:Gledder\’s diving blog…

When Fraser stopped faffing and finally decided to join me in the Red Sea after all, I jumped ship from the YD Grand Sea Serpent trip and moved to Hurricane - still with Tony Backhurst. Hurricane has mixed gases, supports technical diving and would let us do the Red Sea in a DIRStylee.

We got off to an interesting start when we got to the boat at about midnight to find the twinsets we had ordered for the week needed a lot of fettling to get them diveable for the week. Sorting the kit took until just after 3:00 am so the wake up call at 7:00am was not that welcome - until we remembered where we were

Hurricane - can’t complain about anything all week (although others did find little bits and bobs to groan about). The food was excellent, the equipment on the boat all worked, fills were completed as requested and promptly, accomodation was comfortable and clean. The dive guides Joe and Karin did not see their job as babysitters - they did not accompany you on dives unless you wanted guiding, they did not check your air, monitor your depth etc., although one diver who dived to 50 meters on single tank of nitrox on the spur of the moment was warned that this was not a particularly clever move

Hurricane - and Fraser

I won’t go through the dives in detail - there have been enough Red Sea trip reports posted here - but our itinerary was to cover Brothers, Elphinstone and Daedalus. Fraser did 15 dives in 5.5 days diving, I did 17 - out of a maximum 18. The highlight for us both was diving the arch at Elphinstone - our first mix dive since getting the cert - 56 meters, total run time 71 minutes. I realise that many people have popped down to the arch on a single tank of air (indeed some from our boat did) but we chose to do it our way, on 21/35, twins and 50 per cent for deco. This did mean that we got rather a lot longer down there than the alternative would have allowed - and got to spot white tipped reef sharks and take a photo or two.

The Numidia at Big Brother was also a great dive, with a similar profile but with rather different memories. The weather at Brothers was rough, whether we would be able to dive the Numidia was on hold for a day and a half as the wreck is at the far north of the island where the waves were rolling in very high. We finally got the OK about two hours before, which was the time needed to fill our sets. The dive was clearly going to be interesting when the Zodiac dropped us right on top on the wreck (it comes as shallow as 10 meters) but despite a negative entry we had to fight our way back to it, then shelter along the side of the wreck on our descent.

We dropped down to 54 meters quite quickly, noting how cold the water rising up from the drop off was. We had a good look round, a bit of a poke about inside and took some photos. Bottom time was around 25 minutes. When Fraser thumbed it, I took us through the deep stops and it was during this that we first started to notice a change in the current around 35 metres. The current was getting stronger and coming off the island now, out to sea. Rather than bag off and drift, we worked our way up the wreck, switching gas at 21 and had completed half our deco requirement when we hit the top of the wreck. With nothing left to shelter on we tried to swim back to the reef (not much more than 20 meters) but could not make sufficent progress.

We did our best to sit at 6 metres, swimming against the current but were washed around between 6 and 9 meters. Fraser bagged up at this stage and we padded the deco to make up for the washing machine effect, finally surfacing in sight of the island but north of it, being taken further out to sea. GIven that the dive boat was anchored south of the island and the ribs were patrolling halfway along, looking for divers being swept south rather than north things didn’t look great, especially as we were caught in rather large waves. It took a while but in the end, a rib was sighted when we were on the crest of a wave and I fired up my Salvo and flashed it back and forth. With much relief we realised that it had spotted us and after a bit of a mad scramble we managed to get aboard The rib had been looking for some YBOD divers who had been diving at the same time as us - I understand that they made it back by going much deeper where the current was less strong.

Back on the boat, Frase decided to sit out the rest of the dives that day - wise move - but I wanted to return to the water asap to cancel out any little spooks. I ended up jumping in, a couple of hours later, on a YBOD MOD1 lesson with Gary Fox - just a little pootle around in 25 meters tucked away from the current. I felt very noisy with my bubbles when with five rebreather divers but am grateful to them for letting me potter along.

Apart from these dives we had lots of uneventful fishy/corally dives - a few sharks, a few turtles and loads of normal reef stuff as well as you would expect. Our gas bill for the week (two twinsets of 21/35, two stages of 50 per cent, and nitrox for all other dives) was £280. Sounds a lot but I worked out that in the UK it would have cost around £200 so not that bad really.

