Wilbo takes Tech 1

Yep.. and about time too!

I joined up with Matt G and Rich G to take Tech 1 with Rich Walker down in Plymouth from the 6th to the 10th September.. The weather played havoc with us and this meant that we were unable to complete the course within the 5 day alloted time.. 

This was a real disappointment to everyone and meant we would need to meet up with Rich to do our experience dives.  As the 3 of us have busy lives - it meant that it would be several months before we could all get together to do the experience dives together - so we conferred and decided that it was best for me to get my experience dives out of the way.. So I did. On the 21st September, I met up with the chimp's very own Badger (himself already Tech 1) who ably buddied me and enabled me not to cock it up. Top bloke.

At the end of the second dive Rich gets Badgers attention and made a 'T' sign followed by a '1' and points to me. Click. It sinks in.. Joy.. Oh the Joy.. :) One happy simian.

Garf turns to the dark side

Hot news off the press is that I am joining Eastbourne BSAC to dive with them, and possibly do some PADI training for their members. They seem like a great bunch, and I am looking forward to doing some of the shallower stuff with them from the club rib.

First dive was this Saturday, and between a small group of us we brought up a couple of crabs, a huge (and very tasty) Brill, and an engine maker's plate. Not a bad haul for a ten minute rib out of Eastbourne harbour and a very pleasant introduction to diving with the club.

Tech 2 Course Report: Day 6: The Final Day

Tech 2 thoughts

So, here we are on the last day of the course. The final dive as to 70 metres, and was planned and executed perfectly, or at least good enough for all of us to be deemed suitably skilled to qualify as Tech 2 divers. We were told we had passed the copurse during the 6 metre stop, so there were some leaky masks from all the smiles for the rest of the stop!. Tech 2 has been my most fascinating experience with GUE to date. The previous course, Tech1, was more endured than enjoyed. I learnt a great deal from Andy Kerslake, and still rate him very highly as an instructor, but realise that I was incredibly stressed throughout the entirety of the course, something I had expected to be magnified at the Tech2 level, but something I was suprised to find is not true.

Tech1 represents a significant change in skills. A fundamentals diver is limited to 30 metres, with no decompression, and may never have carried a stage. A Tech1 diver has 50 metres within their grasp, potentially carrying one of two available decompression gases, and a runtime of 90 minutes in the water. This is an enourmous change in diving, and so the course has to raise the bar of the student's skillsets to meet these challenges. Tech2 is different. The failures that you are given on Tech2 are no more complex than those on Tech1. In fact, they are, by and large, the same things, as there is only so much that can be failed. Yes, there is more equipment to be carried and managed in the form of additional decompression gases and bottom stages. And yes, this does give the instructor more scope for generating failures. However, whereas Tech1 represents a significant change in skill, it is presumed at Tech2 that those skills are now firmly embedded, and it is an attitude, or indeed awareness change that has to happen at Tech2. No longer can you rush in and just fix something and move on. The Now it takes a moment after everyone can breathe to think your way through the dive and determine how the failure, and any fix you have put in place, will manifest themselves as bottles are changed and regs are switched. In addition, communication throughout the team becomes critical so that everyone knows what is working, and indeed what is not, on every diver's rig. So, what is built on a Tech2 course is not buoyancy skills, but awareness, capacity, and finesse through the ascent. the buoyancy skills must be in place, unconsious, or you simply cannot get through the course. If you have to think about buoyancy when task loaded then you're not going to get through Tech2.

Being around people like Rich Walker and Rich Lundgren is also a fascinating experience. They are both highly competent divers, and both highly competent educators. Both are passionate about GUE without being exclusionist. Forget your image of the GUE instructor unwilling to listen to new ideas or concepts. These guys are researching and reading everything that comes out to see how it might affect their diving, and you're going to struggle to find many people who know more about decompression. Rich Walker has spent 20 years in academics creating models of what happens to the human body in certain situations. As you can imagine, this gives him an interesting perspective on decompression models. We've picked up plenty of the most recent thoughts in decompression, diving practices, safety, exploration and research, which has made for conversations late into the evening. They are also, it has to be said, just phenomenal in the water.

finally, the course is a good laugh. Tech1 will make or break a team. By Tech2, the team must be in place, so from this perspecitve everyone just relaxes and has a good laugh. Howard and Gareth have become good friends of mine, and as we begin the process of planning the dive today, I know that I've had a bloody good laugh with some good mates.

