Anatomy of the GUE Valve Drill

This article outlines the process and reasoning behind the DIR valve drill, as understood by myself. firstly, a caveat. This is my interpretation of the valve drill, and my thought process behind it. If you want to learn how to do it officially, then you need to take a GUE course, or speak to a GUE instructor.

Process summary

The basic valve drill involves closing and opening all three posts on a twin set starting with the right post, then the isolator, then the left post.

Process Details

1. Signal to your team you are going to perform a valve drill
2. Wait until your team is in place and then continue
3. Purge Backup regulator
4. Shut down the right hand post whilst simultaneously signalling you are manipulating a valve to your team
5. when the post is shut down, breathe down the regulator until it "locks".
6. Remove the regulator and replace with your backup regulator
7. clip off your primary regulator on the right chest D ring
8. Open the Right post
9. Unclip the primary regulator and purge it
10. Remove the backup regulator from your mouth and replace with the primary regulator
11. Shut down the Isolator whilst simultaneously signalling you are manipulating a valve to your team
12. When the Valve is closed, Re-open the isolator
13. Move your torch to your right hand
14. Shut down the left hand post whilst simultaneously signalling you are manipulating a valve to your team
15. When the post is closed, purge the backup regulator until it "locks"
16. Open the left post
17. Move the torch to your left hand.
18. Check the position of your right hand post
19. Check the position of your isolator
20. Move the torch to your right hand and check the position of your left post
21. Signal that your drill is complete

Looks like a lot of steps, but it really should not take you any more than a minute or so to go through the drill in a nice slow fashion, and I've seen people do it a great deal quicker than this. The trick is to go through the drill slowly and carefully again and again until the movements become muscle memory rather than conscious action. At that point, you can begin to speed up the drill until it becomes both smooth and fast.

Anatomy of the process

Now that we understand the steps we have to take in order to complete the drill, let's look at each step in a little more detail and explain some of the reasoning behind it.

1. Signal to your team you are going to perform a valve drill

OK, so we are diving in a two or a three. We signal to the rest of the team that we are going to do a drill. This means a clear point at all the other team members indicating "You!" and "You", then pointing at your mask indicating "watch me", and then a turning motion with both hands indicating valve drill, hence "You! Watch Me!" "Do a Valve Drill!". this is critical as the rest of the team need to know what is going on so that they are ready if there is a problem. A problem could be you shutting down both posts and leaving yourself out of gas, or something going wrong with your kit. In either situation they need to be ready to step in, and critically, they need to be doing nothing else but watch so that they are not doing any other drills at this time.

2. Wait until your team is in place and then continue

If you are swimming in a line, you need to give your team time to get into a triangle formation all pointing inwards so that they can see you, and see your valves. This is important so that they are in the correct position to donate a long hose if they need to, and so that they can follow your movements on your valves. so have patience and let them get ready before you get going. Once you are all in position, you maintain eye contact with your team. This is done to ensure that firstly, you are keeping your head up during the drill and not getting absorbed in what you are doing, to keep your head up so that you maintain trim, and also so that you maintain situation awareness in case another member of the team has a problem themselves. you are only doing a drill, and need to keep an eye on your team at all times, including when you are doing drills.

4. Shut down the right hand post whilst simultaneously signalling you are manipulating a valve to your team

The signal for manipulating a valve is a clear "Attention!" signal, which consists of a controlled side to side motion with your torch beam. this must be a controlled and relatively slow motion, very different from a "I need assistance URGENT" signal which is a very quick motion with the torch. The signal is continued until the valve is closed. The signal should be given so that all other team mates can see it, and if you are diving in a team of three it is important that you do not get caught in the trap of only signalling to one person.

5. When the post is shut down, breathe down the regulator until it "locks".

This one creates a little discussion, but there are a couple of reasons why we breathe down the regulator. Firstly, it is a check that we have shut down the correct post and indeed are breathing the correct regulator. Most important, it depressurises the regulator. If A post or hose has a small leak, then turning off the post might leave the hose bubbling for some time. The hose needs to be depressurised in order to stop the bubbles. If the bubbles stop after you depressurise the hose, you have found the leak. It will also allow a team member, in a real situation, to reseat the first stage if necessary. finally, it is continual training against panic when you suck on a regulator and nothing happens. It becomes instinctive after several hundred drills - regulator locks, take it out and replace with a backup. this seems obvious, but what you are removing is the initial "Oh shit!" when the regulator locks.

6. Remove the regulator and replace with your backup regulator

The critical word here is "Remove". we do not spit out the regulator and replace it. We remove it with our hand and KEEP it in our hand until we are breathing successfully from another reg. This is so that we do not have to suddenly search for it if the regulator we wish to breathe off fails. It also means we do not have a regulator dangling around. there is a principle in DIR that a regulator is either in our hand, in our mouth, or clipped off. We never leave a regulator hanging as then we do not know exactly where it is. so, in this step, we remove our regulator with our right and then, whilst holding on to that regulator, we place the backup regulator in our mouths.

7. Clip off your primary regulator on the right chest D ring

In the last step, we were left in the position of breathing off our left post, and holding the primary regulator in our right hand. Now, we clip off the regulator onto our right chest D ring. This keeps it neatly stowed away whilst we continue our drills and continues with the ethos that we always know where the regulator is. we clip it to the right chest R ring as opposed to the left because we have a policy of not clipping anything across the body. this again is muscle memory. We do not get into habits of clipping across the body because sooner or later we would clip something across the `long hose and trap it.

8. Open the Right post

So, with the primary clipped off and breathing off the backup, we now reach back and open up the right post, remembering to keep our eyes at all times on our team. We open the post until it is fully open.

9. Unclip the primary regulator and purge it

We now unclip the primary regulator from the right chest D ring and give it a purge. This is to ensure we have turned on the correct regulator and that we are going to get gas from it when we attempt a breathe, which we are shortly to do. Note that we keep hold of the regulator during the purge process and continue to keep hold of it to the next step.

10. Remove the backup regulator from your mouth and replace with the primary regulator

As with the earlier step, we remove the backup rather than spitting it out. We now have the backup regulator in our left hand, and the primary regulator in our right hand, so we replace the primary regulator in our mouth and begin to breathe from it. We can now let go of the backup regulator.

11. Shut down the Isolator whilst simultaneously signalling you are manipulating a valve to your team

We now close down the isolator valve, and as with the earlier steps, we continue to keep our eyes on our team, and clearly signal with the torch in our left hand. We continue to close down the valve until it is fully closed.

12. When the Valve is closed, Re-open the isolator

We do not have a regulator to breathe down with the isolator, so once we have fully closed it, we fully re-open it again. Simple.

13. Move your torch to your right hand

Having finished with the right post and isolator, the next post we are going to deal with is the left post. However, we have an issue here because we hold the torch in a Goodman handle in our left hand. Now this is where some smartarse will say “ahh but I can still manipulate the valve with my left hand”, but what that person would also do is send erratic light signals all over the place as they do so, which could easily be misinterpreted as a problem. So, we don’t do that. What we do is switch the torch to our right hand by sliding it out of the Goodman handle, and grasping the torch in our right hand by the barrel of the light head. This means we can hold the torch and continue to give signals with it, and frees up our left hand to manipulate the left post.

14. Shut down the left hand post whilst simultaneously signalling you are manipulating a valve to your team

Remembering to keep our eyes on our team, and continually giving a clear side to side attention signal, we now reach back with our left hand and shut down the left post until it is fully closed.

15. When the post is closed, purge the backup regulator until it "locks"

Now that the post is closed, we reach to our backup regulator with our left hand, and purge it until it empties. This will depressurise the hose for exactly the reasons we described earlier. Once the regulator has stopped bubbling, we know we have shut down the correct post.

16. Open the left post

We can now open the left hand post. We open the valve fully, and then give the backup regulator a purge to ensure it is functioning correctly again.

17. Move the torch to your left hand

We now slide our left hand back into the Goodman handle of the torch.

18-20 – The flow check

We have essentially finished the valve drill now, but we need to just do a flow check to ensure all posts are back in their correct positions. This is a general DIR policy. Whenever anyone, including yourself, has been manipulating the valves, we do a flow check at the end to ensure all the valves are where they are supposed to be. In the case of the valve drill, all posts should be back in the open position. So we reach back with our right hand and check that the right hand post and the isolator is open. We take the torch in our right hand and check the left hand post is open, and then finally place our left hand back in the Goodman handle and we have completed the flow check.

21. Signal that your drill is complete

As the drill is now complete, we give a signal to the rest of the team that we have completed it and are ready to move on to the next person’s drill, or continue with the dive. There are different ways we do this, but the way our team does this is to give a circle with the torch indicating “OK”. The other team members return the signal. This gives the other team members the information that you are happy, but also you are getting a confirmation from them that they are satisfied that you have put all of your valves back where they are supposed to be. If you had made a mistake and left a post closed at any point, they could intercept you at this point and rectify the situation for you.

And that is my anatomy of the GUE valve drill.

Photoshoot of Scooters at Stoney

by GLOC
As you will soon come to realise, I am the artistic side of Team FoxTurd, Howard providing the humour and Garf the questionable looks. I dabble in land photography, mainly portrait and street photography but since Jan '06 I have been partaking in underwater photography.

Here are some photos that were taken at the DIRx Gig over the weekend 18/19 November.

