DIRF Course Report March 22-25

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Bismark:
Heh Bjorn, it is pretty cool to read your course reports as I was on the other team and we only heard the occasional blip about how your work was going. "What goes on underwater stays underwater....... " unless you hear it from the other guy. One thing that happened to us was as we were doing drills around the SMB line, some other rec diver who was just out for a swim (I guess) swam down are ascent line and was trying to get our attention to see if we were okay. I just about laughed out my reg: here was our team hovering about 3 feet from the bottom in pretty good trim (okay Dan was above us lurking somewhere) and we were clearly in control doing something which must have looked complex while we were all wearing double tanks, and this dude in bright green fins and more crap hanging off his vest bcd than most dive shops have hanging on walls, while kicking vertically to stay off the bottom, is task loaded just asking us if we were okay. I didn't know the sign for "you gotta be kidding" so I gave him the okay and he moved away somewhere. That was pretty funny. And no I wasn't narced........:)

Guy, that is classic. We saw that dude trying to descent. We knew he was trying because he was head down, bright green fins out of the water kicking trying to get down. I'm scared to mention this, but I _think_ he may have been an instructor ...

:rofl3:
 
Heh, heh -- at this point, I'll reveal that Team 2's nickname was to become "Team Siltout"...

Good reports, Guy and Bjorn -- you didn't waste any time putting those together, did you? I look forward to seeing the rest of them: I just got a start putting together my own course report, so it's nice to have other peoples' recollections to fill the gaps in my own. I had no idea that you encountered the dreaded Green Fins Of Death! I remember us having a good chuckle at the surface commotion when that person was trying to descend... god, we're scarcely 24hrs out of Fundies and we've become such snobs already!:11:
 
Ah yes, but I think I was a snob before the course started..........:) And Jeremy, you look a bit out of trim in your avatar.........What do you think Bjorn? By the way, don't either of you guys work for a living?:)
 
Day 3: HUMP DAY!

8 am - meet at the shop, go over course materials, get briefed on 2 dives for the day. These are the tougher ones.

Dive 3 includes descent with stop, valve drills, S drills with swim, OOG diver, ascent up line with OOG diver and 2 stops. Things are starting to stack up and you can tell that the complexity is increasing.

I'd been in the doubles for about 10 dives before the course and agree that any changes made _just_ for the course are going to be problematic. Getting the gear sorted before the course would be highly recommended. Every time I tried to "tweak" something it threw me off enough given the the complexity was increasing.

As we swam out (we were team 2) we heard the debrief and it turned out that a certain diver (I'm not naming names of course, but if you've read everything else you'll know who) sucked his 95's down to 800 psi in a 36 minute dive. :wink:

So we were only going to do one dive. I had been stressing about doing the no mask swim because I already missed the mask remove earlier. So to start the day I left my mask off, popped in a reg and stuck my head in the water. Good times, slight brain freeze (44 degree water does that I guess) but not bad. I was feeling better... and now I wouldn't have to do anything with it.

I believe that this was one of our better dives. We worked together, as 2 divers did the drills the third would face the current and hold the team in place, we worked as a group. I was the TC and Diver 2 (this day) had some issues with buoyancy, but we got him back down. Things were a bit clustered but we managed to get through.

I did a valve drill that received a "not all that bad" from Dan and it turned out that at the end of the day one 2 people had gotten the valve drill right and I was one of the two. I didn't mess up my buoyancy too bad during the drills either. Dan commented that for most of us our buoyancy and trim were best during the valve drills and s drills because we weren't thinking about it so much. We felt like we'd become a team. Unfortunately I silted the place out trying to hold folks in place so I decided to call us (mostly myself) Team siltout :) Has a nice ring to it, don't you think?

