the dive this time to 40m and to give you an idea of the problems I’ll run through the ascent.

Clare has non-fixable left post failure which results in us thumbing the dive. I run out of gas on the deep stops right while I’m putting the bag up, I gas share with Fraser and hand the bag over to Clare and help her send it up. We switch one at a time at 21m as we have an OOG diver (me) and you want the maximum level of concentration on them while they switch. Once I’m on my 50% I run the bag and monitor Clare and Fraser’s switches. They then juggle cylinders around moving the bottom stage onto the leash and the 02 bottle forward. I then hand the bag over so I can carry out the same task. Throughout I’m running the buoyancy on my drysuit as my wing inflator comes off my doubles which are dead in the scenario. We are conscious of time throughout the ascent with 3 mins at the gas switches and 1’s for all the other stops. As we move up through the stops we reach the back gas break at 9m and Fraser has to switch back to back gas then donate his long hose as I don’t have a gas supply. At this point the bag is again handed to Clare who also takes over timing the stops. We reach 6m and again I switch first followed by the other two. Fraser has a free-flowing 02 stage which is fixable and then my 02 bottle starts free-flowing. I accept a donation of Clare’s 02 and reseat the 1st stage which fails to fix the problem so the cylinder is dead. I then switch to my 50% bottle and we finish the deco.

Throughout the ascent problems have to be communicated, stage switches independently verified, buoyancy kept and stops kept to time. Easy really :) it’s just a case working efficiently and prioritising. We’re pleased to hear both teams are going to Plymouth so it was definitely a good day.

Once again have to pack up to relocate. Lots more carrying of cylinders and a lot of activity and we’re away from the NDAC by 5.15pm. We split up on the journey and I end up reaching Deep Blue in Plymouth at 7.40pm. Brian had beaten me there and introduced me to Ritchie Stevenson and Sean who had stayed late to do our fills. Deep Blue were truly excellent throughout our 2 days and couldn’t do enough to help us out. Once the rest of the group arrived there was again a lot of cylinder carrying to be done before we went off to check into the hotel. There was a big fireworks competition in Plymouth so the trip across town took us ages and we just had time for a meal before bed.

Day 4 and we are diving off of Endeavour – Deep Blue’s boat. First thing in the morning we are moving cylinders onto the boat and kitting up. Due to the tides we were actually able to get two dives done today with a planned surface interval of 2 hours. The dives were both to be on the wreck of the Medoc, with us planning to use a bottom stage of 18/45 on both dives with us using an element of the backgas on each dive. Essentially we were running two teams with the instructors tagging along with each group. Team Jacuzzi went first and we gave them a few minutes in case the shot had missed the wreck (if so they’d have sent up a bag) before we descended. Unfortunately we hit the bottom and find HMS Seabed with no sign of the wreck in sight. We set off looking for the wreck and manage to find a pipe and a solitary jetfin. After 10 minutes run-time we issue thumbs and start the ascent. Jarrod messed with us a little – Clare saw him de-pressurising the 02 bottles while on the leash so they initially free-flowed when they were turned on. We reached the surface to see the other team on the boat – apparently their missed wreck SMB popped up about a minute after we’d descended :(

We head into sheltered water for the surface interval and then have another crack at it. This time the shot is in place on the wreck and we do the dive. Not a bad dive, the wreck was reasonably together and the vis was probably 5-6m. Clare finds a conger tied to the wreck by a fishing line and manages to free it, I also spot Jarrod getting caught up in a random line and for a moment stop pretending he’s not there and check he’s ok. We each finish our bottom stages at different times. When Clare’s is done I’ve still got 80 bar so I stay on mine. Likewise Fraser’s outlasts mine. This does break-up the dive a bit as we have to pause to sort out switches. We’ve been down for about 25 minutes bottom time and Clare has a non-fixable left post failure so we issue thumbs and start our ascent. The ascent is ok although we overcook the deco and end up taking an extra 5 minutes.

