Report on Essentials of Recreational Diving (super-long)

[Gombessa]

Since a few people here expressed interest in this class, I wanted to post a quick overview of an "Essentials of Recreational Diving" class I took with a friend earlier this month.

For those who don't know, Essentials is like an "Intro to DIR" class offered through 5thD-X (5thD-X/Breakthru Diving), which may or may not also be or have been Breakthru Diving. The naming thing is a bit confusing, but whatever. The class is about learning good diving principles in a fun and relaxed environment. It's not DIR-F, and it's not pass-fail. The cost with two in the class was around $350 each. Also, as long as you have a long-hose configuration you can take the class in any equipment you have. We both had hog harnesses, but I had a singles rig and my friend Steve had full doubles with argon and can light.

Our instructor was Delia Milliron, who teaches with AG and formerly Joe T. as well. Setting up the class was simple - just a few quick email exchanges to set up the dates and requirements, and we off to the races. We split up our classroom and dive weekends due to scheduling, and it turned out great because otherwise we would have been diving right in the middle of the big storm that enabled Mavericks up the coast.

The class is a half-day of lecture in the bay area, and two days of diving in Monterey. The lecture consisted of going through the basics: why better diving is more fun, overview of the skills covered in the class, gas management. We also did dry runs of the skills we would be practicing during our dives (trim, kicks, s-drills).

The next weekend, we met at the Breakwater in Monterey. We covered pre-dive checks, determined our dive plan, and then headed out. We did two dives a day, full of propulsion techniques and drills. Pretty much everything we did was in the context of maintaining good buoyancy and trim. This was really the point when I realized how absolutely crappy I was as a diver. I've told myself for a long time how I may be new, but the fact that I spent so much time thinking about diving and trying to improve probably made me better than the majority of recreational divers out there. I swear though, you get out there, and just trying not to drift away is a full-time job. Add any kind of thought process like a drill into the picture, and it was chaos, pure and simple. Between dives, Delia gave us a rundown on things to improve and answered questions. I really came away from each dive not only knowing what I did wrong, but also what I needed to work on to get better.

Each dive was video-taped (digitally), with an extensive video debrief at the end of the day. We had a technical glitch the first day so it unfortunately didn't happen, but everything was worked out well the second day, and the full, silty glory of bad, bad diving came back to haunt me on in 42" widescreen glory at the end of the day. I have to say it was *tremendously* helpful to see how you trim in the water. The visual feedback is the first step in associating the feel of doing something right or wrong, and I think the only thing that would have been better would have been if we could have lowered a 12-foot mirror into the Breakwater. Throughout, Delia was incredible, providing instruction and advice that really helped me become aware of what I was doing in the water and how to adjust it. The key lesson we came away with was the need to *commit* - your helicopter turn won't be as good or natural as turning in a big fluttering arc, but you've got to make the decision to use the helicopter turn and get better at it. Even if you can't back kick worth a damn, you need to try it first, every time, or you'll never get it down.

Interesting events: I lost my weight belt during a mod-S drill: my long hose hooked the weight belt and it fell into the sand even though it was under my harness (figure that one out). I swear I didn't start ascending until we all did a double-take and realize what it was.

During an S-Drill demonstration, Steve and Delia floated away from the tied-off scooter (~10ft vis). I could either stay with the scooter or follow them. I briefly considered cutting the smb and scootering into the sunset, but thought it was probably too hard to either sell or dive with a one-of-a-kind CSI-scooter, so I followed them. We of course lost track of the scooter at the end of the drill and got to practice an extra horizontal ascent to go topside and spot the smb.

Over two days, we did 3 dives of drills, and one "fun dive" to finish up valve drills, and head out along the Breakwater putting everything we learned to use.

In the end, it was a fantastic and eye-opening experience, and IMO it was worth every penny. I'm more excited about diving than ever, have an idea of what I need to work on most, and can't wait to incorporate drills and techniques into my dives. I would recommend it to divers in a broad range of skill level, from beginner (myself) to experienced (this is kind of an extreme case, but my friend actually passed DIR-F years ago and still said he still got tremendous value out of the class).