I also did a couple showing some skills including the OOG donate

I will hopefully upload most of my photos from this year to this blog for all to see.

I am seriously looking at getting a housing for my Fuji S2 SLR as I find there are some issues concerning the Olympus 5050 which I currently use.

Farewell to the VR3

By Garf



The time to sell the VR3 has arrived. I always said I would keep it until DIR gave me a tool to enable me to dive without it, and Tech1 gave me those tools. To be honest, once you have learned all the shortcuts for calculating CNS, Minimum gas, and specifically Ratio Deco, and once you have plugged the numbers generated by ratio deco through a few pc programs to satisfy yourself it's sound, then the arguments for using computers do become a little weak.

That's not to say the VR3 is not a great tool. It has served me well for a couple of hundred dives, and without Ratio Deco, there is no way I would be selling it on. It has always worked flawlessly, and if truth be told, got me out of a few tricky spots, and I could never criticise the unit itself as it is a great piece of kit.

However, the simple truth is that the real strengths of the VR3 are somewhat undone by the DIR approach. The ability to program multiple gases, even whilst underwater, to cater for whatever mix you are diving becomes somewhat irrelevent if you dive using the same standard gas mixtures everytime. The facility for deep microbubble stops is not necessary if we start our deep stops at 80% of the average ATAS. Hell, there's even a fast calculation to work that out. The "time to surface" calculation that I loved with the VR3 is unecessary becuase at any point throughout the dive I can look at the dive time and know exactly how long it is to the surface anyway. If I choose to pad that out to make it more conservative, well there's no difference between padding out the VR3 and padding out Ratio deco, neither are going to do you any harm by making them more conservative.

What I never understood about Deco on the fly was that you only need to know your bottom time and the average depth, and away you go. There is no complicated calcuoations to perform in the water, and once you know how it all works it is a pretty appealing methodology, as there are three people in the water any one of whom is a complete backup for the deco, all of whom are checking to ensure nothing daft is being done. As long as you follow those protocols it's a great system.

So, the VR3 has gone on ebay. The sale was accelerated in the end by a need for some urgent cash after spending a ludicrous amount of money on Tech1, but it was definitely on the way out. There was nothing wrong with the VR3, I would never stand and critice one, or the owner of one, becuase they are a great piece of kit. The simple truth is that I simply cannot see a need for it anymore.

Decompression Theory References

This is all the Information We have on decompression theory and practice. OBviously the first of you smartsrses to comment on this - I am still building it, but have about 30 links to add!

Decompression Theories
Eric Baker Explains the concept of M Values
bubble Mechanics

VPM for dummies

Medical
Bernhard Meier, MD; James E. Lock, MD, "Contemporary Management of PFO"

Deep Stops
Richar Pyles Article about the benefits of Deep Stops


Bernhard Meier, MD; James E. Lock, MD

Garf's Scapa Incident

There will no doubt be trip reports of the 2006 YD gig in scapa, which was a great week. For John and I, though, the week was marred by one difficult dive. I have documented this below in the hope that just maybe something in it might help someone who reads it.

Jag had decided on the Wednesday evening not to dive the following day as he had developed a bit of a cold and could not clear his ears properly. This left JW and I to dive the Markgraf at 45-46 metres the next morning. Along with everyone else, we sat down that evening and planned runtimes and gas mixes.

The plan was to dive using twin 12s of 26% giving us a ppO2 of 1.43 on the bottom, with single side slung stages of 70% nitrox as a rich deco gas for a gas switch at 12 metres. This would give us 26 minutes bottom time, and we should hit the surface with a third of our back gas remaining and approximately 50% remaining in our stages. I was using an AL80 rather than a 7 litre stage, so expected to come out with even more gas as a reserve. Although the gas planning was done in vplanner, we were going to fly the VR3s to the same bottom time, and had cut tables from vplanner and also laminated IANTD Air and 50 tables as a get out of jail free backup. I was going to take position 1 and lead the dive, and john would follow in close behind. The mixes were a little hot in the evening, so I did the maths and worked out the necessary air tops to bring the mixes into line. In the end the gases were spot on, and so we made sure all our kit was ready, and prepared, and then went to bed to get a good night’s sleep before what we knew would be a challenging dive. The visibility in Scapa Flow at the moment is terrible, ranging between 3 metres and less than a metre, and so we had our serious faces on, rather than taking the dive for granted.

In the morning, the weather was pretty nasty, and on the way out we could see the sea raging in the open ocean, but luckily we were protected in the flow from the worst of it, so after a brief chat, we decided, along with just about everyone else on the boat, to proceed with the dive as planned. We kitted up, and for some reason I decided to take John’s spare wreck reel with me, as with the DIR stuff I have been doing, I had only been using a spool. The VR3 was also a little “uncompliant” but in the end I was very glad I had it.

We jumped in and made our way through a fairly significant swell to the shotline. At the shot I signalled down and off we went, with me leading and John right behind me, exactly as planned. At approximately 25 metres I decided to fire the salvo. Nothing. A buzz, and no light. Shitsticks. I guess I should have called the dive at this point, but there’s no point debating it, and what we actually did was reverse the team roles, with John leading with his monster greenforce, and me tucked in literally within elbow distance using a Halcyon scout, which in the darkness actually performed very well. I let John know the Salvo wasn’t playing and we both indicated we were happy to continue the dive as planned.

We swam towards the bows of the wreck just above the seabed at 45 metres, and reached the bows very quickly. We stayed there for thirty seconds or so, and very impressive they were too. The visibility was somewhere around the 3 metre mark, but it was as dark a dive as I have ever been on. If it wasn’t within the tightly focused beam of the torch, it didn’t exist. However, all was well and repeated checks of each other revealed we were both comfortable. In fact, due to how close we were to each other, I believe we were diving very well as a buddy pair, and basically enjoying what was a deep but relaxing dive.

We moved round to the port side of the wreck, and continued swimming along the side. We were navigating by keeping the wreck within torchlight, which meant we were 2, maybe three metres away from it. At approximately 11 minutes, the wreck disappeared, leaving us in the middle of a black void. We looked at each other and presumed we had accidentally swam away from the wreck, and so turned right approximately 45 degrees to meet the wreck again. What must have happened is that we swam over one of the large blast holes, and in the lack of visibility, and due to the sheer scale of the holes, we simply turned into the wreck and then swam into it.

We found a wall and swam along it. We also moved up a couple of metres. At approximately 13 minutes bottom time, the wall came to a junction with two other walls, as if we had swam into a metal toilet roll holder and someone had scrunched up the end. It came to a point, with walls all around us, and no room for us to move.

At this point, possibly assisted by the narcosis, both of us quite literally lost our minds. All out flailing panic ensued for maybe 30 seconds, maybe a minute. It was the longest minute of my life. Extremely thorough discussions with John have revealed a similar pattern, but his demons are his own to bear, and no doubt haunt him as they haunt me, and I have no right to post them here. Below is a short paragraph detailing just how a few of those moments felt. I have removed much of what I wrote here as I find it haunting, and John's feeling is that he and I know how it felt, and that is what matters.

John! John!, Oh fuck, he's seen it too, its another wall of the ship. Bail Up. OH FUCK NO. The ceiling is enclosed, and behind us appears to be closed too!. Fuck, NO NO NO NO NO NO PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE NO I don't wanna die, no no, I don't wanna die, please no help me god no. JOHN! SWIM! DOWN! DOWN! I’m going. At the bottom. Viz has closed to zero and no torch. OH shit where's john, he didn’t follow me I'm on my own, noooooooooooooooooooooo. What will it be like to die. how will that last breathe feel knowing there's nothing to swap to. I want to be with you now! I'll give up diving immediately, just please let me go home. please. GET A FUCKING GRIP OR YOU ARE GOING TO DIE. You can breathe. Let’s look at the gauge. Fuck, that wasn’t a good idea, let’s not look at that again, I can either breathe or I can’t. OK. EVALUATE. You have no torch to speak of, but the viz is now zero anyway. You don't know where John is. I can't help him right now, I have got to get myself out now. Gas is 80 bar, that aint going to last long. Fuck. OK, Need a plan. come on Gareth, think. OK, I’m on the bottom, what’s the depth. 43 metres. bolox. bolox. Bolox, it’s not the seabed. Get a grip. OK, swim, swim, swim, Hatchway in the floor. decision time. Never saw a hatch coming in, but saw fuck all coming in anyway. gotta make a call. Do it, through the hatch and down. 46 metres and pebbles. YES, you FUCKING BEAUTY. Next plan, swim for a bit and look up until you can see any sort of green above. Swim, Swim. Eh? Oh Christ no, the pebbles have given way to rivets and armour plate, and heres another wall. Ceiling still enclosed. Pleaase nooo, I don't wanna die today. NO WAY. Let me out you bitch. Turn 90 degrees, feel along the wall. Can't see a bloody thing. swim along, swim swim swim. check up. I can see green!!!!!!!!! OH THANK FUCK.

