tmassey
Contributor
As with most things I write, this is a long story. This one doubly-so: it started four years ago and ends with an entirely different class. My thoughts on both classes are pretty intertwined, so I'm going to have to write up both reviews. This is the first one: TDI Advanced Wreck with John Chatterton. Get comfy...
As I've written about previously (in my GUE Fundies review opus), I had taken a large number of PADI classes, but was never happy with the instruction I received. By 2010, I had made it to PADI Master Diver (which means OW, AOW, Rescue and five different specialties). While my Rescue class stands out as the best non-tech class I've ever taken, the rest were singularly lackluster. While I had not technically run out of PADI classes (you'll *never* run out of PADI classes...), I had run out of interest. There were a couple that still intrigued me (Wreck was on top of that list), I had zero confidence I would actually *learn* anything substantial. So I never took them.
In 2015, I stumbled upon Advanced Wreck from TDI. At this point in my experience, the only entry points for tech diving were GUE Fundamentals (and I had a huge mental hangup on that, documented in that link above), or Advanced Nitrox / Deco Procedures, which at that time seemed beyond what I was ready for. But I love wreck diving: at that point it was by far my favorite dives. So, I started to look into it.
Then I found that this guy John Chatterton taught it. It was a name I had heard of before. I had never (and still have not!) read any of the books or seen any of the TV shows. But I knew that he was a well-known wreck diver. Teaching Advanced Wreck. Now I'm beyond intrigued.
I figured the price for a class from a well-known person would be beyond what I'd want to spend. Turns out, it costs just about the same as anyone else. (Note: Prices went up for 2020. Still very reasonable.) (Other note: I've noticed this. Classes from well-known and well-respected SCUBA people are often on par with any other quality education. And I've found that some of the most expensive classes around are priced not based on the quality of the instruction or the respect of the instructor. Sometimes they're simply just more expensive. So put the effort into finding the right instructor.)
But. I was *way* under-qualified for this class. I had a bit over 200 dives. I had been diving long-hose and BP/W for a couple of years at that point, but I had no more than 6 or so dives in a 1970's-vintage set of LP72's -- with a single yoke outlet! I'd never done a valve drill and had never done a long-hose air share with another person. Advanced Wreck is taught in full tech configuration. Could I possibly do this?
What the heck: let's find out. So I sent off an e-mail outlining where I was as a diver and asked his thoughts. He ended up suggesting a telephone call. We spent probably a half hour or so talking, which I really appreciated. In the end, he thought that it would be possible for me to take the class.
Then let's do this!
To "prepare" for the class, I assembled my first set of isolation manifolded doubles and spent an hour or so diving them in a local quarry by myself. Basically little more than a single dive, with no actual valve drills or anything, just reaching the valves to see what it was like. I then packed everything up and flew down to Florida. I was able to go on a two-dive trip the day before class, also in doubles. Still no valve drills or anything.
OK. Now for the class. The class was four years ago, so keep that in mind. I don't remember exactly what went on minute-by-minute. At this point I can only remember the lasting impressions that this class made. Fortunately for this review, this class left some of the most lasting impressions I've ever had from a SCUBA class.
If I remember correctly, I signed up for the class approximately one month or so in advance. John sent me the TDI Advanced Wreck book, as well as a four-page class outline, as well as some other seemingly-odd resources, including the history of a random Coast Guard ship. There was also a list of a dozen or so other books (diving-related and otherwise) that were recommended.
That class outline was intimidating. Four pages of skills that I had no experience doing... Tons of line work, and I had maybe 2 hours of *total* experience with a reel in my life. Valve drills, air shares, and more. Like a good student, I covered every word of the assigned material, and some of the recommended items as well.
The class was set up with a half-day of classwork in the morning, and an afternoon diving. This was quite a bit of class time -- more than I had ever had in a class since OW in 1992. (Ice diving had a single half-day of class, and no other classes I had taken had had anything more than a, say, 30-minute "class" session before a dive.) There was quite a bit of material that was covered during this time -- and a good chunk of it not exclusively focused on wreck diving.
My expectations for classwork were based on what I'd experienced in nearly every diving class to this point: effectively page-by-page review of the class book. (By the way, that's also what I experienced for a good chunk of my Intro and Full Cave classes, too......) The class work for *this* class was *not*.
If someone were to ask me to describe what *I* thought were Mr. Chatterton's goals for this class, it would be to help people to completely reconsider all fundamental assumptions of how they approach diving. Questions of gear configuration and technique were secondary to that. The biggest focuses were on mental aspects long before the dive. Strategic dive philosophy. Comprehensive planning. Dive preparation. Gas management. Deco management. Logistics.