Thursday night and we have a quick fish and chips and it’s time for an early night for everyone. I ended up travelling in the same car as Richard today and found everyone had been teaching him new words mostly Clare with a smattering of road rage comments.

Friday and we are diving the Eastpoint wreck. We drop down the shot and reach the bottom, check time, flow check and start to move off when Clare signals attention. She asks me to check her 100% bottle so I swim around and find it missing! We communicate this to Fraser and do a brief search of the bottom. We decide to bin the dive rather than incur a lot of deco knowing we were missing a deco cylinder. We start our ascent and I start to slow us at 48m for the deep stops but Clare keeps going. I signal to slow down but Clare vanishes above me. At one point I see Jarrod several metres below me and Clare and Fraser several metres above me. We collect ourselves up at 39m and manage a slower ascent. It later transpires Clare had figured 10m/min up to 33m where I wanted to drop to 6m/min as soon as we started the deep stops at 48m. We go through the deco stops without any issues and at 6m I split the 02 time with Clare who then stays on 50% for final ascent. Not the best way to finish the week, in hindsight a wider search for 5 minutes on the bottom wouldn’t have incurred much more deco and should have been attempted. We also needed to keep the ascent together and not ended up split up.

Jarrod suggested this and expressed concern at the speed of the initial part of the ascent, he was concerned that there was some anxiety which prompted it. Overall he felt we were competent divers but not ready for a full Tech-2 pass. He went on to explain how Tech-2 is essentially the highest Tech qualification that GUE hand out and is therefore challenging. He felt we’d be fine within the cert but not up to the limit of it and just needed more polish to be what he felt was appropriate for a such a cert. He did say he didn’t think going back to Tech-1 level diving would help us and thought we should continue to dive in the T2 range and just keep the deco down to lower levels.

For me the course was a valuable experience, albeit a tough experience. I think the relocation and non-stop nature of the course made it a very busy 5 days. I found the discussions with Jarrod and Richard fascinating. There description of all sorts of topics is a distance away from the image that is often believed to be DIR. I had a conversation with JJ about rebreathers and being the gadget fan he really does think they are the coolest toy. However with everything he explained you have to weigh up the potential reward compared to the risk so they have a place but only when you can limit the risk. It was discussions like this on all sorts of topics that helped me build a deeper sense of what DIR is all about.

Team photo back row left to right – Brian, Andy, John, Fraser, me, Jarrod and Richard. Front row left to right – David (support), David Martin (diver) and Clare.

I owe massive thanks to Richard and Jarrod for making the journey, to Andy Kerslake for assisting on the course and providing vast amounts of kit, to David for lugging gear and to all the divers who made the course what it was. The team ethic was there throughout whether we were organising food, sorting lunch, carrying cylinders or borrowing dive gear. I’ve now been told to go diving which a good result – I also got an offer of a tour round some of the sights of Florida which I’ll have to take Jarrod up on when I next go there.

I’ve read quite a few class write-ups in the past and always found them interesting so I thought I’d share my view of the course. The course was with Chris Le Maillot from DIR Mexico their website is here.

First up the setup in Mexico is excellent. We rented the apartment above Chris for the week which meant he’d knock on our door at 7.30am each day for us to set off. We’d rented a hire car so we followed Chris’s truck around in what became a daily routine. Tank filling station to collect 8 twinsets (5 mins down road), ice from petrol station (1 min from filling station) and zero gravity shop to pick up the kit (1 min from petrol station). We’d then drive about 10-15 minutes to one of the many Cenotes for diving. It really did make life pretty easy.

The days were a mixture of land drills, diving and lectures. All the new skills e.g. lost line procedure, lost buddy etc were carried out on dry land before the dive to give us ample opportunity to get them straight in your head before you had to do them in the water. The lecture sessions were fascinating – Chris’s experience was obvious and he had a fantastic sense of humour.