Having lost John on the way out, and swam out without him, I then beat myself up pretty badly and hung outside the wreck for a minute trying to decide what to do. I decided that psychologically I needed a way up immediately, and as long as I had that I could face going back in, which I had to do to be able to live with myself. I bagged up with a big wreck reel (thank god I took that and not just a spool deployable from 21M) and then tied it off to the wreck. That line extending 45 M into the sky one perhaps the most beautiful thing I have ever seen and all the way up I was expecting it to stop as it hit a ceiling somewhere I could not see. I swallowed the intense fear I was still feeling and decided to go back in to the wreck to look for John. I couldn't see and had had no formal line laying course, so had to make it up as I went along. I tied off a spool to the reel that was secured to the wreck and then tied it off at another point close to the wreck as a backup in case something worked loose. Having no torch to speak of, I then felt my way back towards and underneath the wreck, keeping the line tight and creating wraps every couple of metres. After turning corners, and going through different areas, I eventually decided that if he was still in there, I wasn't going to find him, and he was either out or not. That was perhaps the worst moment of the dive for me, as I turned around, thinking I was leaving him alone in the wreck.

Back at the bag, I tidied up the spool and put it all away. I had overstayed my welcome on the markgraf and had racked up quite a bit of deco, so began the long ascent alone. At 6 metres, during the 24 mins of stops, I put my thoughts together about what I would tell John's family if he wasn't on the boat. After completing all my stops I hit the surface 66 minutes after leaving it.

On the surface, I am obviously the last diver up and the boat is standing off within 100 metres. That skipper really has his shit together. The boat is beside me in moments. On the ladder, I scream through the reg “Where’s John?” and Gizmo says “He’s here, he’s on O2”. I nearly fall off the ladder as the tension leaves me. I climb up the ladder and sit down. Gizmo and air Assisted do me proud and my kit disappears around me whilst I sit there with tears in my eyes. Everyone is being great, but I need to be with John, he’s the only one who will understand the look in my eyes, the only one I care about right now. The only one I left in the wreck. I rip off my drysuit and head downstairs to where John is laying down and are administering O2. JAG has blatantly taken control of dealing with John and is sitting next to him with a “don’t even try to get me to leave” look on his face. Top man. Juz and Blanaid are assisting admirably like the experienced divers they are. Joe and Simon are running through a 5 minute neuro test. I collapse next to John and hold his arm. He seems ok. I go into shock at this point and start to shake like a leaf. I get out of my clothes and get into something warm, but the shaking does not stop. Shock has obviously got me in its grip.

Only at this point do I ask why John is on O2. He has voluntarily missed 14 minutes of stops himself at 6 metres to see if I was on the boat. He wanted to feel like he had done everything possible to help me, somewhat convinced himself on the way up that I was most likely dead, but willing to go into the pot on the off chance that raising the alarm will help me. This is why I dive with John and JAG. Balls of steel, the pair of them. I feel bad at this point. I did all my deco, and coldly decided to finish it rather than heading up, convinced he was dead already and going to the surface would provide no solutions. Right or wrong, we make our decisions at the time, but that one definitely haunts me.

As John is not showing any symptoms, skipper heads back to the stromness, and radios ahead to the pot that someone is on O2. A doctor comes to meet the boat and takes John up to the pot. At this point, I am wandering around in a daze, and in retrospect, pretty deeply in shock and collapse into my bunk. The dreams were, well, a close second in terms of horror to the reality. Waking up a couple of hours later I find the boat deserted as everyone has headed off to Kirkwall. I, for some reason, assume the pot is in Kirkwall so wait anxiously for a call. Eventually I manage to get hold of JAG, who is sitting next to the pot John is in (no surprise there) and John is apparently fine. Learning the pot is only ten minutes from the boat, I race up there myself in time to see John coming out of the pot. He is fine, although clearly as deeply shaken as I am.

John is banned from diving for 4-6 weeks, and I cancel my next days dive as at that point I was ready for selling my kit. We decide to do the only thing people who have come close to death can do. We get totally and utterly shitfaced together, compare feelings, thoughts, profiles, timings, gases, everything we could.

Working through the number in the cold light of day, we swam into the wreck together after 13 minutes and became almost immediately separated in the panic. In turning turtle and swimming to the seabed I had, to my everlasting shame, kicked off John’s mask to add to his nightmare. I have obviously received unending but hopefully humerously intended snipes from the YD crew about that since I surfaced. Putting his mask on he found himself alone and in absolute zero viz as the two of us in our panic had kicked the shit out of it. Making our separate ways out of the wreck, we believe we came out different routes. I had made it out of the wreck in 4-5 minutes, though it really seemed like an eternity. John took nearer ten, so I can only begin to imagine the horror he experienced in the darkness. I then went back into the wreck to search for John for another 8-10 minutes, meaning John was out of the wreck whilst I was still inside looking for him. John left the seabed somewhere around 28 minutes, with me about 7 minutes behind him. John missed 14 minutes of stops on the way up – voluntarily I would stress, and I completed all mandatory deco. Total runtime for John was 36 minutes. Total runtime for me was 66 minutes. These numbers may not be 100%, we still have some comparisons of profiles to do.

Lessons learned and repecussions.

Should we have called the dive on the shotline when the torch failed – maybe
Should we have called the dive when we lost the wreck – maybe
Would trimix have avoided the totally out of control panic – maybe. I do wonder how much of the problem was narcosis. Fear I can deal with, worry I can deal with. This was full-on out of control panic, and that is something I can live without ever experiencing again.

There are a lot of maybe’s on this dive. However, both of us feel that we are not remotely interested in the opinion of anyone who was not in that hole feeling like they were going to die. It’s easy to sit at a computer and plan what you would do differently. When you think you are minutes from death, you can’t be as rational and you live with the decisions you make. I have my regrets. I wish I hadn’t swam down without him assuming he would see me and follow, but dragged him to the seabed with me. I sure as hell wish I hadn’t kicked his mask off. I wish I hadn’t panicked but dealt with it calmly and rationally. I feel bad for selfishly completing my deco when john was so very selfless about his, but those are the decisions we make in the deep dark, and we have to live with them.I genuinely felt that I could not add to the solution by surfacing early and John was either dead or he wasn’t. Truth be told. At various points in the dive, we both thought we were almost certainly doing to die and be left in the wreck. At other points, we both thought our opposite number was dead and left inside the wreck. We were both wrong, and in the cold light of day’s that’s really all that matters.

It was very frightening.

Please do NOT geen me for this thread. There were two of us in that wreck, and although the text is mine, we wrote this report together.

Dive safe folks.

The Art of Shutdowns

I have been reading all the recent threads about valve shutdowns, or valve drills as some refer to them, with great interest. The reason for this is that I have been trying to crack them for 18 months, and its only in the recent month or so that it has all come together. So I have decided to write down my thoughts on what barriers I encountered, or heard about, and include all of the advice I have had, in the hope that it accelerates someone, or gives them an insight into the problem they may be having. There's an obvious DIR slant to it, but hopefully there is information in there for anyone trying to reach that elusive valve

Firstly, let’s have some clarification of a few issues. The name. GUE calls it a “valve drill”, and I have heard instructors from other agencies call them the same, but I have heard divers from all agencies call it a “shutdown”, and for simplicity’s sake, that is how I am going to refer to them here. Although the minutiae of the procedure may differ form agency to agency, it can be taken as pretty much universal that being able to reach and manipulate your valves when diving a set of twin cylinders is a “Good Thing”, and that not being able to reach them is a “Bad Thing”. Just how “Bad” is an endless debate, so let’s not go there. Additionally, my experience has been with a set of twins that have their valves pointing towards the sky when I am standing up straight, so that is where the focus of this document will be. Not everyone does this, and the pros and cons of “inverting” cylinders is another endless debate.

Reaching Back

Before we get hung up on kit and configuration, let’s talk a little about physiology. How exactly do you reach for the valves in the first place. There are two ways of reaching back. The first way involves keeping the forearm parallel to your body and rotating your shoulder, so that so your entire forearm moves behind your head. I have seen people manage to reach their valves like this, but you have to be very flexible, and it looks far too much like hard work. The second way will give you another two to three inches of movement. Bend your arm at the elbow, but keep your elbow facing forwards, with the inside of your forearm tucked in close against your head. It’s a conscious effort to keep it in that position, if you relax your arm will rotate, so keep that forearm close into your head. Now rotate your shoulder and push that arm back so that you can still see your elbow, but your lower arm and hand have disappeared past your head. This is a much better position to be in, and give you more flexibility. It is also a position that can be extended by training and exercise, which I will discuss later.

Reaching back for the isolator with the right hand is almost identical, except there is a little trick to it reach back, as in option 2, above, but this time bend your hand 90 degrees up at the wrist and then put the inside of you wrist against the back of your head. Now push back with your head. You hand should just land on the isolator.

Reaching for the left hand post is the same as the right hand post, but wit the left hand. However, this is the valve that causes most people problems simply because they have less flexibility in their left shoulder than they do in the right. This can be helped with specific exercises, which I will document later.

Now we know how to reach back, we need to make sure everything is set up to allow you to stand a chance of getting there. Tip number one is to put your kit how you want it and leave it alone. It doesn’t really matter if that condiguration is DIR, DIFF, DILLIGAF, or whatever, but once you have your kit setup correctly, leave it alone and start diving it, because you need a few dives with each configuration before you know what’s what. Changing things every dive will just leave you in an endless circle of adjustment. The configuration below works for me. If you want to do it another way, knock yourself out.

If you do not have your harness, backplate and twins set up correctly, then it really doesn’t matter if you are Mr Stretch, Captain spaghetti, or the incredible bendy woman, you are not going to get to those valves. Now “correctly”, in this article, refers to how I’ve finally ended up with my twinset configured. This is “correct” for me. The combination of the elements I describe allows me to reach the valves. Please don’t whinge at me if you don’t happen to like having your rig the same way, I’m trying to be helpful here!

