Class report: GUE Tech1, 10/24-10/26 in High Springs 10/31-11/2 in FTL & Ocala

Photos: http://www.geocities.com/tiswango/1026tech1/

Reports on all the dives leading up to the class are archived by month and posted at:

www.tiswango.blogspot.com

After booking this class back in September and thinking about it since May, it was finally time. Thursday night Charlie and I were jacked up on excitement and hauled booty up north making it to the Cadillac Motel. We arrived in High Springs at 11:50 PM in 4.5 hours with one stop for fuel at the Okahumpka service plaza. I assumed that cave diving would mean not having to worry about creatures; instead of being in the water, they are running across the road. Sorry there Mr. Raccoon, Darwin calling.

Friday 10/24

We met Tyler at Extreme Exposure for the first class at 9:30 AM. It made for a very long day. We covered the basics of the DIR Fundamentals class. We reviewed situational awareness, gas management, dive planning, oxygen maladies, equivalent air depth, oxygen handling, mixing, analysis and labeling. The coolest thing I learned was a deeper appreciation of standard gasses and being able to figure out the numbers for partial pressure filling in my head. Fill Express' banked gas is just gravy.

Saturday 10/25

From 10 AM to 2 PM Charlie and I went to Ginnie for some cavern diving. See my other report for those details.

Buck had to drive to Tallahassee for his FWC fitness check out. We met at EE around 4 PM, topped off the tanks, and headed to Ginnie for practice dives. Buck and Charlie teamed up and I teamed up with Stacy; she was a Tech 1 student in progress. We practiced all of our drills swimming down the run at Ginnie in 6 ft of water. Once Tyler hopped in we got to do them again without mask to practice leading a dependent diver around.

While there was still light, Tyler demonstrated how to switch to a deco bottle. The process was easy: depth, id, valve and remove hose. Then depth, id, valve, purge, turn on and breathe. After a couple of switches we settled down in the Devil’s Eye to shoot lift bags. Tyler demonstrated how to shoot the closed circuit bag and the open bag. Then we hung out at the bottom shooting the bags while he deflated them on the surface. I was trying to hit Tyler with my bag, so I got an added problem to solve. After 5 times, Tyler told me to take off my mask and ascend using the lift bag. I had a hard time maintaining my depth because of the technique I was using to wind the spool up. I would pull out 3-4 feet of line and wrap. Tyler taught us to make small loops and keep the line tight. Then we know if the line is loose, dump gas; if we are hanging on the line, we are too heavy. It replaced the information usually taken in by our eyes. At 9 PM in pitch blackness, it was time to get out and call it a night.

Sunday 10/26

We met at EE; topped off the tanks; and got psyched up for the long training dive in the Ginnie Ballroom. First we were to do a cavern dive with the same teams as yesterday. There were two cavern classes going on and two cavern teams inside. It was busy. Every time we went in, there were hordes of divers coming out. We finally made our placements inside the cave and headed in. Stacy went to the grate and then went to the cave area to the left. I found an area to pop up in and saw the hundreds of cyalume sticks up on the ceiling. I had some trouble turning around and Tyler caught some hand fanning on film. I should have pushed off from a rock instead of swatting cave flies. He told Stacy to end the dive, and then her light went out. I put her into the lead position on the way out. It was an easy dive. Before exiting the cavern, I found Tyler to make sure my mask was not going to disappear on me. Tyler was sizing us up.

After a quick debrief, we started our rescue drills. We learned a new technique for bringing an unconscious diver to the surface. We each practiced this 3 times each. I was such a good actor, one of the open water divers swam by with eyes wide open and gave me a weak questioning "ok". I responded with an ok and a smile as I was rescued. We practiced switching to our stage bottles and running through a complete valve drill with Tyler watching. This was the only valve drill we did in the whole class. Several times Tyler repeated that he would not be touching our valves during the class.

Now we were ready for another cavern dive into the Ballroom. There were fewer people inside which made life easier. We took the same route and Stacy lost her primary light in almost the same spot. I stayed looking at her with mine until it went out, too. We were in complete darkness. This got my heart beating. I hesitated between going for the line or the back-up light. I grabbed the line as Stacy got her light on. I deployed my light and we thumbed the dive. I started out and Stacy reeled in, at 4 ft we found our line… it was cut. Now my heart was beating; my mind hit the red in RPMs thinking "We're lost". Granted, all I had to do was turn around to see the exit. I searched and found the end of the line. I held both ends and lit the area for Stacy to tie it together. She couldn't. I tied a quick knot that wouldn't hold, but it got a few loops on the reel and got us headed on our way out.