Day 1 we have some lectures on pre-dive checks, gas planning, why 1/3’s is not always enough particularly in a two person team, why three’s work better in cave diving, types of line, reels, spools etc. Many of the topics had been mentioned before but the emphasis in cave training is different and promoted some very interesting discussion. We did some surface line laying at Cenote Pon De Rosa before hitting the water. All dives started with a full valve drill and s-drill usually in 2m of water (1m by the end of the week) which enforced perfect buoyancy. Chris then led the first dive as an example of what he wanted us to achieve. We made our way into the system and made our way through the cavern zone and through our first Halocline. (Haloclines can be amazingly beautiful and/or a pain in the arse by disrupting the vis). Next dive was similar format but this time it was our job to run the reel. We made our way in and were in the halocline when Frasers light failed so we thumbed the dive. Clare ran out of gas during our exit so exited on Fraser’s long hose. This was to be the way of our dives – nice dive on the way in, scenarios on the way out.

Day 2 and Chris up’s the pace, swim test at 8am followed by 5 dives at Pon De Rosa. One of Chris’s earlier comments stuck with me – he described the Tech diver as a dancer but a cave diver as a ballerina. This was becoming very apparent with the level of finesse he expected. Being Tech-1 we could do the drills but elements such as hose routing during an s-drill to promote streamlining become important so your exit isn’t slowed by any further entanglement issues. Scenarios today included 4 lights failing (all primaries and 1 backup), 3 primary light failures and OOG exit, 4 lights failing and OOG exit. We also do some open water dives in the Cenote following a line with masks off on your own and then again in touch contact with the team. While this was occurring Chris was clipping us to the line, pulling post failures, re-routing the course, adding extra markers etc.

By the end of the day’s diving and lectures it was 9pm odd and we were all pretty tired. I also found that I was really picking up a cautious attitude to cave diving. Another comment today “Time is gas and gas is time”, he described cave diving as punching up a big clock on your way in and that clock doesn’t stop ticking no matter what happens. If you take too long, you die – it’s that plain and simple. With some tales of cave divers dying from mistakes you aren’t left with any illusions.

Day 3 and we were at X’Tabay today and we did 4 nice dives. We reached the first really decorated area – a room called the Wizards den with some stunning formations. We had more complex scenarios today with simple and complex valve failures, light failures and OOG exits. Chris was pretty careful to stack the scenarios up for instance I had a left post failure followed by a primary light failure, the idea being you forget to do your flow check as you’re already moving on to deal with the next issue. The person who had the valve failure would then also be the person who ran out of gas, as they were already low due to their earlier valve failure. Chris also started asking for masks once we were back in open water J

We also did the lost diver drill today along with an interesting final dive as we had an OOG diver and all ran out of lights so completed a blind gas sharing exit. It actually wasn’t that bad – it took us twice as long to exit when blind but Chris was actually quite pleased as we’d not stopped and had really moved.

Day 4 and we’re at Carwash today, bit of a different Cenote as the first 3m of water are full of tannic muck and there was only about 1m vis. However once we hit 3m there was pretty much un-limited visibility with a smoky layer hovering above us. 3 dives today with lots more failures – bit of theme of manifold failures with Chris using the bubble-gun on the manifold for 5 minutes to simulate gas bleeding our while we were exiting followed by an OOG emergency after that and again more light failures.

Our final dive today included the lost line drill. All our lights are off and with my eyes shut I’m moved off the line and let go. You have to keep you eyes shut for the drill and it starts ok when I make a good solid primary tie. At this point it goes a little wrong for me as I tie off a secondary in the wrong direction. I start the star shaped search and I figure I’m moving about 4m searching for the line but apparently it was more like 1m! I totally forget to try and count the knots paid out on the safety spool and fail to cover any distance. I try 3 directions and make more of an effort to go further. I add a placement and set off but when I reel back I forget I’ve made a placement and think I’ve reached the secondary, I promptly set off in another direction and shortly after that find a line. Chuffed to bits I grab hold of it and secure the spool. At this point I get tapped on the head by Chris who manages to communicate several things to me – you’ve just died, you’re an idiot, now relax and try again. He’s turned his light on and I see I’ve just done a beautiful circle and found my own safety line. I reel it all back in cursing myself for being stupid. The lights are off and I start from the primary again. I do a better secondary and decided I need to go for some distance this time. I pick what I think is the right direction and set off. The cave can only be maybe 7m wide and I’m sure I’ve swum 10m and I’m feeling pretty stressed when I find a line. I secure my spool to it, drop my NDM and turn my light on and I’ve done it! Not a pleasant experience and a very powerful lesson in how disorientating a total silt out with a lost line would be. We all successfully find the line and mark the right way out. By the time we’ve all done this we’ve clocked up an 80 minute cave dive.