Bands

Let’s start with the twinset. I really have lost count of the number of divers I see moving twinset bands up and down their cylinders whilst at dive sites, in attempts to reach their valves, totally forgetting about what this will do to their trim etc. I was that diver for a few months so I certainly cannot claim I haven’t been there myself.

Move the bands to just below, and I really do mean just below, the neck of the cylinders. Then leave then alone. Really. It’s a seemingly common belief that moving the bands down a cylinder will move the valves closer to your hands. Let’s think about that. Your twinset is a straight line, but your back is a curve. Moving the bands of the cylinders down therefore moves them up in relation to your back, but actually moves them further away. The closest they will get to your back will be if you set up your cylinders as in Image 3. I spent ages mucking about until someone physically demonstrated that one to me.

Cylinder Valves

Ignore the barrel o ring versus facing o-ring nonsense. Pay scant attention to the MDE versus the world guff. Laugh in the face of the balanced versus unbalanced valves argument. There are but two types of valves in the world. There are those that you can shut down, and there are those you can’t. When your supply of life giving gas is rapidly bubbling away, that is the only distinction that matters.

So how do we make sure the valves are as helpful as possible. Well, the first thing we can do is replace those silly hard plastic knobs that come with many manifold and valve sets. They are a crime against humanity. Replace them with rubber knobs, which you will find longer (hence that bit easier to get to) easier to grip, and easier to keep grip of.

Next is the valves themselves. MDE valves, whatever people say about them, are fairly simple to turn, so we’ll leave them alone. If you have the other type, be it dirzone, scubapro, halcyon, whatever, then strip them down every couple of months, clean them and regrease them with O2 grease. It makes an unbelievable difference to how easy the valves are to turn.

Backplate and Harness

Right, so that’s the cylinders sorted, what about the back plate and harness. Well, lets go through a fitting. Take the back plate off the twinset and put the harness and plate on. Don’t do up the crotch strap of waist strap. Reach back with your fingertips. You should be able to touch the top edge of your plate with either hand.

If you can’t do this, then your harness is loose. Now this will no doubt cause an endless debate, but if the harness is loose, then sooner or later the twinset is going to shift down your back slightly moving the valves further away from your hands. So stage one of fitting the harness is to tighten up those shoulder straps until you can reach the plate with both hands. For those of you not familiar with your set rigged like this, this is going to be weird, because it feels like the shoulder straps are very tight indeed. A tip for getting the shoulder straps the same length – stand on the crotch strap, if you have one, and just lift the shoulder straps, you should then be able to tell visually if they are the same length.

Once you are happy with the shoulder straps, it’s time to adjust the crotch strap. I’m not going into the waist strap because from a shutdown perspective who cares. The crotch strap, however, is important. Too tight, and it’s going to pull the backplate down away from your shoulders. Too loose, and it’s going to allow the backplate to ride up, creating the same scenario when the bands are moved down the cylinders where the valves actually move away from your back. If your waist strap comes horizontally across your body from the slots in the backplate, then the crotch strap wants to come between your legs and about 1 inch higher than the waist strap when pulled taut. That’s the general plan, now do the whole thing up and see if you can still reach back and touch the backplate.

That’s your SCUBA sorted, but what about the clothes you are wearing.

Clothing and thermal protection

Few divers are forward thinking enough so that when they purchase their first drysuit, they think to themselves of their future diving needs, and see the potential for twin cylinders in that future. As a result, drysuits are often ideal, or at least acceptable, for single cylinder diving, but are totally inappropriate for twinset diving. Although many agencies teach that being able to reach back and open a valve with a single cylinder rig is a Good Thing™, this skill seems to be lost once any formal training is over. I have to be honest and say I’ve ever seen one diver practicing this in the water with a single rig. So, it really only becomes a conscious requirement, and indeed an obsession, once a twinset is purchased.

It is in the area of the chest, shoulders and arms that drysuits tend to let people down with regards to reaching their valves. Reach back with your hand as if you are reaching for a valve. Now we’ll go through a checklist for the suit.

Underside of Arm - Look at the underside of the arm on the suit, in the area that covers your armpit. How taut does that get when you reach back. This is as absolute killer for shutdowns. If the suit stops you here before you can reach back, then nothing short of a new suit, having patches built into the suit, or inverting the cylinders, is going to get your hand onto that valve.

Chest and Shoulders – How tight is the suit in this area - You need flexibility in the area of the chest and shoulders to allow your shoulders to rotate freely when you reach back and enough give so that when the front of the suit is pulled up by your arm reaching back is does not restrict you.

Arms – Are the arms of your suit long enough, too short and when you reach back they will get pulled up. I saw a diver with drygloves on the end of too short drysuit arms that told me he felt the restriction in his fingertips when he reached for his valves.

Well, that’s a bunch of you looking at your beloved drysuit with disdain and horror. Sorry about that.

Undersuit

Under the suit we encounter more problems. Try getting into your drysuit naked. Go on, you know you want to. You’ll find you have a great deal more flexibility than you normally do. As you add layers and bulk to the inside of the suit, the less flexibility you will have. When purchasing a drysuit, you need to think about the maximum level of thermal protection you will have with that suit, so that you are not left in the position of several divers I have encountered - being able to do shutdowns in summer, and not in the winter. Now put on your normal undersuit and drysuit, and just stand up and reach back over your head. Just stop and think about where you can feel any restriction. If you do have an issue with the undersuit, the resolution might not be as costly as with an inappropriate drysuit. There are several manufacturers of undersuits, such as 4th element, that make very warm underclothes that are far less bulky than both the Weezle type suits and indeed the Thinsulate type suits. It’s not my place to say what you should and shouldn’t use, but I recommend using what keeps you warm and allows you mobility.

Gloves

This one seems obvious, but it caught me out. I love my 5mm gloves, but I do struggle to shutdown my valves in them because I lose a great deal of tactile sensation and indeed grip in them. 3mm gloves will offer you more in the way of grip, but may be a little cold at certain times of year. I find drygloves great – when they work. As with just about everything else, try some and stick with them a while before giving up. Perhaps try with thin gloves and graduate to thicker gloves once you can turn the valves – but just remember there is a flip side to that – once your helps freeze, shutdowns become rather more challenging.

Twinset Configuration

I thought I’d avoid this one, but it will no doubt appear on any subsequent thread so let’s just get it out of the way. This is one of those TRUTH moments, where you have the priveledge of sharing something which many people seems to struggle with but is an undeniable fact. Are you ready? Here we go. Inverted cylinders are easier to shutdown. Sorry!. There’s so many pros and cons of both ways that I am not going to get into it, but the fact remains that from a perspective of shut downs, inverting is the way forwards, so to speak. Many people adopt inverted rigs for this very reason. It doesn’t appeal to me, but then I can do a shutdown. The DIR mob claim that everyone can do a shutdown if their rig is properly configured and they are trained properly in how to trim and weight themselves etc. Well, for the Non-DIR crowd, there really is some truth in this I’m afraid. For the DIR crowd, it is “some” truth, and not the whole of the truth. Some people simply do not have the mobility in their joints and require another solution. This section is in here just to recognise and remind you that the contents are what worked for me, and what I learnt on the way. You may have a pre-existing condition that means inverting is the only way to do it, and if so, go for it!. Actually, if you just fancy having inverted cylinders, go for it!

Kitting Up

It’s nearly time to hit the water, so let’s kit up. Firstly, when you are putting your drysuit on, pull up the body of your undersuit so that you have some spare material in the top half of your drysuit where you need it, rather than being trapped in the bottom half near your legs. Make sure any spare material is around your chest and shoulders. Do up the drysuit. Now “do a superman”, by putting your hands together and stetching them up towards the sky, stretching your legs as well. This will ensure that your undersuit and drysuit are best placed for flexibility in the shoulders and arms, and that you are making use of that spare material you pulled up in your undersuit.

Now put on your Harness. Rotate your shoulders a little in the shoulder straps to give them room. If you have any spare material in your drysuit, make sure it is above your waist strap where it will be useful for the shutdown, and not trapped below the waist strap where it is useless. Get in the water.

Trim and in-water attitude

I watched a friend and fellow diver attempt two shutdowns this past weekend, and they were completely different. The first was a disaster, with him not being able to do anything more than just touch the valves, kicking up silt and finning around, swearing through his regulator. The second time, he reached back and went through the valve drill in perfect order, experiencing no problems. Bizarre huh. Not really if you were there. You see, on the first dive, he was stressed and his trim was such that he was at about a thirty degree angle with his feet pointing downwards.

Let’s deal with those two facts separately. He was stressed. I could hear it in the language he used. Hell, I’m not even sure what some of the words meant, and certainly couldn’t spell them, but he definitely sounded annoyed. Try tensing up your arm, you will lose mobility as the muscles tense up. Now chill out and let you arm rest, the mobility will return. The lesson is if you are tense and having problems doing a shutdown, leave it and come back to it when you are feeling more relaxed rather than continue to struggle and get more frustrated. I try to control my breathing before a valve drill for two reasons. Firstly, it means I am not going to change depth (much) during the drill. But perhaps more importantly, it means I am going to be relaxed. Now this works for me, just do whatever works for you, but chill out for the love of God, because swearing and kicking about is not going to achieve anything and only make you more annoyed.

