DrySuitDave:
Yum, gut-spilling...
This trip was difficult but uneventful. I had two equipment problemsseveral metal rivets had to be replaced and a wire came loose in the electronics pod. The rivets were replaced with nuts and bolts; the wire will get repaired over the upcoming weekend. I have to get much better at the travel part of rebreather diving.
The diving was cold. Very cold. We did two dives a day for three days. At times, I may not have been even remotely pretty (both in and out of the water
), but I managed to complete all of my assigned tasks. I had a fight with a reel, and won, lost a bag on the ocean floor, and somehow, but not through the mouthpiece, got a little salt water in the loop on the last day.Now that I am home, I can go back to, for me, square one, and get buoyancy and trim squared away. Everything gets easier from that point forward. I passed on a trip in four weeks to Cozumel because I need more practice in a controlled environment before I go forth, and I do not want to go back to open circuit :froggy: .
It all seems, in a way, very anticlimatic. I now feel as though I have a very basic set of skills that need to be rigorously practiced before much of anything else takes place. And that's where I'm at.
In the end, the class spanned 205 hours over fourteen days, including six pool dives and thirteen open water dives, many of which were at least a hour in duration. The class was an adventure in and of itself, and also the beginning of a much larger adventure. I learned *a lot* from Jeff.
Todd.
