markmud
Self Reliant Diver--On All Dives.
Hello All,
This last weekend, I completed a Solo Diver course through Dolphin Scuba in Sacramento. Rick, our instructor, and one other student performed three dives in Monterey Bay for the certification class.
I am a warm water diver. I have a wetsuit that I bought for 60 to 70 degree water. Not 53 degree water. I was freezing cold for five hours.
However, the lack of proper thermal protection added another element to the training curriculum.
We practiced overcoming multiple issues serially while focusing our attention on the most critical issues when needed--breathing gas and buoyancy.
We deployed our redundant masks, our smb, our pony rigs, and manually inflated our BCs. We manually inflated our BCs for all three dives as the BC does not work (obviously) with a pony; we did not use our inflator button during the three dives.
My fellow student is a retired USMC gunny sergeant and jumpmaster. I am a licensed master mariner and former tug boat captain. We did not receive remedial navigation training--I assume our instructor thought if a gunny sergeant and professional mariner needed remedial nav training, we were lost causes.
The course forced us to practice skills that we should have mastered already, and to rely on ourselves for safe transit to the surface.
The course also reinforced maintaining situational awareness and not diving beyond our own capabilities. We did a SAC test and performed the math calculations for estimating gas usage at different depths.
The fact that I was diving cold water and not perfectly weighted and trimmed, added more complications to the training experience. I was down-by-the-stern, to use a nautical term, and failed to correct the issue through the three dives.
To iterate, everything we practiced were skills that any diver with 100 logged dives (or more) should have mastered already. It was good to run-through the drills in a serial fashion on each of dives.
I am glad I took the course and enjoyed the company of my fellow student, instructor, and the rest of the diving party.
A dry-suit is in my future.
markm
This last weekend, I completed a Solo Diver course through Dolphin Scuba in Sacramento. Rick, our instructor, and one other student performed three dives in Monterey Bay for the certification class.
I am a warm water diver. I have a wetsuit that I bought for 60 to 70 degree water. Not 53 degree water. I was freezing cold for five hours.
However, the lack of proper thermal protection added another element to the training curriculum.
We practiced overcoming multiple issues serially while focusing our attention on the most critical issues when needed--breathing gas and buoyancy.
We deployed our redundant masks, our smb, our pony rigs, and manually inflated our BCs. We manually inflated our BCs for all three dives as the BC does not work (obviously) with a pony; we did not use our inflator button during the three dives.
My fellow student is a retired USMC gunny sergeant and jumpmaster. I am a licensed master mariner and former tug boat captain. We did not receive remedial navigation training--I assume our instructor thought if a gunny sergeant and professional mariner needed remedial nav training, we were lost causes.
The course forced us to practice skills that we should have mastered already, and to rely on ourselves for safe transit to the surface.
The course also reinforced maintaining situational awareness and not diving beyond our own capabilities. We did a SAC test and performed the math calculations for estimating gas usage at different depths.
The fact that I was diving cold water and not perfectly weighted and trimmed, added more complications to the training experience. I was down-by-the-stern, to use a nautical term, and failed to correct the issue through the three dives.
To iterate, everything we practiced were skills that any diver with 100 logged dives (or more) should have mastered already. It was good to run-through the drills in a serial fashion on each of dives.
I am glad I took the course and enjoyed the company of my fellow student, instructor, and the rest of the diving party.
A dry-suit is in my future.
markm