Just before ascending and as Diver 3 was stowing his long hose, i was in the center (TC) and diver 2 was swimming to the upline with us, the 'blue hand of death' came over my shoulder and now I was OOA! A split second glance at Diver 3 on my left and he was looking at his long hose trying to stow it, so diver 2 it was! Donation by Diver 2 was quick and seamless. I actually spat my reg out as I started signaling him and everything went very smooth! In a real life situation I'd have been very happy with the quick response. Dan mentioned that this was a the best s-drill we did that day. We had the general small issue with the ascent and the stops, but we did make stops and our 3 minute ascent was only 5 minutes (maybe 7, I forget, but we didn't do too bad apparently).

The day ended early and people got a chance to get out and do something. We knew we'd have a full final day given that we had to catch up a dive but Dan assured us it was not a big deal and we'd be able to finish no problem.

The other team met us at the waters edge to help out and carry up weight and you just got the sense that we were all working together both within and between the teams. Everyone wanted to ensure the others were going to do ok.

As we were wrapping up Dan asked me if there was any way I could borrow a can light (again, the one I was going to use had broken and wasn't around). He mentioned that I was pretty much going to receive a Rec pass, but that if I could get a light and show him that I could use it and not mess up he thought I'd have a shot at a tech pass. As you may be able to imagine, this made me pretty damn happy. However, I had no way to get a light. Dan then told me I could use his, the bulb had died on him but I could use it if I wanted to try (Of course I did!). Very cool!

Day 3 summary: We had a team. I trusted the other guys to work through whatever we had to work through and knew we'd get it done. It may not be pretty, and we'd probably violate rule 6 a whole bunch, but we'd get the job done. At some point Dan called us 'the superstars'. I'm pretty sure there was sarcasm involved though he did mention post dive that "It's amazing what happens when you turn your brain on". Again, we took this as praise :)
 
Hey! Guy, considering my avatar picture was taken before I'd ever taken DIR-F, I think my trim wasn't half bad! :)
 
Its going to be a beating.

dsteding:
Awesome reports, thanks for sharing.

I agree, these reports are really helpful in terms of giving those of us yet to take fundies (my class is four weeks away . . . :11: ) a preview of what to expect.

Congrats to you all!
 
Okay Bjorn, I have to add here for all to see that I actually spent time underwater before our third dive helping Dan lay out the course. Okay, so I just swam along carrying along the weights clipped to my left hip d-ring but c'mon, cut me some slack:) Then I was the Donor for the OOG ascent while Allan "Lungs" was the guy sucking off my long hose for the ascent. Plus I think Royse underfilled my tanks:) so when you add all that up...... okay, I know I still sucked. But kind of nice to have a break and regroup after dive 3 wasn't it?
 
Bismark:
Ah yes, but I think I was a snob before the course started..........:) And Jeremy, you look a bit out of trim in your avatar.........What do you think Bjorn? By the way, don't either of you guys work for a living?:)

Yes I work for a living. That's why I said "shhhhh I'm working on it now" above :wink:
 
Bismark:
Okay Bjorn, I have to add here for all to see that I actually spent time underwater before our third dive helping Dan lay out the course. Okay, so I just swam along carrying along the weights clipped to my left hip d-ring but c'mon, cut me some slack:) Then I was the Donor for the OOG ascent while Allan "Lungs" was the guy sucking off my long hose for the ascent. Plus I think Royse underfilled my tanks:) so when you add all that up...... okay, I know I still sucked. But kind of nice to have a break and regroup after dive 3 wasn't it?
Funny, that -- I was the donor for the OOG diver in our group yesterday... and I helped Dan take up the line... and I still had 1400psi by the end of two dives... :rofl3:

Sorry bud... couldn't resist... :wink:

Actually -- doing the calculation, I had a SAC rate of approx 1.0 ... wow, that's almost twice as high as on a normal dive. I think we were ALL hoovering the gas pretty quick with all that task loading!
 
I still think it was Allans fault:) Maybe the rest of the team didn't notice a freeflow for like 2 minutes............ Tuff to find good team mates these days. Also Jeremy, you had twin 130's buddy while I had 95's. For the last day I had those suckers so filled I had to loosen the tank bands and they were glowing before I got into the water:) I think I still have enough air in them for two or three more dives.................
 
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