ERP
Guest
GUE Rec Triox class report.
So with a whopping 3 dives on my shiny new doubles I spent the weekend taking GUE's Rec Triox course.
The Instructors were Andrew, Mike (MHK on the board), Joe, and Mark
Including myself there were 4 students. Given the course cost <$400 that's a pretty damn good deal by any standards.
Day 1 started with a quick briefing in the parking lot, getting our tanks topped off and a quick stop at Starbucks (I think Andrew might drink more coffee than I do
) before going to the lake to dive.
The dives were basic ascent, decent and valve drills Mike was kind enough to introduce warious failures during the drills to keep it interesting. Doing the basic skills while having my mask stolen, getting mysteriosly caught in the line, having my valves fail at random, airsharing and having any dangling equipment clipped to pretty much anything handy, was somewhat overwhelming. When we surfaced Mike would point out what we'd done wrong,
as far as I could make out about the only thing we did right was not drowned.
About half way through we swapped over to work with Andrew, and did a basic dive. He adjusted our weighting, and the dive had only a few minor failures.
We were back in the classroom early in the afternoon. Day 1's lectures were basically a recap of the Fundamentals course, with a strong emphasis on gas management. Once the lectures were complete we did the video review, it's an awesome teaching tool which to me always seems to be a combination of amusing and depressing .
We started early the following morning, with the swim test (Ugh!). Day 2's dives were really building on the feedback from Day 1, before being joined by the instructors, we did basic drills. We did a short dive with Andrew and it was readilly apparent that between myself and my buddies new doubles we were having some significant bouyancy issues. Mike conducted a remedial bouyancy clinic for the two of us with requisite mask removal and airsharing everytime something went right. By the time we got out of the water it was clear that myself and my buddy weren't going to be passing or diving deep on the final day.
Day2's lectures were the basics of gas blending and some basic decompression theory, figuring NDL's, what stops should be made from various depths. It was a LOT of material. We followed this up with another less critical video review and the written test.
We met at Starbucks 6:00a.m. on the 3rd day, Andrew blessed the other team to dive Triox and we drove up to Tahoe.
Day 3 is the experience dive, Andrew took the other buddy team on two dives while Mike worked with us in the shallows.
So I failed the course, but it was a lot of fun, to be honest I really wasn't looking forwards to the class. I didn't get a chance to get out with my doubles and practice prior to the class and I was expecting to get hammered. It was great learning experience and a lot of fun, and I will be taking it again once I can get a few more dives on my doubles and make them a bit less shiny
It's a class I would recomend without reservation, like DIRF courses the course is tailored to it's participants, several of the people in our course had intentions to move onto Tech 1 and as a result it was a little more intense than it would have been if we'd all been purely rec oriented.
So with a whopping 3 dives on my shiny new doubles I spent the weekend taking GUE's Rec Triox course.
The Instructors were Andrew, Mike (MHK on the board), Joe, and Mark
Including myself there were 4 students. Given the course cost <$400 that's a pretty damn good deal by any standards.
Day 1 started with a quick briefing in the parking lot, getting our tanks topped off and a quick stop at Starbucks (I think Andrew might drink more coffee than I do
) before going to the lake to dive. The dives were basic ascent, decent and valve drills Mike was kind enough to introduce warious failures during the drills to keep it interesting. Doing the basic skills while having my mask stolen, getting mysteriosly caught in the line, having my valves fail at random, airsharing and having any dangling equipment clipped to pretty much anything handy, was somewhat overwhelming. When we surfaced Mike would point out what we'd done wrong,
as far as I could make out about the only thing we did right was not drowned.
About half way through we swapped over to work with Andrew, and did a basic dive. He adjusted our weighting, and the dive had only a few minor failures.
We were back in the classroom early in the afternoon. Day 1's lectures were basically a recap of the Fundamentals course, with a strong emphasis on gas management. Once the lectures were complete we did the video review, it's an awesome teaching tool which to me always seems to be a combination of amusing and depressing
. We started early the following morning, with the swim test (Ugh!). Day 2's dives were really building on the feedback from Day 1, before being joined by the instructors, we did basic drills. We did a short dive with Andrew and it was readilly apparent that between myself and my buddies new doubles we were having some significant bouyancy issues. Mike conducted a remedial bouyancy clinic for the two of us with requisite mask removal and airsharing everytime something went right. By the time we got out of the water it was clear that myself and my buddy weren't going to be passing or diving deep on the final day.
Day2's lectures were the basics of gas blending and some basic decompression theory, figuring NDL's, what stops should be made from various depths. It was a LOT of material. We followed this up with another less critical video review and the written test.
We met at Starbucks 6:00a.m. on the 3rd day, Andrew blessed the other team to dive Triox and we drove up to Tahoe.
Day 3 is the experience dive, Andrew took the other buddy team on two dives while Mike worked with us in the shallows.
So I failed the course, but it was a lot of fun, to be honest I really wasn't looking forwards to the class. I didn't get a chance to get out with my doubles and practice prior to the class and I was expecting to get hammered. It was great learning experience and a lot of fun, and I will be taking it again once I can get a few more dives on my doubles and make them a bit less shiny
It's a class I would recomend without reservation, like DIRF courses the course is tailored to it's participants, several of the people in our course had intentions to move onto Tech 1 and as a result it was a little more intense than it would have been if we'd all been purely rec oriented.
