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All I really have to say is wow, that course is worth every penny. I will leave it to the others that were in the group to announce if they passed the course or not. I was luckily enough to have squeaked by and received a rec pass, due to not having doubles and a can light.
All in all the course was very well laid out, On friday we met and had classroom sessions and fitness testing at the Scuba sciences 7th street shop, thank you by the way for allowing us to use the facilities. On saturady we were out at the lake conducting 3 dives. These dives ranged form practicing fin kicks to practicing the basic five drills, reg removal and replace, exchanging regs, mask clear and mask removal, and for the life of me I can't remember the other, possibly air share. Anyways these all had to be done while maintaining bouyancy. Which is not as easy as it sounds when you are trying to remain perfectly trim and still in the water column.
The next day had us shooting SMB's, and again practicing our backwards kicks and helicopter turns, as well as doing the unconcious/toxing diver rescue from the bottom which I must say I did horribly, sorry for killing ya Kevin. After all of this we went out on our own little dive that we planned but I turned it after about 10 minutes due to some serious leg cramps the kind that just knot up on ya after a hard game of rugby or soccer, having not eaten or drank any water since about 5 in the morning can do that to a person. We were trying to bang out the rest of the course. Oh and in between all the dives and lectures on sunday, we got to watch a boat catch fire and have our dive site(Vista Point) swarmed by every moron in the lake who had to come running to see what the smoke was. Seriously I wonder where these people get there boat safety courses from or whatver it is called, talk about idiots.
Anyways enough of the ranting and raving about the boat. After completing our dives on Sunday we went to the local Red Robin on Happy Valley and had a debriefing and wrote a test for the course. After all of this we were sat down one by one and we gave our own evaluations to the instuctor. He either agreed or disagreed with our remarks and we scored our selves on our performance, with his insite. After all of this he told us whether er got a provisional or a pass, since nobody took the course in a tec format nobody received the tec rating.
Alot of intricate details like the secret hand shake and the ceremony were left out due to secracy so please do not ask about those. Obviously the course involved alot more I just do not feel like writing detailed events of what happened.
Well I thing that should about cover it. If Charles or Matt can think of anything to add, please do. My thanks goes out to Karen, Kevin and Edison, as well as Scuba Sciences for all of the help in putting on a great weekend for our Fundies course.
So Kevin and Edison were helping with the class? They're great guys. I enjoyed meeting them here in Seattle.
Steve's a great instructor, isn't he?
Kevin & Karen C. helped a great deal with the class, taking care of logistics and video issues, Edison the lazy bum only showed up on Sunday for a dive. I've talked extensively with one of the class members, and since he's not on the board I'll give his report. He felt the class and instruction was VERY good, and he learned alot. He has been diving around 12 years, worked many trips as a DM, and is an OWI. He has been trying to master the back kick for awhile now with little success, he said Steve fixed that and it's now working. Being a diehard stuborn american, he wasn't real happy with the !You Will Use Metrics! part of the class, but he got over it. He really liked that Steve explained in detail why any changes in gear configuration were done, and why they did things in a certain way. Over he thought it was a great class, and will probably jump into the next one for his Tec pass. It would be great to hear from the two other board members on how they thought the class went, and if it was worth while to them.
Yeah I committed a sin I did the dreaded MOF. Ah well as for furthering my courses with GUE, I believe I will, just going to take it one step at a time though, it gets dam expensive fast. I am sure the others on the board already know that though. As for the carpet diving we got some great bottom times on those dives, no problems staying down for as long as we wanted but every now and then we had to jump in the water to cool off a bit.
As for the metric portion of the class, well I was right at home, well being from Canada and everything, although I originally learned on psi and feet.
Anyways again I truly am thankful for all the supprt that we received at the lake from be it people there encouraging us, or setting up the course, it was all greatly appreciated. Not many people I know would come out and support a bunch of divers or friends when they are going through a course and it just goes to show that there actually are people out there who are thoughtful, and care about helping others out.
Oh and I forgot to mention that Steve is a good instructor very helpful and you could tell he comes from a teaching background. Now why can't open water classes be like this course, it would really prepare new divers for the ocean instead of just throwing people to the dogs which is what it basicaly feels like when you are newly certified.
Well Steve covered it in both units for us, not really sure why, but the formulas do not really differ that much from one another. I believe he did this because his slide show was in metric units, mind you a few of the formulas were wrong though, so I believe they are new slides. But like I said, altogether it was an amazing class to participate in.
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Originally Posted by TSandM