Tech 2 Course Report: Day 5

Day 5

Imagine my suprise when we woke with a fully grown Hippopotamus amphibius in the room. As the room swam into focus I realised that although there was indeed an enormous mammal in the room, it was merely howard snoring. I checked to make sure my fillings were all in place, and staggered down to the breakfast room in self defence, with GLOC just a moment behind me.

The plan today was to do three 40 metre dives, each once requiring changes in ascent rate, bottle rotations, and multiple gas switches. At any point, Rich was of course free to mess with us and induce failures for us to manage. "Manage" is the appropriate word now. Problems requiring thinking through rather than just a fast response, as a hasty action that seems to work now might cause you further problems later on down the line. With the training dives only giving us ten minutes on the bottom and ascent times of approximately 15 minutes, our aim was to ensure the ascents were as smooth as possible.

To goal for the day was to ensure that we stayed together as a team, as in elbows touching in a triangle of three if possible, at exactly the same depth, and breathing the right gases at all times, whilst obviously ensuring the ascents kept to time.

The three dives were all pretty similar. Ten minutes or thereabouts at the depth of 40 metres, with failures going on. There were failed isolators, failed bottom stages, failed right posts, failed left posts. Some were fixable, some were not. We had to remember who had what failed so we knew who could donate gas and who couldn't and who was the potential weak point in the team, re-ordering the team accordingly. Without going through every dive, I'll do the last one, as it was challenging one.

Descend to 6 metres on a mix we were simulating to be almost hypoxic, so fast down to 6 metres. There switch to bottom stage, and perform a bubble check. All good. down we go. 20 metres per minute. At the bottom - 40 metres, swim along the wall, GLOCS left post fails. Howard's torch fails. Re-order the team. Howard goes into fix GLOC whilst I provide a visual reference for buoyancy control. Very, very dark. GLOC sorted, swim on. GLOC's bottom stage runs out. He tell us and the team switches to backgas. Howard's suit inflation bottle runs dry. My iolator fails. Howard's in there to check whilst GLOC provides reference. As it's the isolator I know what's coming. I go out of gas. GLOC donates. I thumb the dive. Up fast in a triangle to 30 metres. Slow the ascent from 9 metres per minute to 6 metres per minute. up to 21 metres. Me back onto my own bottle of 50%. GLOC and howard switch to 50%. I bag up. Still at 21 metres. GLOC and Howard rotate bottles. I pass bag to Howard. I start rotation, but it's now time to move. I rotate the bottles on the move between 21 metres and 18 metres. GLOCs 50% bottle runs out. He switches to backgas and tells the team to extend the deco stops. Howard's 50% bottle runs out. He does the same. My 50% bottle runs out. We're now at 9 metres. Switch the team to backgas ready for the O2 switch. 6 metres. GLOC switches to Oxygen. howard passes him Bag. Howard switches to O2. I switch to O2. 3 minute stop. 2 minutes to surface at 3 metres per minute. Break surface and swim back to pontoon for debriefing.

Now, back in the B&B having watched the video self assessed, we're going down the pub for a pint.

We must be doing something right, the two Richards are letting us go to 70 metres tomorrow. Either that or they just plan to leave us there and let natural selection judge us. Whatever the above sounds like, it is not in any way " a beasting". The whole point is that it is not stressed, and there is a time-out signal if we feel overloaded anyway. We're here to learn, and learning we are, as well as having a good laugh all the way through the week. Yes, we have progressed an awful lot during a short space of time, but then we have the attention of two very competent divers and instructors, so that's hardly suprising.