On the way, I noticed a lack of light; I turned and found a flashing light. I swam right up to Stacy and she was still flashing, but there wasn't anything wrong. I was about to ask her a question when she gave me out of air. We shared and I put her in the 3 o'clock position. She locked the reel and left it; we swam out. After we cleared the entrance and I felt the satisfaction of escaping death, I felt a rush of water in my face. Oh yeah, open water less than 30ft is fair game for masks and mine was gone. I signaled Stacy and she brought me up nice and easy. On the surface I opened my eyes with a big smile; these are the dives we love!

Back on the surface we did a quick debrief. Charlie and Buck didn't lock and leave the reel when they were sharing air. They couldn't figure why Tyler kept cutting the line in front of them. Too funny! Now it was back to opening of the Ballroom to shoot lift bags some more. After three more times I took my mask off and practiced my ascent with small wraps of line on the spool, it worked like a charm.

Tyler was out and dressed when it came time for the final drill: ditch and don doubles at the surface, floating comfortably, without breathing a regulator. William A. told me the secret to this drill: putting your gauges in your pocket so there was nothing to catch on the harness straps. I was in and out with ease. At the end of the day Tyler was supposed to make us swim the run at Ginnie. The water is so cold we convinced him we would be happy to swim in a real pool in FTL.

After we packed up the gear, we had a verbal review of the last dive and Q&A session. We pulled out of Ginnie at 7 PM for the drive home. I was home at 11:50 PM

Friday 10/31

After watching the weather go from bad to worse all week I was concern about the state of the deep ocean dives. I called Jerry at Parrot Island to cancel my reservation and he said the report was 5-7 and the seas were 6-8! NOAA underestimated, whoa, look out for flying pigs! Tyler and Dave Sweetin showed up at 11 AM and we set up a classroom complete with white board in Charlie's dinning room. Tyler's LCD projector and PowerPoint made the classroom training much more focused and easy to digest. He also has a visual example to illustrate all the key points. The guy is sharp!

Now we were getting into the good stuff! We spent hours on the benefits of helium and decompression basics. Then we got the full history of deco theory and reviewed the latest information on bubble mechanics. Tyler made it clear that there isn't much "science" to decompression. First we learned the theory and history, and then we would learn to implement the "Art" and "Strategy" of deco. He gave us a good appreciation of how much isn't really "known" about deco. Dive computers and deco programs give us a feeling of control or power; that's really an illusion because we just don't know. My brain was fried!

We finished at 6 PM in order to make it to the International Swimming Hall of Fame for our swim test. Then Buck reminded us that it was the boat show weekend and parking was $50 around there! Now Tyler was thinking we really were afraid of the swim test. Back up plan was the pool by Coral Reef Scuba off University. We got there at 7 PM to find that the 7-8 PM swim was cancelled and the pool was closed because the life guards wanted to go home early. Foiled again! New plan was to meet here at 9 AM for the swim and then finish the lecture at Charlie's.

Saturday 11/1

We met at 9 AM; the lifeguards let us in at 9:20 AM for free. I knocked out the 300 meter with 6 laps in 6 minutes 27 seconds. Well within time, yet beaten by several seconds by Charlie's power breaststroke. A quick run to Dunkin' Donuts for some coffee and then the big lecture on "Deco on the Fly." After reviewing all the rules for doing it in our heads, we ran some tables in deco planner to see how close we came. Amazing! Then we learned all the tips and tricks needed to edit the profiles from the computer to take out the guess work and make it art. Finally, since DIR divers dive as a team, and though you brain is the number one failure point, we were allowed to take the test as a team and solve the problems. Tyler and Dave took off and headed home to Alachua.

At 4 PM we loaded up Buck's van with 6 sets of doubles filled with 30/30 and 21/35 plus gear. We motored north to Ocala to spend the night and get ready for Sunday's dive at Hal's Hole. The drive was enjoyable as Buck had every DIR, WKPP, and Halcyon video ever published in the van with a 10" TV and VCR. After watching to videos featuring clips from Sally Ward, Cave 2 just went up on the priority list for the next training. We shacked up at a Ho-Jo off the interstate and started copying 30/30 air tables into our wet notes for the day ahead.

