That tech 1 - it’s hard you know…
First sign that something was up was bubbles behind my head from the right. Shutting the post down, I signalled to Al who came over to help…just at the time that Fraser when OOA Knowing that Fraser’s need at this stage was greater than mine I waited on my backup for Al to be able to check the first stage and repressurise…when he did the bubbles had stopped - and we all relaxed for an instant ….the same instant that Andy Kerslake was pulling off loose line and wrapping it round Al and Frase
Well, it’s the end of day one, Tech 1. We’ve just crashed out after a 19 hour day, 16 hours of which were under instruction to a greater or lesser extent. The most important thing today was we didn’t die…there were times it came close but we survived to try again tomorrow
The day started with theory and then line laying in the garden of the B&B. It was quite funny when Andy tied off to a garden fountain - which then toppled over as he pulled the line taught - but not quite so funny when it took us 6 minutes to return blind along line which took us only 1 minute to swim when sighted.
Off to a very busy Stoney Cove at lunchtime for the first dive of the day. First were individual s drills and valve drills. When these were duely completed with no issues we went line astern and Fraser tied off a primary tie to start running line. This is roughly where my recollection of the dive starts to blur…
Multiple valve failures, loose line, collapsed SMBs, OOAs wing inflate problems - you name it - it all happened, often simultaneously A touch of class at the end was Andy’s insistance that we each put up SMBs which he then knitted together at the surface. We did all surface laughing though
Dive 2 was similar - although Al was running the line. It went somewhat more smoothly until Andy managed to pull a good 20 meters of line off the reel and wrap Al and Fraser together thoroughly - several times round manifolds, legs, arms etc. I went back to help and was confronted with line floating everywhere in the water and the hand of Kerslake dropping a loop of it on to me for good measure. An anglo saxon hand signal stopped this one and I untangled Al and then Fraser who was OOA but didn’t know what to do with what I had untangled. I gathered it up round my hand which was not perhaps the brightest thing I’ve ever done - next time a rock would be good. Andy repaid me for my cheeky hand signal with a valve failure.
Fraser got fed up with my housekeeping and huried us up back along the line to the exit - as we had an OOA he was of the view that the priority was out. Only problem with that was that the slack line was free for Andy to play with again. Flashing lights alerted to the fact that buddies were again trussed up but this time when the line was freed I attached the slack to the armoured carrier instead to try to get rid of it. Line, nasty stuff
Back to the B&B for video debriefing and more theory…then dinner and dive talk….then a bit of kit fettling and bed.
And that’s where I am now…writing this so that at the end of the course we have some record of what we did. As a team we had a damn good day…more enjoyable than we thought it would be…with some valuable lessons learned.
PS - if the title doesn’t make sense…look here http://www.yorkshire-divers.co.uk/f…1919#post281919
