Cave/Wreck and OC trimix/rebreather trimix

[TSandM]

In fact, any time you spend something on the order of 5 days with an instructor and donŽ´t learn or improve enough to consider it time wisely spent you should ask for your money back and use a different instructor...

ymmv obviously...

I think this is the key. Joel Silverstein went and did a cave class with Larry Green last summer. There's somebody with a ton of experience in technical diving and wreck penetration, and he still felt that he learned a lot from the course. It wasn't what I would have learned from the same class -- He was more focused on looking at Larry's TEACHING strategies -- but he learned a lot.

If you're paying $1500 for a class and not feeling as though you got your money's worth, I think you have the wrong instructor or the wrong attitude.

BTW, I ended up doing my Cave 1 class twice, sort of, because I buddied up with somebody else who needed another diver to a reeval. It was only a month after my first class, but I still learned from going through it again. (Now, I wouldn't have paid $1500 to do that so soon, but that's mostly because I need the money to do Cave 2 )

 

[dab]

$1500 for a rebreather diver to get trimix certified when he is already OC trimix certified. Or paying for a full wreck diving class for a full cave certified diver seems obtuse. This IS NOT short cutting ones training, it is a more logical use of ones time and money.

Having been through most of the courses mentioned, I agree their is some overlapp. However, that said there are enough unique differences that warrant the specialization. In this type of diving, any mistake can be fatal, and the more specialized the training to match the enviornment the better. If I am staging bottles 1500 feet back into a warm water cave system and things go wrong, I want my training to have been in this type of enviornment and have the skills and mindset to be able to get myself and my buddy back to the surface safely. Conversely, 300 feet into the bowels of a Lake Superior shipwreck at 220' requires a different skillset and training, in that type of enviorment, to safely get back to the surface. Rebreather trimix and OC trimix have many similarities, but have unique differences as well (onboard gas/off board gas -- contingency planning, etc.). Training is expensive, tech diving is expensive, but taking shortcuts can result in a cost none of us want to pay. Pick your instructor carefully and get all the training you can. My 2 cents worth.

 

[Tienuts]

I can see both sides to this.
I'm Full Cave and Normoxic Trimix certified.
Do I really need to do a wreck course if I want to do a reasonably straightforward wreck penetration with an experienced buddy?
Similarly I would have no problem doing a 240 foot dive in a familiar location,although officially I need Advanced Trimix for that.

At some point a diver should be able to decide for himself when he needs formal instruction and when diving with experienced buddies is enough.

Tom Mount will tell you most of this is common sense. Some have it and some don't.

There are some divers who are smart, careful, intuitive, and could do most deep trimix diving or long cave penetration with a minimal of formal instruction.

There are others who could spend a fortune on classes and equipment and never have the skill set, situational awareness, or common sense to be in a swimming pool, much less a cave or wreck.

 

[ianr33]

Why Thank You !

 

[I Dive]

If everyone hasn't caught on by now, they will realize sooner or later that there are some certifications that don't teach you much if anything.

I find this very hard to believe. With any sort of education or training, you only get out of it what you want to. If you go into it thinking you already know everything and it's a waste of time, it is doubtful you will learn anything. But, then again, if you already know everything why aren't you teaching the class? If you go into a class with an open mind, ready to accept the entire class as the learning opportunity it is, I'd say it would be nearly impossible to come out of the class not learning valuable things.

 

[DeepSeaExplorer]

If you had said something like combine OW and AOW, Nitrox and Advanced Nitrox, or even Normoxic and Hypoxic Trimix, I would have agreed with you. But, OC vs rebreathers, and cave vs wreck, are completely different animals.

There was just recently a rebreater death in a cave from someone that probably didn't have sufficient training, learned rebreather and cave separately and combined their skills on their own. I know it's been a raging argument led by a few special individuals that don't want to retake cave in their rebreathers, or want to teach OC divers while wearing a rebreather, but at a minimum some type of course involving gas management definitely seems in order.

 

[ianr33]

There was just recently a rebreater death in a cave from someone that probably didn't have sufficient training, learned rebreather and cave separately and combined their skills on their own.

Which accident was this?

 

[Jim Lapenta]

This stuff scares the hell out of me after what I learned last weekend from Pete Nawrocky(rebreather instructor), Chris Laughery(NAUI Technical CD), Richie Kohler( ya'll know who he is), and Gary Gentile(another known person). All of these guys gave presentations at an event last weekend here in pittsburgh. As a result I do not want to do cave or rebreathers at this point( caves never). I do want to do 250 foot OC trimix wreck dives though. ANd based on what I learned there are some similarities but the differences are enough to be glad there is seperate training. I did not like my wife hearing from all of them though that wreck is far more dangerous than cave.

 

[DA Aquamaster]

There was just recently a rebreater death in a cave from someone that probably didn't have sufficient training, learned rebreather and cave separately and combined their skills on their own. I know it's been a raging argument led by a few special individuals that don't want to retake cave in their rebreathers, or want to teach OC divers while wearing a rebreather, but at a minimum some type of course involving gas management definitely seems in order.

Which accident was this?

I can't speak to the accident issue directly, but I agree with you that mastering a rebreather in a more or less an offshore open water environment does not mean a diver can effectively fly it in a cave environment. The potentially saw toothed profile that may result can create several issues for a rebreather diver with only offshore or quarry that they may not fully anticipate or be well trained to deal with.

 

[Rhone Man]

Just to balance the post: John Chatterton gave a webinar last night, and one of things he commented on was that training agencies like to "slice the loaf pretty thin" when splitting up their training courses, and he though there were some levels you could skip over pretty easily. On the TDI open circuit classes, two he picked on were basic trimix (why bother, go straight from extended range to advanced) and advanced nitrox (doesn't add much that they don't cover anyhow in deco procedures).

Now, that is not the same thing as equating wrecks to caves, or OC trimix to rebreather trimix. But I think the point still has some validity: cutting a pizza into 8 slices instead of 6 does not make it a bigger pizza.