Day 5 and we’re at Taj Mahal for 3 dives. By now our drills are more polished than before and Chris has us 12m apart for all S-drills in only 1m of water. Watching Clare and Fraser do a 12m swim, share gas and move off without moving up or down more than about 10cm was very cool! This was a really nice cave system with lots of very white limestone. More scenarios on the first dive – complex valve failures, OOG, and light failures. We end up doing another blind gas sharing exit and as we reach the cavern Chris starts taking masks. We deploy backup masks and he grabs them as well. By the end of the dive he has 6 backup lights and 5 masks and we reach the surface laughing. We then practise some unconscious diver towing and practise moving each other around. We reach the final dive of the course and Chris says as it’s our graduation dive and that if we do well he’ll not spring any failures on us. It’s an amazing dive, lots of formations, white walls, low bedding plains and big rock formations. We make our way up into a room called DCS dome and it’s full of green tannic water that sucks up the lights. We carry on and drop back down to 12m and turn the dive around 30 minutes in on gas and exit the cave. The exit is very odd as nothing happens – it’s also the first time all our primary lights are on for the exit and we have a cracking dive.

Overall the class was superb. Chris is a fantastic instructor and a great laugh. There are a few jokes of his that will haunt Fraser for an awfully long time – “Take your time Fraser, there’s no rush. We’re going cave diving”. I personally learnt a huge amount – not only the skills, dive planning but also the psychology of cave diving. The way you communicate underwater can show frustration, nerves or cool confidence. By showing calmness in a problem you can help keep the team calm. One of our big lessons was to take your time and relax – in the event of dramas a slow methodical response is better than the Benny Hill high speed approach . I’d thoroughly recommend the course; it’s definitely improved my diving and given me a whole new addiction to follow. Fraser’s classic comment comes to mind “Cave Diving – more bottom time, less vomiting”.

This weekend was the final part of my TDI trimix course with Frank Bruce of E-Aquanauts. We were at the NDAC for the weekend and our first dive was a trimix dive to 48m on 21/35. I struggled to get to grips with diving with Mal as there was a difference in what he’s learnt being non GUE trained. As Mal described it was like talking to foreigners! This led to some confusion and not the smoothest ascent. I had an issue at depth when I couldn’t re-clip my guage. I asked Clare to help but lost buoyancy and started going up. However I couldn’t reach my rear dump as Clare was in the way, stupidly I didn’t use the front dump. This led to us popping up 3m before I got it sorted which was piss poor. I must admit I found the narcosis quite noticeable on this dive which was a bit odd. Later on the ascent I managed to lose one of my stage bands which proved to make restowing the reg a pain. My first genuine 2 stage deco dive and I have to say I wasn’t happy with how it went.

Second dive of the day was a skills dive. I’d traded twinsets and now got my 32% set on. I felt much more comfortable on this dive and generally found it quite straightforward to begin with. Clare had a primary light failure so we re-ordered putting her in second place. Shortly after I had a light failure (position 3) and we again need to re-order. At this point Clare went out of gas. This was swiftly followed by Mal going blind. At this point Mal didn’t understand the blind signals which meant we started ascending too rapidly. There was a moments confusion where I reached in to clip off Mal’s torch and Clare thought I was going to drive Mal and let go. This was very quickly corrected but none the less we were losing bouyancy. Frank cancelled the drill and we sorted our depth out. Thumbs was issued and we started up. Again not the smoothest ascent.

Although the dives may have met the grade I wasn’t happy with how they went. Frank’s feedback was we needed to slow it down and ensure we maintained control.