Finally, the hotel which they transferred us to the Coral Dive Hotel was fine… very good standard of accomodation with appalling service and, unbeliveably, no lunch service in the main dining room.

I did like the bar floor though… very fitting with the theme of the week.

Hope you enjoyed the trip report and if you want to go to the Red Sea - you could do a lot worse than go on Hurricane to the South

Quote of the week… (from Fraser)

“A shark came up and eyed Clare carefully, but left her alone - clearly a decision based on mutual professional respect”

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Reading the report of our tech 1 course, Bryan (Finless from YD) posted

“I must say it sounds, by your dive scenarios, as if you lot have been having Albatross Pie for tea after spending a day stepping on every available crack in the pavement whilst denying the existence of the gods of luck with 2 fingers and wondering what Poseidon would taste like in batter with chips.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself :o)

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We were at 36 meters when Al’s right post failed. Frase tried to fix it but couldn’t get it reseated so it was left off. Al signalled that he was happy to carry on so we continued along the wall. Another cloud of bubbles indicated that his left post had also gone and he shut that off as well - after I had put him on my long hose. Given that Al now had no useable gas, we had a deco schedule to do and we were some way below our first gas switch we thumbed the dive. Unfortunately, at this exact moment Al’s mask was lost and he was now blind as well as out of gas.

Fraser caught him almost immediately his mask came off and passed him to me to guide. Al held out his torch which would get in the way on ascent and I clipped it off for him - and got going. With no wing inflate Al took a bit of time to get going but we got underway with Fraser watching the ascent, calling deco.

We switched Al’s gas first when we got to 21, slipping down a bit which is not best practice. This took us a minute or so to recover from but when we stabilised I passed Al over to Fraser, sent the bag up and we continued our ascent.

I hadn’t clipped my long hose off when I took it back from Al and it free flowed which caused further grief, and our ascent slipped further behind schedule - aided by some confusion as to who was in control as we had changed roles on ascent when Al changed hands. We were all still together though and getting Al to where he needed to be - the surface.

The verdict? Neatly summed up by Andy Kerslake’s signal in the video. One finger (you all know which one) which signifies broken - although in this case I’m pretty sure the more accurate translation was - they’re f*@ked. An ascent which should have taken a maximum of 9 minutes took closer to 12 - and it felt like half an hour. The greatest loss was around 21 where the 1 minute allowed for in the schedule for switching and bagging off had slipped to 3 - had we been on minimum gas at the time of the emergency allowing slippage like this would run us at risk of running out of gas. So we did it again….

Sitting at depth, knowing that something is going to go wrong, but not knowing what is stressful - and it’s almost a relief when it does. This time my right post was the first to fail. I shut it down, signalling to Al and Fraser as I did so, and Fraser tried to fix it - to no avail. We reordered the team with me in the middle and carried on the dive. Suddenly Fraser went out of air and knowing that I could not donate with my right post off, he went past me to Al. I was watching them sort themselves out when I lost my mask…

Hanging over 70 meters of water, with a deco requirement, knowing that your buddies are both busy sorting an OOA and not looking in your direction, taking your mask off to hand it over to an instructor should be quite stressful - but it wasn’t - I had complete faith that as long as I relaxed so my depth didn’t change, and I signalled to them, they would be there and would get me out. No question. It was at this moment that I realised the value of what we have built on Tech 1.

We had the same problem on this ascent in that I’d lost my wing inflate and it took a moment or so to get going. I have a slightly different method of clipping of my torch so can stow it myself, Al (who I later learnt was driving me) understood what I was doing and changed his grip to let me use my right hand - then we were off.

Everything went smoother, little problems encountered on the first ascent were ironed out, I deployed my own stage reg in an attempt to help speed things up on the switch - although I was still reliant on Fraser to ID the bottle, switch it on and tell me to swap regs. He did this, then deployed the bag and we were off again - on schedule. From there on up it was sweet - the boys even put in a stop at 1 meter…all under control.

Andy didn’t need to say anything when we hit the surface. We may have survived the first ascent but on the second we had done it right and it was time to move on.

Our experience dives were to be from Teignmouth, the Rota (45 meters, 1st World War wreck,) and the Northville (similar profile). Our limiting factor on the Rota was to be our deco gas, we only had enough for 20 minutes deco so would vary the dive length to suit this dependant on the average depth. I was to run deco, Fraser would lead the dive and Al would bag up. Andy was in stealth mode, light off, just to ensure that the stress levels were raised.