Sunday 11/2

We arrived at 9 AM sharp after getting lost on the country roads and streets listed on my Yahoo Map. I called Hal and he got us right there. Forty Fathoms Grotto has the same look and feel as the Dive Outpost. It's several small buildings with the exception of the large hole off to the right. Hal Watts came out and greeted us with big smile and hearty "Hello!" We filled out the waivers and learned that we were customers of Tyler and that Tyler and Hal would settled up the bill at the end of the day. Tyler also had to be "checked out" to lead our training dives. A quick review of paperwork took care of that. Josh from EE also came to video our class and he was also a guide for the Grotto.

We humped all our gear down about 4 flights of steps to Pontoon 1 where we would gear up. The bubblers that clear off the duck weed were turned off as Hal was replacing a dock and the other class wanted the "darker effect" of the duck weed reducing the ambient light.

On the dock were 4-6 students also taking a Trimix class. They said they were diving to 160 ft. After doing the site check, the mess of gear all around was scary. Every type of clip, stage rigging, hose, wing, marking, and color known to divers was present. One O2 bottle had a green jacket on it. Tyler did a good job of explaining how when the system works its fine, you know it’s O2. But when the system fails, regulator not in the jacket, you don't know your O2 from your 50% bottle. Breathing the wrong gas at deco is how tech divers are killing themselves. The GUE MOD sticker identifying the bottle can't fail, unless the sticker fell off, and then you wouldn't breathe it.

During the first class Tyler clearly demonstrated how easy it would be to grab the wrong regulator during a gas switch. But that won't happen since we are only carrying one bottle, I argued in vain. Then at the dock Tyler pointed out that he and Josh both had yellow AL 40s, with identical stage regulators and pressure gauges rigged exactly the same. How easy would it have been to pull and clip off Josh's O2 bottle and not Tyler's 50% bottle? A cave diver died while dropping deco gas because he put the 50% at 20ft and the 100% at 70ft on the way in. He didn't ID the bottle before breathing it at 70ft, toxed, and died. He only had one bottle on him. That drove the point home: Even one bottle can kill you!

As for the other class, I thought to myself, “At least they are breathing the long hose.“ Then one of the students was complaining about having too many cords and hoses around his neck and he wasn't going to put the long hose there. He worked out some way to stuff it and breathe his back up for the class. All hope lost again.

This class was heading in the water as we went up to work out our dive plan. Tyler ran us through all the numbers. Did we have enough back gas for our dive plan? Did we have enough deco gas? What was our CNS, OTUs, Rock Bottom, and deco schedule? At least we didn't have to know who the 36th President was! (LBJ) Since the gun was loaded, we would switch to 50% at 50ft so there was a 20ft margin of error. He also explained that if someone was out of mask, the team should switch his gas for him AFTER they have switched themselves. Just like the drill on the airplane: Secure your mask before helping others.

Dive 1: Forty Fathoms Grotto

Time: 11:35 AM
Team order: Matt (lead), Charlie (deco), Buck (lift bag and run reel)
Depth: 99ft
Max BT: 20 minutes
Bottom Time: 15 minutes
Mix: 30/30
Ascent: 18 minutes
Deco gas: 50%, switch at 50ft
Rock Bottom: 1300 PSI
Temp: 71 degrees
Visibility: 20 ft
Deco: 70/1 60/1 50/1 40/1 30/1 20/1 10/1 Total: 7 minutes

We ran through the equipment check on the surface and headed for the water. Tyler and Josh were already in the water and Tyler asked us to bring him his mask which was still sitting on the bench *grin*. I teased him a little bit to make sure this would be a "good" dive. The bubbles from the other divers cleared all the duck weed off the surface for us. We did an S-drill, surfaced and Josh pointed out which rope to use on descent. We choose "wing on wing" formation instead of single file so that we could keep track of each other better. Everyone was descending slowly, so I slowed down to keep the team tight. It took us 7 minutes to hit 99ft. At the bottom the visibility went to 20 ft and it was dark. The rope we followed was tied to an old style satellite dish, which was tied to the wing of the Piper aircraft to our right. There were ropes all over the place; it looked like a cross between a junk yard and the monkey cage at the zoo. I understand the need to put something there for people to see, but I guess I'm too much a cave diver and enjoy the natural look of things.

I followed another rope over to the 25ft boat which is resting on a tree at 115 ft. When I hit the boat with my light I couldn't see it, moving the light away it would reappear. Very spooky. I made another right and headed over to the two person sub. There were dummies in the sub which made the scene surreal for some reason. I started to wish I had less helium in the mix and a little more "Nitrogen Bravery." We continued a little further to an old car that is upside down on the bottom.

