Looking for a good Tech Wreck Diver Instructor

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Andres Cuevas

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Location
Chile
Hi, I'm looking for a good Tech Wreck Diver Instructor and I need some advise.
My wife and I have the Intro Cave Diving, we made it in Mexico, and the Decompression Procedures certification.

We live in Chile South America, here we used to dive in waters around 10°C (52°F) and bad visibility. Dry suit all the time.
We want to expand our skills one more step now, we have a location with hundreds of wrecks, lot of big wrecks at 40mts, but we are unable to penetrate them because the lack of training.

I tried to find a good instructor in South America without luck.
The only good instructor I know in the region is Marco Reis Jr, a brazilian instructor, we took the deco procedures with him. But he is always traveling and getting a place and a definitive date to make the training has been impossible.
So for me is time to look somewhere else.

I've been able to gather two names so far of instructors I know have the skills we are looking for, one is Pete Mesley NZ and the other is Andreas Matthes MX.
Pete is a little far from where we are and Matt is located in Playa del Carmen where there aren't too many wrecks.

Our two last instructors (Tech and Cave) left the bar really high, incredible buoyancy, impeccable trim, really horizontal trim and not the 20° trim that some tech divers exhibit (Not trying to criticize anybody, just trying to explain what we are looking for), huge experience and knowledge in their area and the ability to share that knowledge with the students.
We like the kind of instructors that are serious in the water but relaxed out of the water, also very important, they don't have to have problems about training a woman.

So the main questions are:
Where to go?
Who we have to choose?

Please, any advise you can give me will be very much appreciated.

Regards,
Andres
 
You have cave training? Take that training into the wreck.
 
You have cave training? Take that training into the wreck.

I understand the similarities between the cave and the wreck.
But there are some details that I'm not so sure about.
How to recognize that the wreck is safe for penetration.
Most of the wrecks here in the zone don't have the original map, so all the penetrations will be exploration.

And could be more things that I'm not seeing.
 
Maybe I need to go for the full cave and complete my cave training, at least in that area I know where to find good instructors.
 
You have cave training? Take that training into the wreck.

Workable solution but the two are not the same.

The structure and skillset in my advanced wreck class and a cave class share many aspects but there are things that a diver comes across in a wreck that are simply not an issue in a cave... and vis versa
 
+1 on lookup devondiver in PI. He also has some blogs, classes, etc. available for more info about his teachings.
 
Andres,

I think that a very, very good technical wreck instructor (ANDI) will be visiting Venezuela later this year to conduct a bunch of training. Not sure if that is geographically compatible/accessible for you, or whether he'd be able to hop over to Chile also, but if interested, drop me a line and I'll hook you up.

Obviously, you'd need to have obtained the prerequisite qualifications/experience to undertake the technical wreck course, prior to enrollment on training - typically qualification to, at least, Extended Range diver level, or equivalent.

Cheers,
Andy
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/peregrine/

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