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We just finished our class today and wow is everyone beat, including me so I will keep this one short(er).
Day 1, Weekend 2
Our class officially was resuming on Friday evening and the three of us decided to practice earlier in the week and attempt to tweak the skills in relation to the video reviews from last weekend. We ended up racking up about 5+ hours of bottom time throughout the week, including the morning of the class. We started some classroom/ lecture stuff on Friday evening to maximize the in water time for Saturday and Sunday. The day finished up at a reasonable hour and we retired to our rooms for an early day to follow.
Day 2, Weekend 2 (Halloween)
We told Ed that our weakest teammate, Jeff had made leaps and bounds improvements from the week prior and Jeff did not disappoint. He looked like a totally different diver and was able to start redeeming himself quickly. Our first day of diving for the new week was a little brutal and we ended up spending about 4-1/2 hours in upper 50 degree water between in-water skills and in-water surface intervals. Again we need to thank Duane who came out to brave the cold with a high of 46 degrees topside to videotape our performance. Duane did this with a leaking drysuit sleeve which by the end of the day had his right arm soaked to the shoulder. All the skills went very well and gave us a sense that a “Tech Pass” might be in our futures. We went over the video briefly and ended the day with a trip to Buffalo Wild Wings for some much needed food and adult beverages.
Day 3, Weekend 2 (D-Day)
We rolled the clock back an hour but still showed up for day 3 exhausted. Not a single one of us was looking forward to jumping back into the cold water and our heads weren’t entirely in the game. As Murphy had it, our team started getting a little irritated with one another underwater and the tension could be felt. I ended up more distracted by Jeff being a depth Nazi and calling Nick and I out for dropping anything more than a foot during the drills. During this whole fiasco I became engaged in an underwater sign language conversation in the middle of a drill. This lead to a valve drill mistake being overlooked by our team and would have added even more stress. After some intervention from Duane and Ed the skills were repeated and everyone was back on track to finish with some grace. The in-water portion of the class was finished after another 4+ hours in the water and in water surface intervals. Ed set up a projector to do our video debrief which went well. Ed didn’t keep us in suspense and told us that the three of us would receive a “Tech Pass” and gave us a minimal list of things to continue working on to tweak our team communication.
Conclusion
I can only conclude by saying that at the time I signed up for the class, I already had a great deal of respect for the GUE organization. By the time we finished our class, our instructor Ed Gabe had strongly instilled a sense of pride to be associated with GUE. Ed was able to provide an amazing amount of insight on the organization and is amazingly humble about his own accomplishments within it. Ed was always very professional and has a very effective teaching style which reinforces quality performance in an unintimidating learning environment all while having fun. Ultimately we didn’t learn new skills but how to perform them with much greater precision. We also learned to be very much aware of our teammate’s location and passive/active communication in the water.
For anyone who might be interested in taking a similar class I doubt I could say enough good things about Ed Gabe and the way GUE was represented.
I really hope that this helps some people who may be interested in taking the class, but have been scared off by preconceived notions enforced by negative online personalities. The skills covered in the class have personally made my diving enjoyment and in water comfort improve dramatically.
I really hope that this helps some people who may be interested in taking the class, but have been scared off by preconceived notions enforced by negative online personalities. The skills covered in the class have personally made my diving enjoyment and in water comfort improve dramatically.
Congratulations on passing and thanks for posting about your class. Reports like yours help to dispel the negative perception about GUE and its training. I know I came out of my Fundies class a more precise, more safe and more comfortable diver.
I read your part 1 of 2 report last week, enjoyed it as it brought back lots of memories and looked forward to this last installment. Again, congratulations!!
LOL I think we all agreed a week off is necessary. Then I'd like to get out on Lake Michigan before it gets "super cold". I didn't get out of bed today until about 3pm and I loved every minute of it Dan's write-up is pretty much everything I would say but much better written. I hope these class reports encourage some local divers to look into this class, amazingly enough there isn't much of a local DIR following even with the Great Lakes in our backyard.
I know that i will most likely be back at Haigh on the 14th and the 22nd....if you don't mind diving with a Noob....gotta get my new undergarments out here shortly
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GUE Fundamentals Final Report, Weekend 2 of 2
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Originally Posted by ScubaInChicago
Dan's write-up is pretty much everything I would say but much better written. I hope these class reports encourage some local divers to look into this class, amazingly enough there isn't much of a local DIR following even with the Great Lakes in our backyard.