The dive boat was very high up and entry verged on painful. I can only think that it was the long drop which dislodged my argon reg as when I went to put gas in my suit the first tine at around six meters the feed failed and clouds of bubbles blew out. Sorting this took quite some time (and intervention from Andy) so in total our descent took 8 minutes.

There was a lot of line on the wreck and vis was not great. Can’t say it was my most enjoyable dive ever…. although seeing Andy get line round his manifold made me smile thinking of tech 1 part 1 when he had done so much of that to us :p

Al extended the bottom time from 20 minutes but thumbed it at 25 and I recalculated deco accordingly. The ascent went smoothly, although it was somewhat disconcerting to have Andy Kerslake circling round the three of us constantly. I think he saw himself as a friendly sheepdog – keeping the flock safe. We saw him as s circling predator – with the theme music for jaws passing through each of our minds! Back for lunch, fills, and the afternoon saw us in the pool dong the swim test. I could get used to this one dive a day lark :o)

Sunday saw us diving the Northville. Fraser did his usual last minute kitting up – running for the boa as it left the quayside. We were the last group in from a full boat and when we descended the shot the vis was challenging to say the least. Like swimming in poo was Andy’s verdict when we hit the surface after a greatly shortened dive. Everything went better today from a planning, communication and kit perspective. Al ran deco on this ascent and changed it to suit the altered bottom time without any problems. For training sake the dive was worth doing – but had it not been a tech 1 experience dive I would have thumbed it earlier purely because it was a waste of expensive gas.

Back to Teignmouth and in taking the kit off the boat my stage reg was smashed to bits – yet a further expense on what had been a very expensive weekend. Off to a café in Teignmouth for food, chocolate cake and a two hour debrief – where we were taken through each of a 64 point matrix covering every aspect of our diving, team communication and planning – some areas would be weaker than others but to pass the course we had to score a pass in every box. We were encouraged to be frank, honest and open with our own views of how we had done over the two parts of the course and the experience dives. Then came Andy’s verdict….

We had passed.

I won’t speak for Al and Fraser who can speak for themselves but to say I was chuffed is an understatement. I set my sights on where I wanted to go in diving a while ago and I’ve got there. Now I can do the very thing that I did it all for … go diving.

But first, like any good summing up there are a few things which need to be put on record. Andy Kerslake is an evil git, with a perverse sense of humour and a shockingly colourful imagination (he rendered me speechless on several occasions which is quite some achievement!) He is also inspiring, encouraging, demanding and generous with his time and advice to the point that we learnt as much out of the water talking to him about his experiences and views as we learnt in it.

Thanks to everyone for their messages of support, their time on the phone when I was down, their advice, patience and encouragement. I know it’s been a long write up but it is the culmination of six months hard work on our part and if you’ve got this far I hoped you enjoyed the read. Fraser and I are going to Egypt on Friday to poke a few fish – and you never know we may be tempted to use all this new training and go and see a wreck or two as well.

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Wow - what problems we have had getting fills for the weekend.

My local shop shut a month or so ago. We figured that we would be able to use the NDC but a local dispute there means that they temporarily have no trimix filling capability. Al decided to take the sets to St Albans - but that didn’t work time wise so he ended up taking a day off work on Monday and taking my two sets and his two down to Breakwater for fills.

Then Fraser comes back from the States and owns up that he has an empty set and stage, and no possibility of getting time off work to do anything about it. This results in a late night dash to meet up at Wraysbury to hand over the empties so I could deliver them to Andy Kerslake who would fill them at Runneymead… Wow - on this occasion the diving will feel easy compared to the pre dive logistics ;o)

Weather looking good for the weekend though - and Andy has just phoned me to say ready to roll - so starting to get nervous.

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The single most expensive piece of kit I’ve bought is my Salvo 21 watt HID light… hmmmm shiney :o)

Made by Barry Miller in Florida the lights are exactly what is needed in british waters. We make a lot of use of these lights signalling between team members to the point that whilst we wear two back-up lights, if iyour primary light fails it’s a real p.i.t.a.

Mine has never really focussed in to a nice tight spot and for a long time I thought it was my fault. Andy Kerslake tried to get it sharp on a recent course but we didn’t see much improvement.