Tech 2 Course Report: Day 4

Day 4

Very, very short report today. My head hurts. We did swim tests, we passed swim tests. We talked abotu decompression strategies. We took an exam, in fact we took 4 bloody exams. We planned 70 metre dives. We planned 100 metre dives. We talked about Oxygen Windows, counter diffusion, new directions in decompression strategies. We talked support divers and ommitted deco plans. We talked in water recompression.

then we mixed a lot of gas. Sorry, a LOT OF GAS. This was to cover us for the remainder of the course, which is a couple of dives to 60 metres and a couple of dives to 70 metres. Once we had all the gas we could lay our grubby chimp mits on, we decamped from Plymouth and headed back to the B&B in chepstow, ready for a busy day in the NDAC tomorrow.

Meanwhile I swam into a bulkhead and bashed my nose and forehead. Then I took enough painkillers to wipe out a small country, and painted my face in liquid plaster. I guess I'll have to wait and see how things look tomorrow.

Tech 2 Course Report: Day 3

Day 3

you remember the scene in the Matrix when Neo is being shown "the world as it is today". The sky is dark and evil, constant storms rage, lightening bolts split the sky, everything looks imposing and dreadful. Looking at the weather reports for the day, that's pretty much how I expected to find Plymouth when I woke up this morning. Contrary to my expectations however, the day appeared to be fairly tolerable. the promised "wind from hell" had not appeared, and I had high hopes of getting in the water.

so, off we trotted down to Aquanauts, and leapt onto the boat. Once again we had aquanaut to ourselves, and young Joe as a deck bitch. 3 stages diving requires the strength of Atlas, or in the lack of superhuman arms and legs, a deck bitch. They ony need to achieve one thing, and that's connect the 3rd bottle onto the correct place on the hip D ring. You'd think that's the least of jobs, a mere trifle. And yet we were incredibly grateful to have Joe doing this, as he consistently put it into the correct spot and handed up the bottle at precisely the right moment. It was a sunny morning, and we were dropped in right next to the old fort inside the wall. Outside the wall, carnage was raging. We had put in a fairly tight shotline to give us a visual reference, and dropped down it to begin the planned dive. Down to 6 metres, where Rich wanted to see set piece demonstrations of valve and S drills". We did our best, and put in what I thought was a good performance. we then all did a double bottle rotation, whilst moving the team around the shot to try and provide some break from the current for the person doing the rotation. This worked really well. In terms of team positioning, we were now getting used to doing drills and descending/ ascending in a triangle. Close enough so that your elbows are touching every now and again. what we were adding into the mix now was a little more finesse on the drills and station keeping. We had been moving plus or minus half a metre, and Rich wanted to see the teams together at all times. Once we had doen the bottle rotations, we then ascended for a debrief. Rich decided he was happy with the progress, and we descended to the bottom so that he could mess with us. Having no other option, we lined off from the shot, as there was a current running and we had to return to it. I laid the line, with GLOc and Howard following. Rich descended intermittently and failed right posts, bottom stages, and the like, and problems were thought out and dealt with. This is an area we were developing. We were learning not to rush into sorting the problem you can breathe with a leaking post, and there's plenty of gas in the team. Think about how does this affect the rest of the dive, and then put in place the best solution, which might be one of several. Then re-order the time, and rearrange the dive accordingly.

We laid line for a little while until Rich gave us a failure requiring us to call the dive and swim back along the line. Basically, he put GLOc out of GAs. with Howard donating from the 3rd man position, and myself leading, we sandwiched GLOC in the middle, we left the line in place and swam back along it to the shotline. At the shotline, we stowed the bottom stages and switched back to backgas. up to the first stop depth and we switched to the 21 metre bottles. Once we were all on the 21 metre bottle, we all did bottle rotations and began the ascent through the intermediate stops. Howard bagged up. At 9 metres, we swapped back to our backgas ready for the move to Oxygen. Up to 6 metres and Onto the O2 for 3 minutes simulated deco. Rich came in and congratulated us, and then informed us We were to swap back to our bottom stages, boogie back down to 8 metres, and do the whole ascent again. Which we did.