The second item in this section is trim. NOW DIR types go on and on and on about trim. Believe me, I’m one of them and just as guilty as any other. There are many reasons for this, which I’m not going to get into here, but ONE of them is that it makes the valve drills easier. Think about it. If you are horizontal in the water, the valves are going to be where they are supposed to be. The further off horizontal you are, the more likely the rig is to slip down your back a little, and maybe just take those valves out of reach. So how does one achieve perfect trim. Yeah right. That’s for another document, and I’ll write it once I know the answer myself.

However, even if we cannot achieve perfectly flat trim, we can use this knowledge to help us do a shutdown, or at least train how to do them. Instead of finning about in Stoney , or in a pool, practicing your shutdowns. Just dump all your air and lie on the bottom. That way you are going to be flat and stay in one place. You will also be pleasantly surprised to find that once you get over the sensation of laying on the bottom, you will relax, because you are not having to think about buoyancy, or trim, or position, or anything, just the shutdown. Marvellous!

Suit Inflation

Yet another important element here. Us DIR types run our suits very tight, managing all buoyancy through our wing. This makes trim and buoyancy more precise as you haven’t got air migrating around your suit but comes at a price. Next time you are in the water, drop a few metres without inflating your suit. Pretty soon you wont be able to reach over your shoulder at all. The squeeze causes the suit to lose all flexibility. So you need to have enough air in the suit to allow the suit to move. On the flip side, if you have ever been daft enough to inflate your suit to the maximum you will find a similar scenario, in that the air bulking out the suit means you cannot bend your arms or legs properly. So there is a happy medium. For me, this means putting just enough gas in the suit so that when I stretch my legs back, and my arms forward “doing a superman”, I can feel the suit moving over my body as it adjusts. This is another of those “get it wrong and you’ve got no chance” elements.

Flexibility and Training

The movement to reach back and get a valve is not particularly natural, but there are some good excercises that will help. I’d advise speaking to your local gym, who will in most cases give you sound advice on how to exercise the relevant muscles without damaging them. There are a few I use. For example, when you reach back, you can give your arm a gentle boost by pressing gently on your upper arm with your opposite hand. The key word here is gently. There are some excellent stetching exercises to be found here http://www.divefitness.com/html/arti...ld_stretch.pdf

Other useful in water exercises are having a buddy gently guide your hand to the valves, and just reaching back and holding them at regular points in the dive, just to get the muscle memory in. Also, have some honest debriefs when you get out of the water, where your buddy can tell you what your trim was like, how far your fingers were, anything else he or she noticed etc. Feedback is essential, becuase you cannot see what is happening.

Conclusions

What I’ve tried to do here is to brain dump everything I have learned about valve drills since I started twinset diving. I’m still putting the gloss on them myself, but if in this post I have given someone a moment to think “ooh I wonder if it’s that that’s stopping me” then it has been worth the effort. Once again, I would re-iterate that this is simply the path I have taken to successfully doing the drills. It’s not necessarily the path for you. What I am not trying to achieve here is anyway intended to replace professional training. Finally, no matter what I have told you, there is no shortcut to this. Like all potentially life-saving drills, a valve drill is something, in my humble opinion, that should be practiced at every possible opportunity, and it is only that practice at the end of the day, that will get you there.

Garfs Fundies Report

Well, it's over.

The following people signed for a fundies course with Rich Walker. Garf, Ahar, Mark Chase, Daz, and Bogwoppit. we all had different expectations for the course, but I will not second guess the others or steal their thunder. For myself, I had two primary reasons for doing the course. Firstly, if I'm honest, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I'd heard so much about it from so many people, which ranged from those who suggested that they make you eat babies for breakfast, through to those who were far more laid back about it all. It raises so much interest, I simply had to see what it was about.

The second reason was far more pragmatic. I had seen several GUE trained divers last year. They differed in some respects. Some were egomaniac, condescending tossers who preached that DIr is the Light and the Way. However, whilst some were preaching, some were quietly getting in the water and going diving. I noticed that they did all, however, have a few things in common. They all possessed excellent awareness of environment, team and scenario. Theyt knew that their role was on every dive, and they knew what to expect from their team. They also communicated very efficiently and effectively. I liked this a lot, and though, for want of a better phrase "That'll do me, I'll have a bit of that thanks". So I decided to do fundies and see what it was all about.

I had been umming and ahhing about it for several months when Rich Walker posted a course up and YD and I signed up immediately. Also signed up were Ian (Bogwoppit) Stapleton, Andy (ahar) Harries, Darren (Daz) Carpenter, and Mark (I can't think of an online name) Chase. I had dived with Boggie before, and knew that both Chasey and Ahar were decent divers, so figured I was lucky enough to be on a course full of people who knew what they were doing.

Immediately after signing up for the course, I thought, if I'm being honest, "I want to minimise the twattishness of my diving on the course and get a head start", and organised a day's diving with Gledders. I'll get into the "Right" and
"Wrong" of this later. On this day I saw how high the bar was, or rather I was clubbed over the head with it and told toarch my back. Gledders and Al were astonishing in the water, and the vain element in me thought "I wanna look like that".

I then organised a few sessions with Ahar in Wraysbury. Now Ahar is a top diver and no mistake, rock solid in the water. We put a lot of effort into going through the drills, both on dry land and in the water. The logic was that if we at least were totally familiar with the actual procedure of the drills, then we would be able to concentrate on other things, such as trim and situational awareness. We also focussed on ensuring we stayed aware of what was happening to the other person, and not getting tunnel vision when performing drills. Now this is easy to say, not so easy to do. Keeping eye contact with an ugly bastard like me through every step of a valve drill must be very hard work indeed. The training felt at the time very valuable, but I wanted to keep things sharp, so spent the last few Wednesday nights before the course in the pool training on my own, doing valve drills and modified S drills, as well as practising the various kicks that would be required.

Another element that I felt required attention was my swimming, which was rocket fast for 50M but then I would grind to a halt, I went swimming every other day for a month before fundies. There is no question that this paid off as we shall see later.

Fundies Approaches...

fundies started for me on the Thursday night, with a complete kit check, which took hours as I checked every nut and bolt,
every boltsnap, every possible detail, to make sure kit was not an element that let me down. Everything was charged, greased and packed away ready for the morning. Off I went to sleep, only to realise once I had relaxed that I was sweating, not due to the work I had been doing, but because I was coming down with a terrible cold. I got no sleep at all, thrashing about in that horrible, feverish, sweaty delirium that you get when you have a bad cold. Throughout the night I became more and more annoyed about how i felt as I knew that firstly it would have a severe impact on how I would dive (assuming I could dive at all) and also because I knew those sods on the course would never believe me.

FRIDAY

0830 AM and like a well oiled DIR machine, bogwoppit turned up to pick me at the agreed time. Actually, that must have still been delirium as he never turned up until 9am. Totally relaxed and in control, he was the complete opposite of me, who was a nervous wreck, coughing, sneezing, and trying to decide if I should even bother getting in the car. I felt truly terrible, and figured I’d be retaking the course at some point in the near future. I decided to go anyway, and just see what happened. Boggie turned up in the little Citroen C3 and we packed it to the brim with black kit and shiny things. Wondering if the suspension was going to cope we climbed in and set off at 9am, with me dosing myself with a combination of nurufen plus and Sudafed.

A leisurely and pleasant drive to the B&B just outside Trowbride in Somserset was made, during which I felt gradually worse and worse, and probably whinged more and more. Despite this, Boggie remained perfectly polite, relaxed and cheerful. We arrived after about 2 hours 45 minutes and found GUE Tech1 diver David Martin chatting away happily with Mark Chase. We also found that somewhere between Surrey and Somerset, someone had turned the thermostat down. It was bloody freezing. My body had obviously given up trying to regulate my temperature and quietly alternated between hot and cold whilst I stood there sneezing and trying to keep up with the conversation

Chasey had promised to play nice with the GUE divers and not upset them, but already they were in hot debate about deco cylinder usage. Despite making a promise to myself not to be an awkward sod, I joined in happily

A few minutes later and the rest of the team began to show up. Daz arrived from Bristol, and Rich Walker all the way from Sheffield. The plan was to start doing the lectures in the B&B, but unfortunately, the B&BG people were not there, so we bailed out to the local pub and had a coffee. In the pub, we finalised the paperwork (DIR-F students are required to submit a very detailed profile of their diving history, kit, and medical health, which Rich then reviewed whilst we tried to warm ourselves up. DIR kit extends to civvies, as demonstrated by David and Rich, wearing identical puffer jackets. Unfortunately, Vobster did not sell them.

At this point, we were still waiting for Ahar, so as Rich had managed to contact him by mobile, and we couldn’t get into the B&B, we decided to skip the first lectures and go directly into the swim tests. I swear that I felt a shudder when he said this, as I had been worried about the tests for weeks. We packed up, picked ourselves up and got ready to go to trowbridge leisure centre. Boggie and I decided to follow Chasey, which included a u turn during which I swear I could hear Chasey’s GPS saying “Turn around when possible, dickhead”. We just pointed and laughed.

