caveseeker7 once bubbled...
Hi Todd,
I was wondering how things are going. Did you finish the training with Jeff?
How is the rig holding up? Had a good time in SoCal?
Hope all's well
Stefan
Hello:
I think that I have sufficiently recovered to actually write about my training experiences. To the kind individuals who sent private messages, well, thank you.
There were two other students in my classone diving a Mk-15.5 and the other a PRISM. Between the three of us, we made an ideal student (my only contribution would be the academics).
Speaking of which, the first two days of the class were dedicated to academics, which were extensive and exhausting. Fortunately, I was well prepared so this part actually went really well for me, though I had to spend some time "translating" the proper equations into "Todd-equations."
The next three days were dedicated to getting the rig ready to dive. Tools are not my friends, and never was this more evident than during this class. The rig needed some love, as it had mostly been untouched for twenty-three years. Let me put it this way, I know the route between Jeff's house and Steam Machines by heart. Peter and Sharon, at Steam Machines, were a life-saving source of supportemergency batteries (as mine did not fit), new absorbent pads (lost, but later found), new secondary display meter, new hoses, new DSV and more new hoses, a part of the electronics pod that obviously had feet and walked away in a huff, a giant piece of rubber (more on this later),...
I think you get the idea.
At this point, I should mention that an *average* day for me during this class was in the sixteen hour vicinity.
The next three days were my fault and only my fault. I assembled the rig incorrectly, and thus spent seventy-two hours from hell fighting carbon dioxide hits in the water. I finally figured out that I omitted a piece from the puzzle (see rubber reference above) and that I was allowing some of the gas to bypass the scrubber. I would really rather not go into details here, but suffice it to say that my experiences were unpleasant, to say the least. The best thing that happened was that a hose completely gave at the beginning of a dive, but the unit did not flood. Oh, and I flooded the battery but not the electronicsorings work much better in the appropriate groove than at the bottom of the battery pod.
Now I am one day over the normal run for the course, and I have two dives to my credit. Jeff and I headed over to Catalina, the day starting at five in the morning, which is when I typically think that I only have five hours left to sleep
. We got two dives in Catalina before I just gave out from exhaustion. The third dive lasted two mistakes and two minutes before I decided to get the hell out of there before I, or the Mk-15, got hurt.
The next day, the last day, I got sick (congested) and there was no way that I was going to finish the class before having to catch my fight home, so I took the day off.
I was unprepared in a lot of ways. It was my first time using a rebreather. It was my first beach dive. It was my first time in cold water. It was my first time wearing that much wet suit, hood, and gloves, it was my first time wearing that much weight, by a huge margin, and it was the first time using a new configuationnew wing(s), bailout (second) in a new place, inflator in a new place running off a stage bottle. Plus, I was stressed, so other fun things happened like my mask constantly leaking (bought a new one but no help) and wasting a whole lot of gas. If everything else would have gone smoothly, I would have had my hands more than full. Where I was not unprepared, I was underprepared, and the effects after a time, added up to way more than I could handle. My fault.
Jeff throughout all of this was patient and wonderful. I cannot say enough good things about him and about the class.
There were some good things that came out of the class. I had a great attitude and no matter what happened, I just kept working. I learned a ton, and easily passed the two tests. And I had one moment in Catalina of total and complete peace, when I understood that one day this would all be worthwhile. I learned to assemble and disassemble ninety percent of the unit, and will get the other ten percent with Kevin in the spring.
I leave again in a eight days to hopefully finish the class, and I hope that I have better experiences to report.
Thank you again for your advice and kind support.
Todd.
