Beiji
Contributor
First I just have to say . . . Wow, what an incredible experience! I'm processing a lot of new information, but I wanted to write up a report while it's still fairly fresh in my mind.
I started diving actively in August 2009 and have been diving year round since then. I heard about DIR and GUE on ScubaBoard, but I never thought I would go any further than watching the cool UTD videos.
Several experiences turned me toward GUE to look for answers to specific problems:
On Thursday, we met for a private class at The Islander site in Alexandria Bay on the St. Lawrence River. We lucked out with dry but cloudy weather, unlike the torrential rain and flash flooding of the day before. Bob's house got six feet of water in the basement. I would have been disappointed but understanding if he had wanted to reschedule our class, but he didn't. He seems to have a genuine passion for education and did not seem at all distracted or preoccupied during our time talking and diving together.
Bob had his 17' trailer with him, and, as we sat inside, he went over some of the history of GUE and the evolution of dive equipment. He talked about the forces acting on the diver (lift, weight, thrust, drag) and why horizontal trim is more efficient in the water. Okay, I have to confess, I was not taking good notes, and I'm sure I've forgotten a lot. However, for some people, this report will be too long, so that's the up side of forgetting.
One of Bob's friends stopped by, and Bob briefly said hello, introduced us, and continued going over material. I was pleased at how he always stayed focused when we were working together.
I was very impressed with Bob as you can probably already tell. He's an excellent teacher - patient, encouraging, non-judgmental, and he's quick to tell you when you've done something well. He welcomed all my questions, and he didn't laugh or even snicker at any of my gear including my Air2 much to my relief.
He made some adjustments to my quick cinch harness so that the shoulder straps stay even, and he used some cave line on the clips on my SPG and second stage. He showed me how to set my tank lower and had me leave off my 13 cf pony. When we got into the water we did the buddy and bubbles check (not sure if there is another name for this routine - GUE EDGE?).
We went through what is probably a routine process of checking out my skills or lack thereof: trim, propulsion, buoyancy. Bob is very good at communicating underwater, and even though some of the hand signals were new to me, he was able to convey the idea of what he wanted me to do. He constantly signaled to me to get horizontal and bring up my head and arms. He had found out before we even got into the water that I have limited articulation with my head, and he said that would cause me to want to look down and bring my body up in order to see, which, of course, I did constantly. When I would get into a good position, Bob would applaud, which made me feel really good. Sometimes we would bump fists, but I'm not sure if that was because I was doing something right or because I needed to be pushed backwards. lol
I saw a large crayfish and the big freshwater drum that hangs out at The Islander. I pointed them out to Bob because, hey, who doesn't love to see that stuff? And then I kind of shook my head and laughed at myself.
When we started ascending I started having trouble. I was too buoyant and wasn't able to vent any more air from my suit. I flailed a bit. Okay, I flailed a lot. When I started feeling that I couldn't control my buoyancy, I got what Bob calls happy feet, moving my feet more and more. So at twenty feet (more or less) I was doing little sculls, and at ten feet (more or less) I was a dancing fool!
When we got out of the water, we looked at the video Bob had taken. There were times when I actually had surprisingly good trim, like 10º! I would not have believed it if I hadn't seen the video. I even said a couple times, "That's me?" My kicks weren't terrible. I drop my knees, especially on the flutter kick. My usual kick is the modified frog kick, and I was way too fast with the full frog kick. "Kick . . . wait . . . wait . . . don't do it . . . wait . . . don't do it . . . kick." I did helicopter both ways, and we didn't try the backward kick.
We took a break, and Bob talked to some folks from West Virginia who happened to be diving at the river and who knew Bob from taking Fundies with him, as well as a former Fundies student who lives in Syracuse who I mentioned above.
When we got back in the water we worked almost exclusively on descending and ascending. We would drop ten feet, hold there, then drop another ten feet. We would do the same thing ascending, Bob telling me to get horizontal and keep my head and arms up. And then we'd repeat the cycle. We worked between ten and forty feet with our final stop at five feet.
I didn't have much trouble with the shallower holds this time - only the one at five feet. Bob had told me that the reason I had trouble when we were ascending on the first dive was because I had air in my feet. I was not used to ascending horizontally and didn't even think about having air in my feet. He told me to stretch out my legs which will cause them to drop a bit allowing the air to move up in the suit, wait a second, and then vent. It worked very well, and no more happy feet. I couldn't believe I was really doing it!
I was very happy with the second dive because I was able to accomplish something I had really been wanting to do: get stable in the water column. On the negative side, Bob told me that I was looking down so much that at one point he took his regulator out of his mouth and signaled he was out of air, but I didn't see him. Good thing it was just a simulation of an OOA emergency because I would not want to go down in diving history as the person who killed Bob Sherwood (and I'm sure he would never really go OOA and if he did he could save himself at only 40 ft)!
We talked some more about things I needed to work on - clip on, clip off - and some introductory gas planning and why my 13 cf pony bottle is really not going to safely get my up from 100 ft. We talked about all my gear and what was good and what I could change.
I'm still feeling the rush from the excitement of accomplishing what I was able to do. As I said at the top of the post, I have a lot of information to process, and I'm not sure where I will go from here. Bob was very encouraging and also very open, and I truly feel that I have choices, and that I won't be judged harshly I don't become 100% GUE.
I started diving actively in August 2009 and have been diving year round since then. I heard about DIR and GUE on ScubaBoard, but I never thought I would go any further than watching the cool UTD videos.