this time we surfaced, and it was obvious that wind, current and chop were all picking up. i stowed the O2 bottle and cleaned myself up. At that moment I suffered a catestrophic loss of fabulousness. The top of the corrugated wing inflator hose seperated from the plastic connector at the top of the wing. this had the effect of dumping my wing instantly, and the 3 heavy stages dragged me underwater immediately. Arse. I popped my backgas reg back in my mouth, closed the suit and inflated it. As I stabilised at about 1.5 metres GLOC arrived and hauled me to the surface. Then everyone else arrived, and I just lay on my back as i was inflated like an SMb, my stages and anything remotely heavy clipped to me was quickly removed and distributed to the other divers. It was no drama. The worst that could have happened is that I could have been sitting ont he seabed at ten metres thinking "arse, I'm going to have to bag up and connect the stages to the line so they can be hauled up". This little incident ended the diving for the morning, so we headed back in for lunch. Debrief on the boat, and everyone was pleased with the performance so far. the plan was to get back in, grab some food, and head out again in a couple of hours once the various failures had been repaired.

So, 3pm in the afternoon, and TFT are heading back to sea. The plan this time was to drop to about 30 metres, so we could do the ascent with the bottle switches in the right place - 21 metres and 6 metres. This was, in Rich Lundgren's words, "the most challenging Tech2 conditions he had ever seen". We jumped into a faily calm sea to find a raging, swirling current. At about 20 metres God turned the lights out. We got to 30 metres and didnt find a bottom. The viz was les than a metre and it was very very black. Rich decided that conditions were just not up to the course, and called the dive. At this point God turned out two of the teams 3 HIDs, leaving me with the only remaining light. As we were there, we did bottle rotations whilst hanging onto the washing line, and switched at 21 metres, feeling along the hoses from the 2nd stages to the bottles to ensure teammates were switching to the right gas. There was a definite lack of pretty, but everything was functional, and we hit the surface when we were suppoed to, give or take a minute.

Back to Aquanauts, and its now 6pm. Time for theory then. Decompression strategies, decompression illness. It went on through the early evening and continued over dinner. We wrapped up about 2130 and headed back to the B&B. Bearing in mind the abysmal weather forecast, we canned the rest of the week in Plymouth. The plan now is to finalise theory and swim tests and administration and exams etc tomorrow, and then spend two days at the NDAC working up to the 70 metre dive on the deep day. Having tried the salt water, and having been spat out by the sea, we had decided to head back inland to a quarry to lick our wounds.

Tech 2 Course Report: Day 2

Day Two

After decamping from the NDAC last night and driving to Plymouth, we had high hopes for a week's diving in the sea for a change. Alas, it was not to be. It was, to be fair, blowing it's nadgers off today in Plymouth, with the forecast for the week getting worse and worse. However, seeing as we had the boat to ourselves we went out anyway, especially as we only needed 10 metres of water.

so we dropped into a ridiculous current, in terrible viz, and attempted to hold station carrying 9 stages between the three of us, and perform v drills, S drills and bottle rotations. A few steps into my valve drill Howard had had enough and called the dive. I did a flow check of all my valves (now including the three bottles and the argon bottle) and we ascended. On the surface it was clear that Rich was having as hard a time watching us as we were performing, but we decided to try and get in closer to the fort and see if the current eased up. It just didn't happen. After a little while, the dive was called and we got back on the boat. Getting off and on the boat is a bit ttoo much like hard work to be buggering about in 10 metres. Howard suggested that we skip the remainder of the course and jump immediately in on the Affric at 70 metres, with the logic that anyone that survived the dive should be given an automatic pass. Luckily for us, Rich decided that this would probably not be the best of plans, so we headed back to Aquanauts to make the mst of the remainder of the day by covering theory.

