Tech-1
Wednesday, July 27th, 2005Tech-1 is the first technical diving class in GUE’s lineup. GUE is a fairly small training organisation but is fairly unique in terms of the skill level expected. GUE courses are different from some other agencies in that you have to demonstrate the skill level in order to pass. No skill – no cert!
From GUE’s website:
The Technical Diver Level 1 (Tech 1) course is structured to prepare divers for the rigors of technical diving and to familiarize them with the use of different breathing and decompression mixtures. Tech 1 training focuses on expanding the fundamental skills learned in the DIR Fundamentals course (or elsewhere), and is designed to cultivate, integrate, and expand the essential skills required for safe technical diving. This will include problem identification and resolution, and building the capacity for progressively more challenging diving. In this class, students will be trained in: a) the use of double tanks/cylinders and in the potential failure problems associated with them; b) the use of Nitrox for accelerated and general decompression strategies; c) the use of Helium to minimize narcosis; and d) the applications of single decompression stage diving with respect to decompression procedures.
For those more familiar with TDI courses it’s the same as Advanced Nitrox, Deco Procedures & Normoxic Trimix.
The course was conducted by Andy Kerslake with the first four days at Stoney Cove. Taking the course with me was my regular team of Clare and Fraser. We met up in the area on saturday night and checked into the B&B. We then went out for a meal with Andy and just talked about diving in general.
Sunday morning and myself and Fraser were up early to park two of the cars at Stoney. We then went back to the B&B and started on the Academics. The format for the following days was fairly similar. We do academics from 8am until noon when we’d go to Stoney and spend the afternoon diving. Early evening was more academics and we tended to go out for food about 8pm. We didn’t have time for lunch on any of the days so a hearty breakfast was required!
So come noon at Sunday we set off to the Cove having just finished our line laying practise in the garden of the B&B. The first dive started with S-drills and valve drills. We then moved onto line laying and while doing that various problems happened. We had fixable valve failures, OOG and line entaglement issues. Often all at the same time! We had some fun with the SMB deployment as Andy enjoyed twisting them together and deflating the odd one just to keep us busy.
Dive 2 was more of the same although Andy had some new tricks with the line. While I was running the line he started pulling it and I merily carried on deploying line at a rapid rate. He then took the extra 20m of line he’d created and wrapped us up in it!
Day 1 certainly was challenging but we did manage to keep it together for the most part so the preparation we’d done before had served us in good stead.
Day 2 and the bar moves up a level. Masks start to get removed and valve failures become non-fixable. We were a bit taken aback when we started what Andy had said would be an easy dive when he started removing masks from two of us at once. Again multiple failures, multiple problems and we had to prioritise under pressure. The loss of masks in 6m of water was a challenge to your buoyancy control as you had to just hold station and wait for your team to sort you out.
The second dive on day 2 was then the one we’d heard about – all 3 of us lost masks and were then placed on the line. You had to keep your eyes shut to simulate a total silt out. This really did provide some comedy moments. Twice we got confused and Andy had to re-orientate us on the line. Once we had a buoyancy moment and started to drift to the surface (line giving us feedback!). And then as we neared the primary tie off the line was cut. As I was at the front I wrapped all the slack round a rock tied in a spool and started searching for our exit. I failed to stop the team from following me and we got reasonably close about 2 feet before I decided I’d gone the wrong way and started to move back to re-try. The outbound trip had taken us 5-10 minutes, the return took 28!
Day 3 and we now had stages to contend with. The bar again moved up a notch and we now had even more problems occuring at once. Blind diver, OOG donation, non fixable valve failures, wing inflators sticking open, line entaglements, stages unclipping themselves, bolt snaps being stolen etc etc. I personally found this day really tough. We made a right mess of a few situations. At one point Fraser lost his mask and just lost buoyancy and went for the surface. Clare tried to follow and Andy then pulled an OOG on me. I turned round to see the two people who were suppose to be following me both heading for the surface – that would be me dead then! I popped my reg back in and turned to Andy with a look of resignation on my face (clearly visible on the video!).
Second dive of day 3 and we had a deeper dive to 20m. Fraser went OOG and as I donated Andy asked for my mask. I then had to rely on my team to guide me up from 20m while blind. This did not go smoothly! We lost it at 8m and shot to the surface.
Day 4 and first order of the day is unconcious diver procedure and toxing diver rescue. Proper placement is key to both procedures but I found the toxing diver procedure very hard work.
Next we were onto the first trimix dives. We had back gas of 30/30 and stages of 50%. We descended to 33m where all the problems kicked in again. Clare had a valve failure, I went OOG so had to swim to Fraser who donated and promptly went blind. I then managed Fraser’s ascent signalling to him to go up, down or level off.
We managed our ascent and the gas switch at 21m and broke the surface on a couple of minutes behind schedule. We were quite chuffed that had that been for real we would have made it.
We then had to do it again with a different sequence. I had a valve failure on the right post then Fraser went OOG onto Clare’s long hose. I then also went blind! I must admit that when the cold water hit my face at 34m my first thought was “I want out of this!”. After a minute or so when my face went numb I relaxed and just let the team manage me. I had no wing inflation so I had to manage my buoyancy on the drysuit. The gas switch went ok and again we broke the surface within a few minutes of the plan.
That then ended the first four days of our tech-1 course. Major lessons learnt
- Slack line kills!
- Prioritise the problems.
- Always assess what’s broken, what’s working.
- Deal with the problems – do not allow them to escalate
- Don’t rush off without taking charge of the situation, you must solve your problems where you are.
- Lights should be pointed so that they are visible to the team member you are following.
- Teamwork is absolutely crucial to technical diving, your team are needed to keep you alive.
Andy Kerslake is a totally superb instructor. We started at 7.30am every day and were generally finished at midnight. From chatting through topics over breakfast to telling us about trips he’s been on over dinner the discussion was non-stop. It really is a completely different experience to DIR-F and I’d highly recommend it to anyone interested in technical diving.
Yes it is more difficult than other agencies courses, yes it is much harder to pass, but who is that good for? Should you really be putting yourself in a decompression environment if you can’t sort yourself out underwater?
Overall the most powerful course I have ever done and definitely the most difficult.
