- Messages
- 808
- Reaction score
- 40
- # of dives
- 200 - 499
Instructor: Bob Sherwood
Instructor Intern: Errol Kalayci
Dates: February 14-18, 2011
Location: South Florida
Number of Students: Six
Sorry, this is long, but being the profound experience that it was, I wanted to address it in detail and give it the attention it deserved. I tried to write it keeping those is mind who may be unfamiliar with GUE procedures.
Wow, where to begin? Well, to start I’ll say this was without a doubt the most challenging dive course I have taken to date. However, it was also the most rewarding. If you’ve read a lot of Fundies class reports, this may sound like a cliché, but this was truly my experience. To give you some idea of my experience going in, you can check my profile, but I will add that I had about two dozen dives in doubles and about three dozen in a drysuit. I took the Primer with Bob last summer when I had just a few dives in each. I’ve been logging about 25-30 dives per year (absolutely, I wish it was more), and I live in an area with few GUE divers with whom to practice.
Day one: We met at a local dive shop, made our introductions, and started with the first lectures and videos. We then assembled our gear for review by Errol and Bob, and made adjustments accordingly. Since my gear had previously been reviewed by Bob, I did not have to make many changes. After this we headed to a club pool for our initial dives. All dives were videotaped and reviewed at the end of the day, with a couple of exceptions due to conditions later in the week. Also, we preformed the standardized pre-dive check (“GUE EDGE” plus long hose deployment and bubble check) before every dive. On this day, we went over the frog kick, modified frog, flutter kick, and modified flutter. We also began to get feedback on trim and buoyancy, both in the water and in the video review, which continued all week. The kicks were not new to me, and I had done some work on trim and buoyancy, so today for me was more about learning what I needed to refine rather than beginning from scratch. Thus began the list I still carry in my head of things I need to work on. The class does not give you a lot of time to practice things before moving on to new skills which need to be performed in addition to the ones already introduced.
Day two: Meeting at the same pool, we worked on helicopter turns, the back kick, and the “basic five,” which consists of reg removal, reg exchange, long hose deployment, mask clearing, and mask removal and replacement. Bob had helped me adjust my harness a bit more before we got wet. I had rudimentary versions of the helicopter and back kick coming into class, but the basic five as presented was new for me. The most trouble I had was with clipping off the primary and deploying and restowing the long hose with efficiency and control. Keep in mind the skills should be done while maintaining trim and staying within a given buoyancy window, so just consider this a running theme for the week. This also began the more intense introduction of team skills, as you need to communicate, cooperate, and provide visual reference for your buddy while doing all this stuff. The day ended with the video review and the nitrox lecture.
Day three: We did the valve drill and s-drill in the shallower eight foot pool we had been using so far, and went to the 25 foot tank for SMB deployment and unconscious diver recovery. The tank was only about 15 by 15 feet so it was cozy with two students and two instructors (especially if two people in the pool don’t have quite the same degree of control, haha), but it had windows to watch the other teams which was pretty cool. I had never done a valve drill in the water and had some trepidation about it before class, but it went pretty well I thought. The s-drill is similar to the long hose deployment in the basic five, except that you actually share gas with your buddy and travel some distance. Managing the long hose while maintaining trim and buoyancy was again the challenge here (hmm, detecting a trend). I had shot lift bags a few times but never an SMB, but it went ok (read completed but far from perfect). Recovering it at depth and restowing it was also new and challenging. I had practiced unconscious diver recovery in rescue class but never with both of us in doubles. It was inelegant but we got it done.
Continued...
Instructor Intern: Errol Kalayci
Dates: February 14-18, 2011
Location: South Florida
Number of Students: Six
Sorry, this is long, but being the profound experience that it was, I wanted to address it in detail and give it the attention it deserved. I tried to write it keeping those is mind who may be unfamiliar with GUE procedures.
Wow, where to begin? Well, to start I’ll say this was without a doubt the most challenging dive course I have taken to date. However, it was also the most rewarding. If you’ve read a lot of Fundies class reports, this may sound like a cliché, but this was truly my experience. To give you some idea of my experience going in, you can check my profile, but I will add that I had about two dozen dives in doubles and about three dozen in a drysuit. I took the Primer with Bob last summer when I had just a few dives in each. I’ve been logging about 25-30 dives per year (absolutely, I wish it was more), and I live in an area with few GUE divers with whom to practice.
Day one: We met at a local dive shop, made our introductions, and started with the first lectures and videos. We then assembled our gear for review by Errol and Bob, and made adjustments accordingly. Since my gear had previously been reviewed by Bob, I did not have to make many changes. After this we headed to a club pool for our initial dives. All dives were videotaped and reviewed at the end of the day, with a couple of exceptions due to conditions later in the week. Also, we preformed the standardized pre-dive check (“GUE EDGE” plus long hose deployment and bubble check) before every dive. On this day, we went over the frog kick, modified frog, flutter kick, and modified flutter. We also began to get feedback on trim and buoyancy, both in the water and in the video review, which continued all week. The kicks were not new to me, and I had done some work on trim and buoyancy, so today for me was more about learning what I needed to refine rather than beginning from scratch. Thus began the list I still carry in my head of things I need to work on. The class does not give you a lot of time to practice things before moving on to new skills which need to be performed in addition to the ones already introduced.
Day two: Meeting at the same pool, we worked on helicopter turns, the back kick, and the “basic five,” which consists of reg removal, reg exchange, long hose deployment, mask clearing, and mask removal and replacement. Bob had helped me adjust my harness a bit more before we got wet. I had rudimentary versions of the helicopter and back kick coming into class, but the basic five as presented was new for me. The most trouble I had was with clipping off the primary and deploying and restowing the long hose with efficiency and control. Keep in mind the skills should be done while maintaining trim and staying within a given buoyancy window, so just consider this a running theme for the week. This also began the more intense introduction of team skills, as you need to communicate, cooperate, and provide visual reference for your buddy while doing all this stuff. The day ended with the video review and the nitrox lecture.
Day three: We did the valve drill and s-drill in the shallower eight foot pool we had been using so far, and went to the 25 foot tank for SMB deployment and unconscious diver recovery. The tank was only about 15 by 15 feet so it was cozy with two students and two instructors (especially if two people in the pool don’t have quite the same degree of control, haha), but it had windows to watch the other teams which was pretty cool. I had never done a valve drill in the water and had some trepidation about it before class, but it went pretty well I thought. The s-drill is similar to the long hose deployment in the basic five, except that you actually share gas with your buddy and travel some distance. Managing the long hose while maintaining trim and buoyancy was again the challenge here (hmm, detecting a trend). I had shot lift bags a few times but never an SMB, but it went ok (read completed but far from perfect). Recovering it at depth and restowing it was also new and challenging. I had practiced unconscious diver recovery in rescue class but never with both of us in doubles. It was inelegant but we got it done.
Continued...
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