I mentioned this to Phill (divingniknaks - Barry’s UK supplier) at the NDC on Friday and he swapped his ballast for mine. What an improvement!

Lightsabers at dawn anyone…

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I was to provide surface cover for a trimix course and buddy Andy Carroll on an evaluation dive today at the NDC.

Arriving at the NDC from the B&B - I won’t name it as I certainly wouldn’t recommend it - there were even more familiar faces to be seen. SimonA, Reikimaster and Finbar Taylor were with Mark Powell, Andy Carroll was there - with Eleanor his wife to be, and Justin and Neil were already running through their dive plans for the trimix course.

Helping the guys kit up for their first dive made me feel like a divemaster for the first time as there were forgotten bits of kit, hoses and crotchstraps left unattached, weightbelts forgotten etc. Its amazing how the pressure of a course makes people forget things which I have no doubt that they would remember normally but I have always been glad for help when struggling with gear - so happy to return the favour :o)

The planned dive time was just over an hour - so it gave me time to grill Andy on the finer aspects of DOTF - and for him to take the piss and declare that “it’s all bollocks really” over and over again. That phrase was certainly the theme of the day.

When the guys got out, Andy and I returned to the car park and kitted up for a dive with Frank. This was to be a basic skills dive and Andy led it - covering valve drills, s drills, stage swapping and smb deployment.

When Andy did his valve drill I took the opportunity to focus my new torch - and promptly fell foul of the screw in the EKPP reflector which is always incredibly tight - I struggled to undo it a tiny bit as it had stuck again - suddenly it gave way and undid quite a bit and the reflector fell off!

This left me an a tight spot - should I leave Andy to descend the two or so meters to the bottom to retrieve the reflector? No - he was in the middle of his valve drill and my place was rightly to stay put. Given that I was blinding us both with an uncovered 21 watt HID I turned the light off until he finished when I could dip down and retrieve the reflector. Andy had to put it back together for me as the screw was so tight I simply could not budge it - neither of us could focus it though.

Andy ran deco and bagged off on the ascent - when the bag floated back down towards us (Frank was playing tricks) he tried again and it came back down for a second time - Frank had removed the dump cover rendering the bag useless. Given that in a scenario where your bag fails it would be helpful to send up another, I offered to put one up and Andy OK’d this. I suppose it should not have been that much of a surprise when this came floating back down too. Nor is it a surprise that seeing I had mistakenly switched to my backup reg after inflating the bag, Frank pulled an out of air on Andy - so we were ascending with him on my long hose, each holding a bag and a spool which had just enough air in to prevent them from being restowed. Who needs a spare hand on ascent ;o) No real problems though - and I left the water with an Ali 80 having entered it with a 7 - result!

The trimix course guys went back in for dive two and I managed to talk Andy into jumping back in again so I could have a bit more time in the water in preparationg for next weekend. I led the dive and deco, bagging off at 21 without any issues. My torch, having been focused on the surface by Andy was much much better - and will be great for tech 1. My valve drill went much smoother on this dive as well.

A good couple of days out - not much time in the water given that I have spent two days away from home but I certainly learnt a lot from chatting to Frank and Andy.

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I was fortunate to be invited by Frank to join him at the PSAI conference at the NDC on Friday.

I left home far too early and got to the NDC at 8:00am for a 10:00am start! Mark Powell was the first familiar face to arrive and Phill from Divingkniknaks came a little later. Frank had hit traffic on the M3 and was running behind schedule so rather than walk in to the meeting once it started on my own, I took the cowards way out and stayed outside with Phill until Frank appeared.

It was quite daunting to see several of the well known names in diving gathered together, Jack Ingle, Mark Andrews, Andy Hayhurst, Dave Crockford, John Liddiard, etc.

I enjoyed listening to plans for the Agency and the outlines of future courses. It was fascinating to talk to people over lunch and after the conference to hear different views of diving and how training should be managed. There was a great deal of diversity amongst the instructors present but clearly a common theme of wanting to improve the standard and safety of UK diving.