Arriving in the leisure centre, my guts were in turmoil, and my ears were now starting to get that horrible “sticky” feeling. Into the pool and we were told it was a 25M pool and we had to swim 15 metres on a breath hold. No problems here, we all managed 25 metres. Chasey the fish could have done laps. Now came the one that scared me, the distance swim. “get going” said Rich, and I launched into a backstroke. 7 minutes and twenty seconds later I was astonished to find I had finished, ten seconds behind Ahar. Chasey was just behind, and captain cool boggie sauntered in with a relaxed breastroke a minute later. Daz struggled with this, and finished up in just under 13 mins, but he only has little legs. So that was the whole team through the swim tests and I was delighted. There had to be some measure of fitness for the course, and I guess a swim test is as good if not better than any other. If there is anyone out there in a similar position to myself, my advice is firstly not to leave training for it until the last minute, and secondly not to swim as fast as you can, as it’s a stamina test not a sprint.

Being in the pool did provide an opportunity for Rich to try out a few new ideas ;“New Ideas on a DIR course, I hear you scream, how can this be?????”. Well, I’ll no doubt talk about my misplaced preconceptions a bit later. We swam to the side of the pool and were instructed in the pool on how to back kick. You have to “get the feet back without the water noticing” and then snap back, using the sides of fins. The power of the stroke comes from the calves, not the fins. This was all news to me. Next, we tried simulating the trim position. Floating on the stomach, back arched as hard as possible, head pushed back to touch the isolator, and arse muscles clenched to raise the knees. Hold that position. It hurts. If it doesn’t hurt, you’re not trying. Finally, we put the two together. Back arched, head up, arse clenched, now back fin. Good god. We all went backwards, faster than I’d ever done before. So he wasn’t telling lies about the fins not providing the power. This was the first time that I realised that Rich really did have his shit squared away. We tried this several times, and it worked. Great news. Being in the water felt great as it was keeping my fever down, so I was reluctant to get out, but we had lectures to attend to , so we all got dressed and headed back to the B&B.

We were all feeling a little happier now I think, now that the first assessed bit was out of the way, and we were about to start absorbing information. We were then given thorough and informative lectures about the history of GUE and DIR diving, and all given 30cc’s of chlorpromazine via intravenous drip. No. No. No. You see, I used to make all the jokes, and take the piss, but the ironic thing is that Rich was about the most laid-back and flexible DIR diver I’ve met. His attitude seemed to be “look, you’re paying, so accept my advice for the weekend, and then do what you want to do”. Nothing was rammed down our throats, and our opinions were often asked what we thought about a topic, rather than just lecturing. A perfect example is we had a big discussion about self inflating blobs, with Chasey and I arguing strongly that they are the best invention ever and David Martin arguing that they were the spawn of the devil and anyone that uses them probably eats babies for breakfast. Meanwhile, Rich just kept quiet listening to the discussion, or rather beasting we were giving Dave, and then said “gimme one and ill have a go tomorrow then”, which shut us up and to my vast amusment, had david staring at Rich in the same way Socrates stared at his best friend and said “I drank WHAT?” So - open to new ideas, willing to try out new things. That was a DIR I hadn’t expected. These lectures I found phenomally interesting and informative, as they blew away all the chaff I had read about DIR and all the shite I had read on forums (such as this posting) and laid it out properly. And you know what, it all starts to make sense when someone explains it properly. The whole “all or nothing” approach just started to make sense, even without the use of barbiturates. We gave as good as we got in the lectures, and thankfully Rich has a healthy sense of humour, so comments from me such as “sometimes you’d be forgiven for thinking that someone just sat down in their garage all day and made this shit up” didn’t result in being admonished. All in all, this was really useful for me, and put the whole course into perspective. Rich proved a very relaxed and knowledgeable instructor, but I am convinced his obvious experience in diving, including instructing for other agencies, helps to provide a more well rounded instructor.

After finishing up with the lectures, we decided to head into Trowbridge for a curry. We piled in the cars and headed off. This is where the team ethic started to break down. Daz got lost on the 3 mile drive into Trowbridge. FFS. We hung around waiting for twenty minutes and eventually he turned up. We decided on a currey. Now, experience served me well in this area. I was well aware that I was going to be spending a significant proportion of the next day clenching my arse, so why make things worse than they are already going to be. “Please provide me with your mildest, most gentle curry” says Garf. “Do you worst” says Daz. How can so much, of something so fiendishly hot, fit into someone so small. I was partly in awe, partly shaking my head in rememberance of the time I nearly had to bin a days diving due to a poorly timed madras.

Dinner was a good laugh, we all chatted amiably about diving, as you’d expect, and rich kept noticeably reticent about the more controversial subject, which I was actually quite impressed with, as I’d have been tempted to just shout “Oh stop talking bolox you tiny man. And you, blond git, will you STFU about your rebreather”. Anyway, a delightful time was had by all, and we wisely decided to head right back to the B&B for an early night. All except Daz, who headed off in a random direction and got lost again. Hey ho, night night. Big day tomorrow.

Saturday……

I hadn’t slept all night. I still felt awful. Added to my cold, I was sharing a room with Bogwoppit. What is it about ex-matelots? All night I had shivered in my fever. All night Boggie had been sawing a plank of wood in half. The buzzing in my ears was blatently perforated ear drums. It wasn’t snoring, it was like listening to speeded-up continental drift. Give me strength.

I dosed up with as many painkillers as I could lay my hands on and went through for breakfast. Fair play to Bardo’s In Laws, they cook a mean fry up and no mistake. Chasey and I displayed a similar trait when we announced that the next person to speak at the breakfast table would have their tongue torn out if the words “here’s the coffee for you” were not forthcoming. Over breakfast, we made our jokes, said our last goodbyes etc etc………


Dive 1

First things first, Rich went through a thorough safety briefing. After this, he outlined the plan for the dive, which was to split up into two teams. The teams were Daz, chasey and bogwoppit, and then Myself and ahar. This suited me as I had been training with Andy and we knew what to expect from each other. We took our time kitting up, making sure everything was where it was supposed to be. This was partyl becuase we wanted everything to be correct, and partyl becuase we were waiting for Daz, who was shitting his brains out after the hot curry the night before. I can stil hear the scremas now. Eventually, he reappeared, somewhat flushed, and looking even thinner than normal, and we continued to kit up. I still managed to leave a reg lying around which rich spotted after appearing from nowhere. I suspect he was on the roof with binoculars. We finshed putting everything together and then worked out the plan. We had to do a valve drill and an S drill, and then practice a frog kick, modified frog kick and modified flutter kick. We did this by swimming very close down to a platform. It’s not as easy as it looks. Valve drills went ok for us, as did S drills, but trim was scrappy and we were drifting forwards. We did not see much of the other team as we were focussing on ourselves. The devil is in the detail with DIR, and it’s the details like always clipping off the primary reg if its not in your mouth that was catching us out. The kicks went ok, but it’s very intimidating with an instructor that seems to be on wires and a video camera stuck in your face. We also needed to work on the distance between us. Andy and I could both sort of back kick, so when one of us drifted towards the other, rather than stopping them, we took it as an opportunity to practice, which was not the best plan as the team then drifted off into the distance.

At the end of the dive, we both sent bags up. This took a little while as it was bloody freezing in the water and everyone’s hands were suffering. Remember that devil? Well, the devil in the bagging up procedure is remembering to clip your drysuit hose back on after you have filled your smb. Andy and I ascended in control, both it was very slow indeed and needed work.

Out of the water and it was time for coffee, burgers and debrief. What can I say about the debrief other than Rich Walker is a very honest man indeed He missed nothing, despite keeping an eye on two separate teams. We did not get a beasting, let’s not pretend this is some kind of “boot camp” style course. It’s not. Rich just watches you, and then edges you to where he expects you to be. There’s none of that mask off, reg out, do a v drill with one hand crap you hear people talking about. The skills are basic, and the focus is on muscle memory, doing the drills again and again until they are slick and second nature, with the intention that when the brown smelly stuff hits the rotating office whirry thing, your hands will know where to go without thinking about it. Nothing on the course is “complicated”. It’s just that the standard for the simple things is set very high.

Whilst we are on this subject the valve drill. I spent ages working on the valve drill, and constantly though “this is mental, id never do this in an emergency”. Well, no you wouldn’t. the drill is to build the muscle memory, in an emergency you utilise parts of the drill as necessary. The debrief was exhaustive and quite correct imho, and I wandered off afterwards, wondering if I was simply to ill to give the course the attention it deserved. There’s not a diver on the course this weekend that hasn’t beaten themselves up over something, and in Daz’s case that is probably considered abuse of a minor.

Dive 2

The way the course works, they give you some set skills, such as valve drill and S drill. You then do that every dive. Then they add more tasks in each dive, so you can never relax, and are constantly learning something new. This is very carefully designed so that it does not overload the diver. Rather it is set at a level so that the learning curve is steep, but not catastrophically so. In some ways, you just sort of go diving and end up better at the end.

The plan for dive two, then, was another valve drill and S drill, and then this time we would do back kicking, the centre of gravity drill, and helicopter turns. Helicopter turns involve some kind of mystic sorcery that allow you to make one frog kick forward with one foot, and one back kick with the other. Yeah right. Note to self. Practice. Back- kicking I am getting. Once you get that the fin is somewhat irrelevant, and that you are using the sides of the fin anyway, and the power comes from your calf, it starts to happen. The other trick is to slow down the recovery part of the kick so that you don’t end up propelling yourself forwards. Finally, trim. If you haven’t got a stable trim, forget it. A big smile from Daz showed he was indeed going backwards. Three seconds later he was going backwards faster than I’d ever seen anyone, granted it being to the surface led by his feet.