Several experiences turned me toward GUE to look for answers to specific problems:
- On a dive on a wreck in Florida, my buddy ran out of air. I posted about it in the Near Misses and Lessons Learned forum and continue to think about how I could have done things differently.
- Consistent problems maintaining my position in the water column during safety stops, including sinking ten feet while trying to deploy my SMB on an ocean dive.
- Doing a face plant in the muck at the bottom of the lake while doing a valve shut down during advanced nitrox class.
On Thursday, we met for a private class at The Islander site in Alexandria Bay on the St. Lawrence River. We lucked out with dry but cloudy weather, unlike the torrential rain and flash flooding of the day before. Bob's house got six feet of water in the basement. I would have been disappointed but understanding if he had wanted to reschedule our class, but he didn't. He seems to have a genuine passion for education and did not seem at all distracted or preoccupied during our time talking and diving together.
Bob had his 17' trailer with him, and, as we sat inside, he went over some of the history of GUE and the evolution of dive equipment. He talked about the forces acting on the diver (lift, weight, thrust, drag) and why horizontal trim is more efficient in the water. Okay, I have to confess, I was not taking good notes, and I'm sure I've forgotten a lot. However, for some people, this report will be too long, so that's the up side of forgetting.
One of Bob's friends stopped by, and Bob briefly said hello, introduced us, and continued going over material. I was pleased at how he always stayed focused when we were working together.
I was very impressed with Bob as you can probably already tell. He's an excellent teacher - patient, encouraging, non-judgmental, and he's quick to tell you when you've done something well. He welcomed all my questions, and he didn't laugh or even snicker at any of my gear including my Air2 much to my relief.
He made some adjustments to my quick cinch harness so that the shoulder straps stay even, and he used some cave line on the clips on my SPG and second stage. He showed me how to set my tank lower and had me leave off my 13 cf pony. When we got into the water we did the buddy and bubbles check (not sure if there is another name for this routine - GUE EDGE?).
We went through what is probably a routine process of checking out my skills or lack thereof: trim, propulsion, buoyancy. Bob is very good at communicating underwater, and even though some of the hand signals were new to me, he was able to convey the idea of what he wanted me to do. He constantly signaled to me to get horizontal and bring up my head and arms. He had found out before we even got into the water that I have limited articulation with my head, and he said that would cause me to want to look down and bring my body up in order to see, which, of course, I did constantly. When I would get into a good position, Bob would applaud, which made me feel really good. Sometimes we would bump fists, but I'm not sure if that was because I was doing something right or because I needed to be pushed backwards. lol
I saw a large crayfish and the big freshwater drum that hangs out at The Islander. I pointed them out to Bob because, hey, who doesn't love to see that stuff? And then I kind of shook my head and laughed at myself.
When we started ascending I started having trouble. I was too buoyant and wasn't able to vent any more air from my suit. I flailed a bit. Okay, I flailed a lot. When I started feeling that I couldn't control my buoyancy, I got what Bob calls happy feet, moving my feet more and more. So at twenty feet (more or less) I was doing little sculls, and at ten feet (more or less) I was a dancing fool!
When we got out of the water, we looked at the video Bob had taken. There were times when I actually had surprisingly good trim, like 10º! I would not have believed it if I hadn't seen the video. I even said a couple times, "That's me?" My kicks weren't terrible. I drop my knees, especially on the flutter kick. My usual kick is the modified frog kick, and I was way too fast with the full frog kick. "Kick . . . wait . . . wait . . . don't do it . . . wait . . . don't do it . . . kick." I did helicopter both ways, and we didn't try the backward kick.
We took a break, and Bob talked to some folks from West Virginia who happened to be diving at the river and who knew Bob from taking Fundies with him, as well as a former Fundies student who lives in Syracuse who I mentioned above.
When we got back in the water we worked almost exclusively on descending and ascending. We would drop ten feet, hold there, then drop another ten feet. We would do the same thing ascending, Bob telling me to get horizontal and keep my head and arms up. And then we'd repeat the cycle. We worked between ten and forty feet with our final stop at five feet.
I didn't have much trouble with the shallower holds this time - only the one at five feet. Bob had told me that the reason I had trouble when we were ascending on the first dive was because I had air in my feet. I was not used to ascending horizontally and didn't even think about having air in my feet. He told me to stretch out my legs which will cause them to drop a bit allowing the air to move up in the suit, wait a second, and then vent. It worked very well, and no more happy feet. I couldn't believe I was really doing it!
I was very happy with the second dive because I was able to accomplish something I had really been wanting to do: get stable in the water column. On the negative side, Bob told me that I was looking down so much that at one point he took his regulator out of his mouth and signaled he was out of air, but I didn't see him. Good thing it was just a simulation of an OOA emergency because I would not want to go down in diving history as the person who killed Bob Sherwood (and I'm sure he would never really go OOA and if he did he could save himself at only 40 ft)!
We talked some more about things I needed to work on - clip on, clip off - and some introductory gas planning and why my 13 cf pony bottle is really not going to safely get my up from 100 ft. We talked about all my gear and what was good and what I could change.
I'm still feeling the rush from the excitement of accomplishing what I was able to do. As I said at the top of the post, I have a lot of information to process, and I'm not sure where I will go from here. Bob was very encouraging and also very open, and I truly feel that I have choices, and that I won't be judged harshly I don't become 100% GUE.