So, into the classroom we went, and discussed minimum deco as it is affected by having a bottom stage. strategies for different bottles including the use of additional deep deco mixes, and how these affect minimum gas. Tech2 adds a level fo complexity in the theory to the point where there simply are no right or wrong answers. there certianly is no GUE big book of rules about how deco is conducted or how gas strategy is managed. Rich simply enabled us to discuss all the options and come to our own conclusions. This course is all about making you think for yourself, rather than try and provide you with answers. It was a very interesting discussion, and moved onto decompression illness and oxygen toxicity, and what options are available - or indeed simply not available- when things occur at different depths. For the example, GUE's approach to Oxygen management is that the only gas on which we ever push the PPO2 to 1.6 is Oxygen at 6 metres. In a freakish coincidence, we train to lift unconscious divers from 6 metres. The deeper the decompression mix, the lower the Max PPo2 is on it. none of them reach 1.6. The discussion went along the lines of that we reckon we'd have a fair shot of lifting a toxing diver from the shallows, but the toxing diver at 70 metres is probably going to die. This took the discussion back to the reasoning why we are so anal about gas analysis and the gas switching procedure requiring a team authorisation as the final check in about 6 to make sure the gas is safe for that depth. We discussed how to handle hypoxic mixes when getting on and off the boat, and why we always ascend on Oxygen, and never on backgas.
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The discussion moved around the managagement of gases to the treatment of bends, and current thoughts on immediate treatment of DCI with heliox rather than Oxygen. The two Riches wee bang up to date with the lastest research emerging in the area of decompression, and as all three of us find the topic fascinating, this went on for some time. we also discussed tweaking and playing with the deco, what areas can be played with, and what areas should be left alone. We planned out a 100 metre dive, reminding us that Tech2 gives you a set of tools you can use to risk analyse and plan pretty much any Ocean Dive, rather than being a fixed set of rules to be obeyed. More and more, the message was "what would you guys do and here's some ideas to choose from", rather than "this is the way we do it".

The discussion continued over dinner, although the weather made frequent visits to the list of topics on the table. The weather does not look good for the remainder of the course. The plan for tomorrow was to do 2 dives, a shallow skills dive to 10 metres, and then a progression to 25 metres where Rich could mess with us, and see more of an ascent. Personally, I don't think we're going to have any more joy tomorrow than we did today diving wise, but we're learning a lot anyway, and having fun.

Tech 2 Course Report: Day 1

Day 1.

Well, either GUE has undergone a fundamental shift in it’s approach to training, or at the very least the UK training director has a very different style than this team has encountered previously. Previously, various members of this team have been threatened with verbal assassination, clubbing with a stick, and on one memorable day, stabbing by Tech instructors in the past. Not anymore. Now, the instructions is more of a specialised coaching. The instructors listen, and give individual guidance. The course is more about you and your requirements, albeit within the usual strict performance requirements of a GUE course.

But then, Tech2 is a bit of a weird course. There is a depth limit on the qualification, but the course gives you the tools to plan and execute pretty much any open circuit dive you care to invest the time and energy in. The drills described in the course materials are there as guidelines, and are modified by the instructors to suit your specific learning needs. The course materials themselves are well prepared, and reviewed by most of the senior team at GUE. We got the feeling that at the Tech2 level, we were being brought more into the fold than previously. It’s a fascinating experience.

Anyway, we all rocked up at the NDC to do the first day. Richard Lundren (RL) is the official instructor, and so did the official safety briefings and introduction to the course. As Rich Walker (RW) was interning on the course, he would be delivering most of the actual content under the ever watchful eye of RL, with RL chipping in here and there to add a different perspective, or give the benefit of his frankly ludicrous amount of diving experience.

On land, we walked through gas switching and stowing procedures. These were obviously the same as at Tech1 level. Well, not quite. Whilst the procedure was obviously identical, there was a great deal more finesse put into it, with checks and balances here and there, all designed to reduce the risk of swapping to the wrong gas when you have a potentially large number of bottles clipped to you. We went through it mentally a few times before moving on. We then discussed how to handle multiple bottles. RW has a great style of doing this, which I remembered from my fundamentals course with him. Contrary to popular belief, GUE instructors by and large do not say “Do things this way because I say so”. What they, and especially RW do is to let the group discuss it, and use the benefit of experience to point out potential flaws in your argument. Pretty soon we had come to the ideal solution( to fit in with the rest of the DIR configuration and procedures obviously) for wearing two bottles, and a leash containing one or more other bottles. We then had quite a discussion about how all of these boltsnaps should be arranged on chest and hip d rings, which I guess sounds like overkill until you try it in the water and realise that unless you do have a robust solution for doing it, usually means you end up cross-clipping things and getting into a nightmare of stress.