The centre of gravity drill is an interesting exercise. If you weighting, and trim are correct, then you can adjust your trim in the water by the simple action of raising or lowering your head, extending your arms and feet. Imagine your body is a see-saw, and you can make that see saw go up or down depending on which end is longest. Obviously, if your weighting is way off, you can forget this drill, but we all managed some semblance of it, which was very rewarding.

The valve and S drills went ok, Andy and I felt like we were getting to grips with them, although during our drills this dive, a bunch of single cylinder wetsuit divers came and kneeled down on the platform, literally between my legs, which was a bit disconcerting. We tried to carry on regardless and got through the drills ok. By now, I have to admit, Andy was looking pretty slick in the water, and I was feeling worse and worse, partly because I was feeling sicker and sicker, and partly because I was struggling to match Andy’s level of control in the water.

Out of the water, and we did not bother with the debrief. It was just too damn cold. This time, we packed up our kit and headed back down to the B&B to warm up before going through the dive. I decided on a shower before facing the video. A word about the showers. Be careful, be very careful. On the thermostatic control for the showers, there was one nano-millimetre between Excruciatingly Hot, and Fantastically Freezing. You have been warned.

eventually, we all settled in the room serving as the lecture room for the course and sat down, not without a little trepidation, to watch the video. Well,the camera never lies. What I thought was pretty good trim turned out to be a bag of shite. We all, without exception, looked at ourselves and went "oh dear", or at least variations on that theme. However, rather than give us a hard time, Rich calmly walked us through what we were doing, and what we had to work on for the next day. Mine was clear. I could do the procedures for the valve drills and s drills in my sleep, but needed to sort out my trim and stability. Andy was pretty much the same, although at this point he was clearly emerging as the strongest DIR diver of the group.

Daz was doing well, obviously diving with DIR divers has helped him, but was struggling a little as his trim and bouyancy were a little unstable, and Mark and Ian, well, they had problems, which I felt looked worse on the video than actually were, and were probably caused becuase they were diving with totally unfamiliar people. I knew at least what I had to do the next day. My back wasn't hurting, and I'd been lazing about working to get my trim into a decent position. The next day I had to basically sort that out.

We went out for another curry, and then called it a night. At some point in the evening, the fever I was running broke, and I began to feel immediately better. I went to bed, fell asleep immedistely, and snored so heavily that chasey, in the room upstairs, was kept awake.

A final word about the Saturday before I move on. Rock Bottom. This is not the condition that arises from maintaining trim, or even the condition that Daz adopted after eating too hot a carry, rather a calculation that provides the absolute minimum requirement for a given depth in terms of gas and time to get you and a buddy safely to the surface. When it was explained to me, I have to be honest I thought “What’s the point of all this faff, if the result is always the same for a given depth, why not just work them all out and write them down?”, which of course Rich then showed me that there was a rock bottom table, but he wanted us to understand the theory. Standalone, it provides a useful little “get out of jail” tool. However, when combined with GUE’s gas management strategies, it becomes very useful indeed.

For example, if you know that rock bottom (and I’m not going to get into the calculations here, they are on YD if you want them) is 90 bar, you can then use a gas management strategy, for example the thirds rule, and arrive back before you get to rock bottom. If you arrive back in plenty of time, you might then extend the dive in another direction with another plan, all the time remembering that it doesn’t matter as long as you don’t violate rock bottom. Simple, and obvious, but one of those little gems that I will always remember to do before a dive, and keep in mind when running plans through any software. Moving on…

Day2

Now I felt MUCH better today , partly because I had broken the fever and was on the road to recovery, but also because I’d managed to have a good night sleep, although poor boggie had been up since about 4 going through valve drills in his head. Fundies is a bit like that  Off for breakfast, and another fine fry-up was provided, washing down with the appropriate amounts of caffeine. By now, I was realising that Chasey and I shared a similar sense of humour as well as an addiction to caffeine, so we growled at everyone across the table until they ordered more coffee in self defence.

The plan for the day was to do a full backplate check (Now this happened on the 1st day, so forgive me I’ll include it here). I was a little sad at the prospect of having my harness messed with, as I have spent MONTHS getting it to what I thought is right, finally nailing it a couple of months ago, and writing down all the measurements etc. We kitted up in full drysuits, and then Rich and Dave cast a very critical eye over the harnesses. First adjustment, the shoulder straps. Leaving the wasitbelt undone, can you reach back with one hand at a time and just touch your backplate with the tips of your fingers. Luckily, I could, but everyone else was told to strip theirharnesses down and adjust them. Let’s just say that not one of them was too tight, all had to be tightened up, to the point that I thought we were going to have to grease Daz and Chasey up with KY to get them out. We didn’t in the end, so after we had finished, they lubed up anyway as they had got the idea into their heads…..

Next step, are the shoulder straps even. Stand on the crotch strap and pull the shoulder straps. I escaped again, so far so good. Another five minutes was spent adjusting, checking and readjusting. Next step, the waist belt. It should come across horizontally from the slots in the backplate, not under or over a belly  When done up, the buckle should be over on the right hand side near the buckle holding the light canister in place. Another five minutes was spent adjusting this. Finally, the crotch strap. Standing up, there should be a minimum amount of room between the crotch strap and you. There was a little more than necessary in everyone’s, but it was VERY cold. Finally, do the whole harness up and see how it feels. Next, cylinder bands. Top band should be JUST below the break of the neck of the cylinders. Ahar had to move his up about 4 inches and was VERY concerned about what this would do to his trim. Boggie also had to move his up a couple of inches. I had escaped the trial unscathed. Hurrah.

Back to the plan……Dive 3

The plan for Dive3 was to take a step back and teach the valve and S drills, and also do “The basic 5”. Now the basic 5 are as follows; Reg remove and replace, Reg exchange, mask flood and clear, mask remove and replace and then a modified S drill. I’ll go through all of these in some detail, as it’s the details that bite you in DIR.

We dropped in, and I felt much better than the previous day. I started to concentrate on my trim, but it was intermittent, so more work needed there. I found that if I adopted a perfectly flat trim, I would start to drop head down, very so slowly. This was discovered by Rich, who got me into a perfectly flat position, and then watched my drift. That one would be resolved later.

Onto the basic 5. The Reg remove and replace. Easy peasy, just remember to remove the reg by the hose and don’t let go of it. Reg Exchange, a little more complicated than it sounds, but again you are building muscle memory. I’ll detail it so you can see it; 1. Get backup reg in hand, 2. Get primary reg hose in hand, 3. Remove primary Reg (keep hold), 4. Put backup in mouth, 5. clip off primary reg on right chest D ring with right hand, 6. unclip primary reg from right chest D ring, 7. take told of backup and remove from mouth, 8. put primary in mouth. Sounds like a hell of a lot of steps doesn’t it, but it’s all nice and smooth when you get it right.

Number three the mask flood and clear. No problems here as long as you control your breathing so that you trim and buoyancy do not go to ratshit. Mask remove and replace I have no issues, its just a case of getting the breathing under control so that when you take the mask off the icy waters of vobster don’t freak you out. By jesus it was cold and no mistake. Watching Rich demo the drills I saw his eyes bulge when he did the mask off, and the uwatec was reading 4 degrees C

Number 5, the modified S is just an S drill where the other person holds the reg rather than breaths it, so they don’t have to clip off their own primary etc. this is a drill I will be doing whether I am in the water with DIR divers or not, as all I have to explain to JAG is “hang on to my reg when I give it you until I ask for it back”. It is also worth doing at the surface as it is a check you have not tangled any of your hoses and can deploy the long hose without any issues. The basic 5 then, are drills I will practice again and again. They are simple enough, but there are lots of little steps to build muscle memory. I think we all managed to get through these fairly successfully, although joking aside the cold water really was an issue.

We then watched Rich do a valve drill. Again, I was looking for the wires that were keeping him rigidly in place whilst he did it, his control was awesome. Smoothly through all the steps, and then it was our turn, which again we did we varying degrees of success. Now, Ahar, who had been worried that Rich’s insistence he move his bands on his cylinders a good 3-4 inches had him worried sick, had just dropped into PERFECTLY flat trim the moment he hit the water. It looked superb, so apparently Rich knows what he is doing. By now, the valve drills for Andy and I were getting steadily better, and we were starting to focus on the minutiae of the drill rather than the major issues. This also meant we could pay more attention to trim, as it is during the more complicated drills that trim tends to go to ratshit as you forget about it. Practice, practice, practice I guess. The GUE valve drill seems to take ages, especially when compared with the TDI drill, which is more of a “dislocate your own arms if you have to, but turn that damn thing off NOW”. I liked the TDI drill, but the more I do the GUE drill, the more I understand that its detailed steps and procedure are designed not to be replicated in an emergency, but ensure you don’t have to think about where to go or what to do when that emergency happens. Muscle memory was a term used again and again through the course. It’s also the drill where you are most likely to drop your head, lose trim, and go all introspective as you try to remember the procedure. I thanked God I had spent a few weeks with the drill blu-tacked to the side of the training pool I used, as this helped me a lot. There are a lot of steps in the drills, and I would personally recommend that GUE write these steps into a procedure and issue them to students a couple of weeks before the course, so at least they have some time to read through it and practice the arm movements. It would also get rid of a lot of what Rich is worried about – people being instructed incorrectly by their friends, and him having to then unpick this training. Anyway, moving on….