At this point I was bored and gestured to Buck to practice running the reel. Buck was confused as I should have been running the reel for the team, but I thought Tyler wanted us to practice in the class. As Buck got the reel out and made a placement, Tyler's light appeared out of the darkness and signaled me OOA. I shared with Charlie, Buck secured the reel and I shot the exit back to the radar dish and ascent line about 10 ft away. On the line we started up and I was attacked by the jaws of the mask stealing serpent and became the dependent diver at about 75ft. So now I'm sharing gas without a mask. I had the line in my right hand and Charlie controlling my buoyancy by my right hand thumb.

At 70ft I started counting seconds in my head, calm and relaxed. Then we headed to 60ft, then to 50 ft. At the stop I could feel Buck on my left pulling out my deco reg. Wow, had he and Charlie switched already? With regulator in hand, I switched and was no longer sharing gas. I counted off one minute, then two minutes and put my thumb up signaling "Hey guys, time to go up to the next stop?" Charlie set me back to neutral. After another minute I put my thumb up again and Charlie set it to neutral. After what "seemed" to be a long time, we finally went up to the next stop. I thought, "Crap, we are going to get nailed for solving problems at depth and not moving up!" I resisted getting angry and just went with the flow. What was I going to do about it?

As we moved up, at the 40ft stop, Buck gave Charlie the lift bag signal and proceeded to shoot his closed circuit bag. It was a perfect shot that hit the 15ft safety bar right in the middle; it’s a 1 in a million chance of doing this! As we continued to move up, and now in the presence of daylight, Charlie turned off his primary light and tucked it in. He was able to reach over my light cord loop, recover the reel, and clip it off to his butt D-ring. As I felt that light tug, I realized that I had something dangling out, and now I correctly tucked in my light cord under my waist belt. Buck followed and turned off his back-up light and clipped it off his chest D-ring

Once we finished our 20ft stop, we moved up and saw that the lift bag was caught at the 15ft safety bar, forming a lovely heart. Buck gave it a tug and freed it up, and as soon as he finished doing this, the underwater serpent appeared again, and this time cutting the lift bag’s line... oops, no reference! As soon as Buck and Charlie looked at each other with a “What now?” expression on their face, Charlie saw how Buck surrendered his mask to the serpent. I felt some movement around me. Then my hand went to Charlie's face and felt no mask. The evil serpent had made its final strike: All three of us were with no mask and no lift bag reference!

Charlie signaled me up and my dubs banged the bottom of the pontoon. Good thing for good trim; That could have been my head! I was pulled right and then felt my back break the surface and I went upright. We lived!

Debrief:

1. Single file should be used in narrow areas or new environments. Wing on Wing only works well when everyone is familiar with the site. Everyone was waiting for everyone else on descent and that is why it was super slow.

2. I should be running the reel as team leader. Having Buck do it brought confusion; I thought it was practice. Buck thought I should be doing it and nothing happened. Buck should have forced the reel at me instead of just holding it out to correct my brain failure. Obviously we should have tied off near the ascent line and run the reel as we dove.

3. Buck and Charlie got props for switching me to deco bottle first so Charlie could switch without sharing gas. Nice work guys!

4. Charlie was slow on the switch as Tyler moved Charlie's pressure gauge from the left D-ring to the lift bag clip. On his next pressure check, Charlie got his pressure gauge through the loop of the stage regulator and created a mess that took time to sort out. We had a 1 minute stop at 70ft; Charlie did 2 minutes so he was clear on back gas to move up. So we were only 1 minute "late" on the deco as Charlie started the timer after switching. No big deal.

5. We made a mess in the silt with good trim. Huh? The sloping bank caught all our fin wash as we kicked. We should have been more careful and head down when close to the sides. The horizontal position isn't perfect for EVERY location, just 98% of them :)

We watched the video Josh shot, ate some lunch and switched over to the 21/35 for the deeper experience dive. Tyler had us run through the plan checking our planned times against available gas supplies. Buck would have just enough deco gas according to the on the fly calculations.

Dive 2: Forty Fathoms Grotto

Team order: Charlie (lead), Buck (deco), Matt (lift bag)
Time: 3:34 PM
Depth: 95 ft
Max BT: 20
Bottom time: 17 minutes
Mix: 21/35, Buck 30/30
Deco: 27 minutes
Deco gas: 50%, switch at 70ft
Temp: 71 degrees
Visibility: 20 ft
SI: 3:13
Deco: 70/1 60/1 50/1 40/1 30/1 20/6 10/2 Total: 13 minutes

We started to get ready for the second dive when Buck opened his tanks to find there was 500 PSI in the 21/35 doubles. I watched him verify the pressure in the tanks Friday before we left. No wonder our voices were so high pitched in the van on the ride up.