Phill introduced himself at lunchtime and it was nice to see that there was quite a lot of interest in the kit he sells from the instructors present. He took back the finstraps which I didn’t like and swapped the ballast of my torch for his to see if it made any difference to the poor focusing ability my torch has had since I first got it. The man’s idea of customer service is simply unsurpassed - if he took over our public services we’d all benefit :o)

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Here we go again…

Back at Wittering for a pool session to be shown the skills circuit - where we have to perform the twenty basic skills well enough to demonstrate to a student how they should be done. The trick is to break them down into the tinyest of steps and do everything really slowly. Like public speaking - if you feel it is too slow - it’s probably about right.

The skills include mask clearing (removal and replacement) scuba gear off underwater and on surface, hover, fin pivots (with inflator and oral inflate), mask off swim, buddy breathing, weight belt removal etc. etc. etc.

Jan demonstrated and we copied - no marking this time. I have to say that I did OK - which proves that I am very comfortable in the water now - and able to slow things down.

Back to the classroom for more theory and then back to the pool to do the circuit for real - with marking. I am asked to wear a BCD and when I sit down to put it on I manage to knock the cylinder on to the floor.

No paint scratches though - I did break its fall with my hand - oooouuuccch!

So I now have to demonstrate all the skills one handed - well not quite but it hurts a hell of a lot which doesn’t help. I do OK though - although I can’t do the regulator snorkel exchange as I don’t wear one :o)

A quick pint with Jan afterwards and a chat about what I need to work on most. He says that I don’t really have any problems with the in-water skills but he would like to help me get a bit more confident in my own abilities through working with divers who dive differently to me.

Shattered… and still got the dreaded snorkelling exercise to do.

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Al and I met up with Daz at Vobster for a few skills and a kit wash :o)

Al and me - ready to set off :o)

I have to admit to feeling somewhat nervous… I’ve done the majority of my diving with Daz or Al but this was the first time we would be diving together as a three.

Knowing that Daz would take the p*ss if we suggested that we did some skills on the dives, Al and I jumped in quick to do a few before he joined us. Wow… a month in the Maldives and diving off the south coast has left us rusty on valve drills - we boths found them a little tough compared with tech 1 - was it only really one month ago? This does show how important it is to keep skills current and well practised - so that they will be there when you need them.

Al volunteered to take his mask off on the dive. I suggested that he merely shut his eyes as the water is very cold still there - but we later found out that GLOC has dived in completely naked A small confusion as to whether level off meant dump air or just stabilise meant that we slipped down a little at 9 but the ascent went well, on time but in control.

Daz joined us for dives 2 and 3. He fitted in to the team really well when it comes to situational awareness, he really does have a sixth sense, every time I tried to creep up on him he turned round. One day…

Mind you I miscalculated at one point… hitting him for an out of air, I realised that I had rejected 32 per cent for tyre gas… and got a torch in the eyes for free Daz school of air donation… make it uncomfortable for the buggers and then maybe they will leave you alone next time

Dive 3 was stunning when we went deep and away from the areas that the students had kicked up. Mind you it was bloody cold - 7 degrees on my computer - did we really dive all through the winter in 4 degrees?… ugh not looking forward to that again.

Quote of the day for me had to be when we were all sitting in full kit at the end of dive three mooching over the dive when Daz leapt up and said ‘Jesus Chris, I’d better move or people will think it’s a DIR team’.

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Day 4 found me at Horsea Island helping out on continuing education courses.

Dive 1 was with Eva who was doing her second drysuit specialty dive. She did OK although she hadn’e tried on her rented drysuit before she came and I had to help her squeeze into it :o) Instructor Jan.

Dive 2 was with Ashliegh - who was doing his AOW navigation dive. The instructor was Matt. Ashliegh had buoyancy problems which with Horsea’s silt layer was not great for the vis. Dive 3 was again with Ashleigh and Matt on DPVs - good fun although managing an SMB on one is interesting.

Back to Wittering for a pool session - watching Alex teach OW dives four and five in the pool to two students.

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Swim tests today.

Ugh…. I’m no good at this. I taught myself to swim last year and my technique is poor and ill suited for speed. We had to do 400 metres (20 lengths of a 20 meter pool) and I managed a poor 12 minutes 19 seconds which only scores a 2.

The float was OK - 13 minutes treading water then 2 minutes with hands out of water. I got a full 5 which goes to prove I’m a lazy git!

I forgot my single wing so ended up doing the skills circuit in twins! Will need to reconfigure the gear to do these satisfactorily.

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