Today’s training went very well.
G=Team Member
NG=Newer Team Member
FNG=A Real New Team Member
We meet up at the Marine Building at 0800 and do some in-house stuff.
At around 0900 we head for Honeysuckle Beach on Hayden Lake about 4 miles from the office.
G, NG and FNG’s get suited up and pack gear out onto the docks.
We break up into two teams with an equal amount of G, NG and FNG’s. We get into the water where I go through the basics first for our half.
Mask off and back on.
Throw reg away then find and replace.
BC off and back on.
Weight belt off and back on at the bottom and the surface.
Free assent to the surface.
Buddy breathe over a roughly 100 yard run.
I would do a skill then have another G, NG or FNG do it.
Our two FNG’s did well. One NG didn’t do so well at first.
NG learned that when you change to underwear that is like 2 inches thick you need more weight. A lot more weight. Like 44 pounds worth. He was warm but will resort back to the thinner stuff and dump 20 pounds.
Then we went to add nourishment to the bodies. Ahhhh, the power of Mexican Food and diving.
Some of the media was there in the morning but I think the snow kept the rest of them away. But at 1300 they show up after our chips, salsa and refry load. A gutsy lot they are.
Then we do some search patterns that only three of us know what up. Hehehe.
G is in the water doing a nice tight pattern about 80’ out. I wait for FNG, who is the safety diver, to get a little relaxed and complacent. So much so he pulls his mask off to itch his nose. Just as he did we had a diver emergency.
I’m sure most of you have heard the old saying, “A-hole over Teakettle”. Yup he was the perfect example.
G is fine but under a major entanglement. It was a drill but he was seriously entangled. NG is tending FNG who now has so much on his mind he can’t get it in the proper order.
No matter how hard he presses the BC dump valve he can’t get rid of the air inside so he can submerge. Kick, kick, kick but going nowhere, at least he’s pointed in the right direction.
First lesson is to stay calm, a tough thing for an FNG to do. Then the dump valve needs to be higher than air supply, which he eventually figured out. He also learned that keeping fins in the water makes one go faster than the air does.
By the end of the day everyone did a great job. It was snowing light with a mid 30’s air temp. The water was 40df with around 20’ of vis.
We all got over an hour on the bottom where it was warmer than topside. Might have had something to do with lunch.
Gary D.
PS. I almost forgot. Everyone of us, I stress everyone of us, placed a mask on the frontal lobe, facing forward, above the eye brows while both in and out of the water. During that activity only a hand full of local Canadian Geese even looked in our direction and not a one of them attempted a rescue.