Out of the water, and we all felt pretty cold this time, so it was off to the burger fan for double cheeseburgers and triple coffees. I personally took a diversion to the loos first. I had fitted a p valve catheter before the first dive, and having not used it, decided to remove it. Evidence showed NOT using it was a good idea, as it had come loose. Obviously I need a “Summer” size and a “winter” size 

We took our coffees and went for a debrief. Again, rich was pretty thorough, and praised as well as criticised. Suggestions were made for the final dive. We then discussed what was to happen on the final dive. Basically, rather than hover over the “artificial crutch” of a platform, we would move to open water, and do our valve drills and S drills in open water. We would then swim off at 6m round the quarry, and Rich would throw the odd “grenade” at us. This meant if you were daft enough to be more than arms length away from your team mate, one of you was going to run out of air. We spent an hour or so warming up, and then carefully kitted up for the last dive of the course. I was feeling a little better about my diving at this point, but wanted to really focus on the trim in the last dive. I also needed to resolve that weighting issue, so I got Rich to check over my weighting arrangement and he made a suggestion which I implemented immediately.

We put all the kit together, and went over to the water next to the burger van, which saved us the trek round the quarry to the platform we had been using for the other dives. We went through the head-to-toe pre dive checks we had been taught, and then moved into the water. Down to six metres and something strange happened. I arched my back, raised by head, clenched my arse, and the trim just fell into place. It felt perfectly natural, and I felt rock stable in the water. It was the best I had ever felt when underwater. Meanwhile, poor Andy, who had been diving well all weekend, was struggling. He was obviously a but unstable, and the inability to stablise was making him more and more frustrated. I could hear him swearing through his regulator as he thrashed about, which probably appeared more pronounced than it actually was because I was more controlled than I had been on any of the other dives.

Andy, who had no problems with the Valve drill all through the course, now missed a step and I dived in and cut the drill, resetting his valves for him. I could see he was fuming with himself. We went through it again, and then went through mine, and then proceeded onto the S drills. I was really enjoying myself at this point, but then Rich appeared from nowhere and signalled to cut the dive. Andy and I went up to find Mark had experienced a valve failure, I believe during his S drill. We watched it on the video later, and I have to admit he dealt with it pretty well, but then I’ve never seen a video of anyone throwing up underwater before, so maybe everyone just hovers there when it happens 

On the video you can see him begin an S drill. He checks his backup, which works. He then donates his long hose, and goes to his back. You can see one clear exhalation from the regulator and then bugger all as it breathed water. He signals to Ian that he needs the regulator back, and Ian provides it immediately. Actually, I thought the both did pretty well considering there was a real gas failure going on. It should also be noted that Dave, the trainee instructor we had been taking the piss out of all weekend, had basically stopped filming at this point and dived in with a reg at the ready. Nice one.

Eventually, Chasey decided enough was enough and went to the surface to sort out the regs, which then appeared to be working ok. This is the point at which Rich called the dive for Andy and I and we joined them on the surface, obviously without a clue what was happening to the other team. Once everything had settled down, Rich asked Mark if he was up to going back down, and he gamely said he was. Respect where it’s due, I’d have probably had enough by then.

We descended again, and then Andy and I hovered around whilst Chasey, Bogwoppit and Daz went through their S drills again. I was having a great time by now as the trim was really starting to come together, and Andy appeared to have settled down, although we was drifting a little more than usual. Once the other team had finished all their drills, which took a little longer than usual as Daz managed to get himself all mixed up, we then just started a simple swim around the quarry. Andy let himself drop a couple of metres below me, which Rich then rewarded with an OOG drill that resulted in Andy rocketing up into me. The inevitable occurred and we ended up on the surface. Bolox. Back down and continue swimming. Eventually, Rich gave us the signal to bag up, and as previously agreed, Andy began to put his SMB together. Just as the spool was unwinding, Rich gave me the OOG signal and Andy had to dinate immediately. The lesson here was obvious. Sort out the gas situation, and then go back to everything else. We dealt with it ok, and then Andy started to wind in the spool. We managed a controlled, slow ascent to the surface, and then spent two mins at the surface organising lights, hoses etc, so we were set to leave the water. Swimming back to the exit point, I felt like everything had come together on the last dive, and felt for the first time like I might be joining Andy, whom I was convinced would pass the course. If I’m being honest, I figured the other three would get provisionals, although both Chasey and Boggie had been harder on themselves than they needed to, and both had proved competent team members, providing gas on demand when the other managed to shut down both their valves on a vavle drill (they both did this one after the other, you couldn’t make up anything funnier than this )

One final interesting point on the last dive was that Chasey bagged up, and then on the video you can see the SMB sailing back down to the bottom from the surface, despite apparently containing gas. It looked truly surreal on the video.

We exited the water, and immediately packed up all the kit into the cars and headed back to the B&B for the full debrief, video, and then individual assessments, which I awaited with some trepidation.

The video showed exactly what I expected. Scrappy on the first dive on the dive, and then all coming together on the last dive. I would give vital parts of my anatomy for a copy of that video. The video debrief was ruthlessly honest, as normal, and then a surprise appeared, another lecture to do.

I struggled through this if I’m being honest. I made notes about situational awareness, dive planning and preparation, which I’m glad I did or I wouldn’t have had a clue. Once the lecture was over, Rich said it was the time for individual debriefs. The plan was that Rich and Dave would remain in the room, and then we would come in one by one for 5-10 mins per person and be debriefed. I volunteered to go first, and remained in the room whilst all the others filed out, feeling strangely nervous about the whole affair.

“Right then….no, I want you to debrief yourself. Go for it”

Bolox.

Below is a rough interpretation of what I said

“Well, I know I can do all the drills as I have been training for them. I appreciate that you have concerns about training before fundies and now understand why, but in this case I think I was lucky to be told the correct drills and the practice has helped me. My diving has improved through the 4 dives, and there is a substantial difference between my diving now, and my diving at the start of the course. I felt everything came together in the last dive. Why are you both laughing, stop pointing at me, that’s really mean, I’m going home”

Rich asked me what I felt I had to train on. I said I was overjoyed with how my trim had fallen into place and needed some in water time to make sure it wasn’t a fluke. Once I had that properly dialled in, I then needed to spend time working on the drills to make them smoother and smoother. I also knew I had to work on clipping things off with one hand, which I was struggling with. Rich suggested some pool time with no gloves, so that the movements become second nature, and then add the gloves back into the equation.

Rich then asked where I wanted to go with my training. I had been thinking about this throughout the weekend. Diving a la GUE had started to make more and more sense to me over the weekend, and I came to realise that I wanted to progress along this course. So I decided to just tell him the truth. I said I wanted to get the fundies skills nailed properly, and then go for Tech1, once I had found an appropriate team to train with. I knew Andy was thinking about this as well, and so all I have to do now is convince him 

By now Rich was in hysterics, and I thought Dave was going to have to call an ambulance. Actually, Rich took it all very seriously, and then said “you’ve passed”.

Which was nice.

I thanked both him and Dave and admitted I had got far more out of the course than my jokes and teasing might have suggested. I then left the room and called my wife, who said “you’re really late, I’m going to eat without you”. Sigh.

I waited in the corridors for the others. Andy got a full pass, which seemed to be no suprise to anyone except Andy. He had dived consistently well throughout the weekend, and deserved his pass, well done mate.

Chasey and boggie, both came away with provisionals, and both furious with themselves, unjustly so in my opinion. It’s easy for me to be relaxed about it, but I’ve seen both of them dive far better than they did this weekend, and they had their share of bad luck. Perhaps most importantly, they have both come away with the determination to go back and nail the skills, which is great as it means I’ll have people to train with over the next few months 

Daz apparently got a provisional as well, although tbh we didn’t find out right away as he came out of his individual debrief, stormed out of the B&B without saying a word, and drove off in some kind of munchkin strop. Whoops.

Lessons and Thoughts.

Am I convinced that DIR diving is for me. Yes, I am. I love it, it makes sense, and it feels right.
Should everyone dive DIR? Whatever, it works for me. Will I stop diving with non-GUE trained divers. Don’t be daft. I might have to explain to JAG exactly WTF I am doing, but I have no doubt he’ll take an active interest in it anyway, as he’ll want to see what all the fuss is about, just as I did.
Will the VR3 be burnt in a midnight ritual. No, but I can see the day when it will be ebayed. That day will come when GUE training gives me the tools to do without it. Maybe.
Did I understand DIR before the course. No. I read everything there is to read. I spoke to numerous GUE trained divers at various different levels. And I still didn’t get it. If you are curious, take the course, it’s worth it.
Should you train before fundies. Difficult one. The problem is THE STANDARD. The moment training is done by people other than GUE instructors then they lose control of that standard, and the standard really is the core of it all, if that starts getting diluted it’s all over. That’s why GUE instructors are continually examined to ensure they are still adhering to the standard. Ant yet….it helped me, but I was lucky enough to be taught the correct drills. So I dunno.

So what’s next. For me, months of training lie ahead, getting these drills nailed. And then I’ll start hassling Andy to train for tech1, and by then I suspect Chasey and Boggie will have passed fundies and we might have a team coming together. Daz, I’m afraid is a little fiery for me. Must be all the curries.

So, thanks to Rich for being a top instructor, Dave for never losing his cool, Andy for being a superb buddy, and all the rest of the team for a great laugh and a great course.