That's not to say that there weren't lots of valuable and specific information. There was. Line work had a big focus (pro *and* con), as well as alternatives (strobes were a surprising focus). How to approach a hole you want to go through. Think about your geometry: sideways may be the better alternative. Where and how you're likely to get stuck and how to avoid or undo this.
Navigation within a wreck was also a big focus. Unlike caves or reefs, these are man-made structures. They have a purpose, they have a design, they're made by humans for humans, and you can use those things when you're inside of them. Remember that random hstory of a Coast Guard ship? It's the history of the sister ship to the Captain Dan! It's got all kinds of deck maps, diagrams and pictures -- that you can use to get familiar with the wreck we're going to be doing!
But like I said, these were not, to me, the biggest takeaways from this class. The biggest takeaways were centered around a focus on diving philosophy. This was *completely* unexpected for me.
Looking back, it shouldn't have been a surprise. Now that I've got 4 years of tech diving experience, I realize now how different tech diving is from normal diving. "Normal" diving is built around a single premise: if all else fails, you can go to the surface. It's so basic, so fundamental, that most people forget that it's assumed in the first place. And when you take that assumption away, either by a physical or virtual overhead limit, everything changes. *Literally* everything: if you change the fundamental assumption upon which all of your strategy hangs, of *course* everything will change.
Of course, I had no awareness of any of this. Dunning Kruger is real, folks. When you literally don't know what you don't know, how can your intuition be anywhere close to correct? It can't. And certainly mine was not.
I have a feeling that this is frequently a disconnect between a new tech diver's expectations and reality. I certainly see it on ScubaBoard over and over: an experienced recreational diver considering tech. They are nearly exclusively focused on gear and technique, and they already have a slew of ideas based on their now-invalid preconceived ideas and experience. When experienced divers try to tell them why their very most basic ideas are no longer relevant (and therefore neither is everything else) they just can't understand how their current intuition, maybe formed over years and hundreds of dives, is now lacking.
But it is.
Looking back, I really needed an Intro to Tech class first. At the time, TDI ITT may have existed as a class, but I had literally never seen it before, and no one was talking about it. Of course, there *was* GUE Fundies, but that's a whole nother story (as I described at the link at the top). And I *still* think that it's silly for GUE to focus nearly exclusively on a 4-5 day high-intensity class as your *introduction*. Just silly.
So instead, I got to grapple with this fundamental realization while *also* learning new skills and techniques I should have already known while *also* doing so deep inside a wreck. Half the time blindfolded.
As I've written about previously (in my GUE Fundies review opus), I had taken a large number of PADI classes, but was never happy with the instruction I received. By 2010, I had made it to PADI Master Diver (which means OW, AOW, Rescue and five different specialties). While my Rescue class stands out as the best non-tech class I've ever taken, the rest were singularly lackluster. While I had not technically run out of PADI classes (you'll *never* run out of PADI classes...), I had run out of interest. There were a couple that still intrigued me (Wreck was on top of that list), I had zero confidence I would actually *learn* anything substantial. So I never took them.
In 2015, I stumbled upon Advanced Wreck from TDI. At this point in my experience, the only entry points for tech diving were GUE Fundamentals (and I had a huge mental hangup on that, documented in that link above), or Advanced Nitrox / Deco Procedures, which at that time seemed beyond what I was ready for. But I love wreck diving: at that point it was by far my favorite dives. So, I started to look into it.
Then I found that this guy John Chatterton taught it. It was a name I had heard of before. I had never (and still have not!) read any of the books or seen any of the TV shows. But I knew that he was a well-known wreck diver. Teaching Advanced Wreck. Now I'm beyond intrigued.
I figured the price for a class from a well-known person would be beyond what I'd want to spend. Turns out, it costs just about the same as anyone else. (Note: Prices went up for 2020. Still very reasonable.) (Other note: I've noticed this. Classes from well-known and well-respected SCUBA people are often on par with any other quality education. And I've found that some of the most expensive classes around are priced not based on the quality of the instruction or the respect of the instructor. Sometimes they're simply just more expensive. So put the effort into finding the right instructor.)
But. I was *way* under-qualified for this class. I had a bit over 200 dives. I had been diving long-hose and BP/W for a couple of years at that point, but I had no more than 6 or so dives in a 1970's-vintage set of LP72's -- with a single yoke outlet! I'd never done a valve drill and had never done a long-hose air share with another person. Advanced Wreck is taught in full tech configuration. Could I possibly do this?
What the heck: let's find out. So I sent off an e-mail outlining where I was as a diver and asked his thoughts. He ended up suggesting a telephone call. We spent probably a half hour or so talking, which I really appreciated. In the end, he thought that it would be possible for me to take the class.