We then talked about how to rotate deco bottles, to bring bottles off the leash and onto you, and take bottles off you and onto the leash. Again, a robust procedure, which we practiced out of the water for a while, and spent the rest of the day doing in the water. For those interested, a summary might be unclip the tail of the stage you want to put on the leash, and unclip the leash whilst your hand is already back there. Bring the leash to your front. Unclip the nose of the stage you want to put on the leash, and clip it onto the leash. Now unclip the bottle that was already on the leash, and nose clip it to your chest d ring. Finally, take the leasg round and clip it onto your hip, and tail clip the stage whilst your hand is there. To those that think that sounds complicated, it’s done with a minimum of movement, and makes a lot more sense when you see it. To those to whom that sounds simple, remember you can’t see much of what is happening on your hip, and moving all of these bottles around plays holy hell with buoyancy and trim.

Ahh buoyancy. Deep joy. We all struggled with that today. 3 heavy bottles attached – more gas in the wing. That meant it dumped from the wing quicker. So coming up to stops , we had to relearn how much gas todump to bring you to a stop without overshooting it or dumping too much. This took a couple of dives, and is something we need to keep working on.

Once all of the theory was out of the way, we jumped in for a 2 and a half hour dive. We descended to 6 metres and did valve drills and S drills. Again RW was looking for more finesse. Now cam our first bottle rotation and ascent. Well, we didn’t hit the surface, but I got lost in the procedure and just stressed out. We recovered it but it wasn’t by any means pretty. Descend again, and this time we go to ten metres, and start laying line. Like Tech1, the line laying is a distraction to give you something to do, rather than keep a concerned eye on the instructor. Mr bubble gun appeared several times and made things fail. Right posts failed, left posts failed, deco bottles failed, stage bottles failed. Masks disappeared, people went out of air. It was Tech1 all over again, but with more bottles. And considerably less stress. I suspect partly the lack of stress is down to the fact that we have moved on as divers since Tech1. But part of it is definitely the more relaxed teaching style.

Once RW was satisfied he couldn’t fail anything else, we went into an ascent.

8 metres. Start the clock. Wait 1 minute, move to 7 metres. Wait one minute. Move to 6 metres. Switch team to 21 metre bottle. 3 minutes deco during which to do the bottle rotation. Wait 1 minute. Move to 4 metres. Switch back to backgas ready for the switch to Oxygen. . Stow the 21metre bottle hose. Move to 3 metres. Switch to Oxygen. 3 mins deco. Clear up hoses, tidy up lightcords. 1 minute at 2 metres. 1 minute at 1 metre. Surface.

That became our ascent for the day, and we did it several times. At one point RL stepped in and said we needed some more time doing rotations. So we dropped to 6 metres and just rotated. And rotated, and rotated. At the beginning of the dives the rotations were just terrible, but got smoother and smoother as we went on. Partly this was us just getting better and better at it. But partly it was breathing down the bottom stage, as moving an AL80 full of nitrox onto a leash in front of you is a nightmare as it is so heavy. On a real multi bottle mix dive, it would be full of mix rather than nitrox and would behave very differently.

5 o clock and we left the water for a debrief. RW announced there was enough there for him to work with. Tech1 skills were there but rusty and the bottle rotations had improved during the course of the day. Plan for the next day would be more finesse of V and S drills, and tighten teamwork during failures and ascents. This was no surprise to us, as we had a pretty good idea of what had gone well and what needed some work.

On the last GUE course I did I sat in my car at the end of the first day and gave serious consideration to giving up and driving home. This time, I can’t wait for tomorrow to begin. Apparently, we’re going to dive in something called “the sea” tomorrow. This will all be very new to us, but that’s what courses are for I guess.

The chimps tackle T2

Well this week sees the Chimps (well GLOC, Garf and Howard) tackle Tech 2 with Rich Lundgren and Rich Walker down in Plymouth. Will 5 days of full on beasting and dive theory take its toll on their fabulousness? We will have to see...