To conclude, here are just a few thoughts I've had and answers to questions I've received over the weeks:

1. Why not DIR-F?
To be honest, I was looking at both DIR-F and Essentials as early as November of last year. I might still do DIR-F later, or I might go with 5thD-X's other courses. I'm not really married to a brand, but after seeing how good Delia is as an instructor, I'll certainly gravitate towards her first. DIR-F being an evaluation-based course really didn't come into the equation either; I've got a PADI OW card which will get me into every dive site I want to go to, so I'm just in it for the education.

The thing is, I contacted the local DIR instructor last year, and it turns out the next free class was April 2008, which was way further out than I really wanted to wait. A big plus here was how flexible 5thD-X was with scheduling. I wanted to take the class with my friend, but we didn't have a third person to fill up the class; no problem. I was in singles, he was in doubles, and we are as far apart in skill level as you can get; no problem, we both got individual attention based on what we were doing and what we each needed to work on. We wanted to take the class ASAP and not wait several month; no problem. I couldn't schedule for one weekend, Steve couldn't for another; no problem, we just found 2.5 days that worked for everyone. It was simply fast and painless, and worked very well for us silicon valley working stiffs who sometimes sacrifice weekend hours to the man.

2. Take advantage of your time
If I have one big regret about the class, it's that I didn't come with a huge notepad full of every question I've ever had about diving. Steve was smart and did, and Delia spent the time to answer and discuss everything. We kept her over on the half-day lecture, made our dive-days run late, and it was all good. This was really *our* class, and she was more than happy to stay and make sure we got everything we wanted from it.

3. Get your videos
Getting videoed as you do drills is one of the most helpful things in the world. But these files are huge (one dive was ~2GB for us) and I imagine this is why 5thd-x doesn't make it a habit of giving them out. Storage is probably also the reason why they don't generally keep student videos. However, they're not hoarding them or holding them for ransom. They're more than happy for you to have your own videos. To do so, bring your laptop and a USB cable and they'll be happy to transfer them on the spot.

4. New stuff
They say you should never introduce more than one new piece of gear at a time. I say, if you're in a class, do it all at once. You'll never have a better opportunity to ask questions about how to set it up, how to prep/route it, how to best use it. Of course, that doesn't mean you should wait until the first day of class to get/use something, but class is a great incentive to get all that stuff you were thinking about anyways This was my second day diving in a drysuit and my own wing and regs, and Steve had never gotten his new can light wet, and had just bought argon inflation on his way down to Monterey, the showoff. Better to flail around with it with an instructor there rather than take the class without getting any feedback on it cause you didn't bring it.

5. Next steps?
Delia was forthright about what we should do next. If I wanted to go tech, I could benefit from first a lot of practice, and then Intro to Tech. My friend, who's cavern-certified and on the verge of technical diving anyways, might just want to take a stage-bottle mini-session and start doing dives. No hard sell, no focus on c-cards or pushing a specialty-tree, just options for where you want to take your diving next, if you want.

[Peter Guy]

I'm glad you liked it. I took Essentials and Rec2 from Joe -- as it turns out I just finished Rec3 from AG.

I really like the progression.

I've had the pleasure of meeting the NanoTech Diver (Delia) and (sort of) diving with her (same boat, same ocean, same pinnacle) -- great to read she did a good job.

[Ben_ca]

Hey Ken,
Great write up.... amazing how a simple task (staying still) is so hard to do sometimes huh? I'm glad you had fun in the class.. It's a great thing when you have all these tools to help you become a better diver. I'm sure you'll appreciate it wen I ask you for an S-drill and a basic 5 (or 6) when we finally dive together

[TSandM]

I really like the way 5thD-x has broken stuff down into manageable pieces. That's the way I learn -- Things like doubles minis and scooter minis and stage bottle minis would be perfect for me. In fact, we broke Rec 3 up into three weekends over four months. It's a really nice way to learn, even if perhaps not the cheapest. But it might be the most cost-effective in the long run.

[ae3753]

Great write-up, I'm glad that you had a good time. Let me know when you're free to go diving.

[Gombessa]

Thanks all, it really was an eye-opener for me!

I've signed up for a res on 3/29 so hopefully I can meet some more of the Mocal group.

I'm also thinking my next class may be Rescue, seems like a logical progression.

[ae3753]

We'll see you on 3/29!

[zen_man]

Thank you for the thorough write up Gombessa!

[sarita75]

Very nice write up Gombessa. Thank you for all the information.

[rhlee]

Nice report. Look forward to seeing you in the water...