Then let's do this!
To "prepare" for the class, I assembled my first set of isolation manifolded doubles and spent an hour or so diving them in a local quarry by myself. Basically little more than a single dive, with no actual valve drills or anything, just reaching the valves to see what it was like. I then packed everything up and flew down to Florida. I was able to go on a two-dive trip the day before class, also in doubles. Still no valve drills or anything.
OK. Now for the class. The class was four years ago, so keep that in mind. I don't remember exactly what went on minute-by-minute. At this point I can only remember the lasting impressions that this class made. Fortunately for this review, this class left some of the most lasting impressions I've ever had from a SCUBA class.
If I remember correctly, I signed up for the class approximately one month or so in advance. John sent me the TDI Advanced Wreck book, as well as a four-page class outline, as well as some other seemingly-odd resources, including the history of a random Coast Guard ship. There was also a list of a dozen or so other books (diving-related and otherwise) that were recommended.
That class outline was intimidating. Four pages of skills that I had no experience doing... Tons of line work, and I had maybe 2 hours of *total* experience with a reel in my life. Valve drills, air shares, and more. Like a good student, I covered every word of the assigned material, and some of the recommended items as well.
The class was set up with a half-day of classwork in the morning, and an afternoon diving. This was quite a bit of class time -- more than I had ever had in a class since OW in 1992. (Ice diving had a single half-day of class, and no other classes I had taken had had anything more than a, say, 30-minute "class" session before a dive.) There was quite a bit of material that was covered during this time -- and a good chunk of it not exclusively focused on wreck diving.
My expectations for classwork were based on what I'd experienced in nearly every diving class to this point: effectively page-by-page review of the class book. (By the way, that's also what I experienced for a good chunk of my Intro and Full Cave classes, too......) The class work for *this* class was *not*.
If someone were to ask me to describe what *I* thought were Mr. Chatterton's goals for this class, it would be to help people to completely reconsider all fundamental assumptions of how they approach diving. Questions of gear configuration and technique were secondary to that. The biggest focuses were on mental aspects long before the dive. Strategic dive philosophy. Comprehensive planning. Dive preparation. Gas management. Deco management. Logistics.
That's not to say that there weren't lots of valuable and specific information. There was. Line work had a big focus (pro *and* con), as well as alternatives (strobes were a surprising focus). How to approach a hole you want to go through. Think about your geometry: sideways may be the better alternative. Where and how you're likely to get stuck and how to avoid or undo this.
Navigation within a wreck was also a big focus. Unlike caves or reefs, these are man-made structures. They have a purpose, they have a design, they're made by humans for humans, and you can use those things when you're inside of them. Remember that random hstory of a Coast Guard ship? It's the history of the sister ship to the Captain Dan! It's got all kinds of deck maps, diagrams and pictures -- that you can use to get familiar with the wreck we're going to be doing!
But like I said, these were not, to me, the biggest takeaways from this class. The biggest takeaways were centered around a focus on diving philosophy. This was *completely* unexpected for me.
Looking back, it shouldn't have been a surprise. Now that I've got 4 years of tech diving experience, I realize now how different tech diving is from normal diving. "Normal" diving is built around a single premise: if all else fails, you can go to the surface. It's so basic, so fundamental, that most people forget that it's assumed in the first place. And when you take that assumption away, either by a physical or virtual overhead limit, everything changes. *Literally* everything: if you change the fundamental assumption upon which all of your strategy hangs, of *course* everything will change.
Of course, I had no awareness of any of this. Dunning Kruger is real, folks. When you literally don't know what you don't know, how can your intuition be anywhere close to correct? It can't. And certainly mine was not.
I have a feeling that this is frequently a disconnect between a new tech diver's expectations and reality. I certainly see it on ScubaBoard over and over: an experienced recreational diver considering tech. They are nearly exclusively focused on gear and technique, and they already have a slew of ideas based on their now-invalid preconceived ideas and experience. When experienced divers try to tell them why their very most basic ideas are no longer relevant (and therefore neither is everything else) they just can't understand how their current intuition, maybe formed over years and hundreds of dives, is now lacking.
But it is.
Looking back, I really needed an Intro to Tech class first. At the time, TDI ITT may have existed as a class, but I had literally never seen it before, and no one was talking about it. Of course, there *was* GUE Fundies, but that's a whole nother story (as I described at the link at the top). And I *still* think that it's silly for GUE to focus nearly exclusively on a 4-5 day high-intensity class as your *introduction*. Just silly.
So instead, I got to grapple with this fundamental realization while *also* learning new skills and techniques I should have already known while *also* doing so deep inside a wreck. Half the time blindfolded.