Sunday and our 57m dive was planned. We had quite a delay with getting Clare’s set filled as it had gone rich overnight. We kitted up and dropped in. This time we went down the shotline like we geniunely would do. We also set off for the dive with a purpose and I definitely felt it had come together much better. Mal thumbed the dive at minimum gas and we started our ascent. Deep stops went to plan and were pretty steady. At 21m Clare’s 50% bottle free-flowed and she attempted to fix it. I held station and tried to provide a depth reference as two of us were already on the 50%. Frank felt I should have stepped in and helped Clare out so he did. He re-tightened the reg and it started working. We started timimg the stops and moved on through the schedule. Overall the team wasn’t always in the same place and it was just not precise.

In summing up I guess the big lessons were around awareness, dealing with failures and communication. The technical element is easy – getting a team working well together and dealing with failures is difficult. From the first day I felt I needed to slow down and be more controlled. From the second day I felt it was a lesson in taking more decisive control. Overall I think we need to work out on buoyancy control to a higher level of perfection – as we were told 19.9m is not 21m.

I passed the course but as Frank said he was looking for a level above that from us and we still have a lot to do before the summer. In some ways it’s odd to have passed a course yet feel that I haven’t acheived what I should have done!

2 more dives were part of my TDI course so for inclusivity I’ll include them.

Dive 1 was a skills dive with Frank Bruce and Andy Kerslake. Myself, Clare, Justin and Mal set off as a team of four. We dropped down and completed valve drills then s-drills before moving off to the Stangarth. I had a fixable left post failure and went OOG on the ascent. Everything went ok although the ascent wasn’t perfect – we were a bit slow at 6m.

Dive 2 and it’s another skills dive. Again valve drill then s-drill. We then did some unconcious diver drills followed by toxing diver. Definitely improved the toxing diver rescue, I got better at using the under arm grip and keeping the purge going. Clare and I then had to carry two stages to the bedstead and hand them over to Mal and Justin.

Started my TDI Normoxic trimix course with Frank Bruce of E-Aquanauts today. We had been booked for a 45m dive down in Plymouth but given a forecast of 5-7 with potential to hit 8-9 the boat got cancelled

We ended up going to the NDAC instead and had a good day all the same. The first part of the day was taken up with forms and dive planning. I was truly stunned at the amount of effort required for dive planning. Following the TDI route took us 40 minutes to come up with all the CNS, OTU, gas usage, deco plan etc. Just to compare we followed the GUE calcs and had the plan done in about 1 minute. No wonder people buy VR3’s! Without battlefield calculations and ratio deco it’s all a pain in the arse!

For the dive we planned a 51m dive on 21/35 in twin 12’s with a stage of 50% (11L in my case 7L for Clare) as deco gas. Our plan was for a 65min runtime. We entered the water and started our descent. Around 20m it got very silty so we moved into touch contact with the line. It cleared up as we hit 30m odd and we carried on down. Once at the bottom, I marked time, gas pressure and flow checked. I signalled direction and set off. The walls of the quarry are fairly sloped here so there wasn’t a bottom as such. The vis was quite good easily 10-15m so we could admire the underwater cliff face. Frank started signalling and indicated his depth/dive timer was broken. I showed him mine and he then ended up keeping station slightly above us. We found the gnome garden and shortly afterwards changed direction. While on the way back Frank thumbed the dive so we clipped off the lights and started our ascent. We hit the 10m/min up to the first deep stop at 36m and then stayed on schedule. I ran the deco and Clare bagged off after the 21m gas switch. Comedy moments on the ascent had to be when I suggested Frank was too far away and when we moved closer he essentially legged it! Second one was when we came across a deco bar at 6m – we actually swam off laughing. We’ve been taught to ascend with no visual reference – SMB’s are allowed but for the length of deco’s we do you don’t need a bar to rest on.

Got to the surface exactly on schedule. Good dive thoroughly enjoyed it and really enjoyed chatting to Frank. Looking forward to the next dive in the course.