Tech 1 - the end…
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.
) so we made our excuses and set off on the journey home. 