At the first dive of the class Tyler said, "If you loose your mask, don't bother with the backup; you'll loose it too." For this dive he stated very nicely, "Feel free to deploy your back up mask on this dive if you should loose your primary mask."

After sharing gas from the last dive, I still had 2900 PSI in my 30/30 doubles. I found a small leak in the tank neck o-ring on the surface after the dive. I told Buck he was welcome to the gas before I had to dump it or use it on a beach dive. He switched over and we scaled our depth back to 100ft and planed some mock deco based on a deeper dive and not having a 2 hour surface interval (SI). Now Hal had turned on the bubblers which cleared the duck weed right out and made for some interesting surface currents.

Charlie led us down the same line in single file for the second dive. We hit the bottom in 4 minutes this time, except halfway down we switched lines and hit the Piper instead of the dish. Charlie was disoriented and we pointed him over to the dish. He tied off the reel to the edge of the dish and went passed the sub to the car.

At 11 minutes, boredom set in and we turned around. I headed to the placement to pull it off and we met at the ascent line. Charlie thumbed the dive and we all replied in kind. And then we hovered there. We hovered some more. I pulled the thumb again and we started up at a snail’s pace. Finally we hit 70ft. Charlie gestured out every word in proper Queens Old English, "You, Watch, Me, Switch, Ok?" Ok, just go. Buck and I had all of our attention on him; we were not going to mess up now. Charlie switched; then Buck; then me. We reset our stopwatch and hovered for a minute with everyone on the gas; then headed up. All the stops went smoothly. At 40ft I remembered I was to shoot the bag so I got it out and strung up. Then I shot it manually at 30 ft. It wasn't pretty, but I got the job done. I'm just not used to shooting the bag by mouth instead of the inflator hose.

Two minutes into the required 6 at 20 ft I saw Buck gesture to Charlie. I didn't catch the signal, but saw the needle of his deco bottle at 200 PSI, buried in the red zone on the gauge. "Could this be a drill?" How did Tyler drain his bottle? Buck switched to his back gas and stowed the bottle. Charlie and I recomputed deco as if he was on 21/35 and, like rock-paper-scissors, we both threw out the right number. What we couldn't discuss was what that number means. I thought it was total deco for the stop and Charlie thought it was deco time remaining. As my shorter time came up we argued about ascending and I accepted my brain failure in that it is not bad to do more deco than less as I thought.

After the 20 ft stop I ascend to 10 ft to finish the deco. I dumped a little too much gas and was slightly negative hanging on the spool. I felt the line move and saw Tyler cutting the line with his knife, "Now what, I thought?" Oops, we were supposed to ascend from 20ft to the surface in 2 minutes, not do a 2-minute stop. Without the line I dropped to 14 ft, regained my neutrality and finished the ascent. We lived again!

Then we debriefed:

1. Descent time was good at 4 minutes.

2. Charlie jumped lines and Tyler noticed that we noticed.

3. On the turn, Buck went to the outside and could have been left behind. He was in Charlie's "blind spot" and if he wasn't paying attention, could have gone right by him. Always stay to the inside near the line on turns.

4. At the switch, just make sure the team is looking at you. It should take about 30 seconds each when you’re smooth, right down the team order.

5. Re-computing deco, always show numbers for time remaining. I forgot to add the two minutes of deco already completed to the total time at the stop.

We packed up and hauled all the gear up. We had to play beat the clock to clear out by 5 PM as Hal was closing. Tyler settled up with Hal. Tyler negotiated a good rate for the day as the retail price for a guided tour is $55 per tech dive and he didn't inflate the price at all.

We headed to Denny's to watch the video of the last dive, review the test, and finish up the paperwork. Tyler was more than fair in his expenses that he asked for reimbursement. We wrote out the checks and asked a few last minute questions. I left it to Charlie to ask, "So Tyler, are we going to pass?" He said as long as our checks don't bounce our cards will be mailed to us in a couple of weeks.

Woo-hoo....!! We Passed!

At 7:10 PM we stared the 4 hour drive home. I let out several primitive battle cries of excitement. It was a job well done by everyone on the team. After over 3 hours I asked for p-valve break at the Fort Drum Service plaza. Coming back to the car I noticed a semi carrying a trailer full of compressed gas containers. It just so happens that baby was packed full of helium. I considered this to be a good sign from the Gods of Excellent Diving to Come. We guessed that there was over 1 million cubic feet of gas headed to the United States Air Force.

I arrived home at 12:50 AM, mission accomplished!

--Matt