DIR Diving Blog

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.