Starting to motor

Things have been quiet - Ian, from Scuba Scene has been doing Course Director training in Malaya. but today I had the second day of a weekend of supporting specialties with students in Vobster Quay. The weather has been cold but sunny all weekend, only 7 degrees in the water still, but warm sunny weather between dives. Yesterday I was doing surface cover when a panicked diver and his Instructor hit the surface somewhat quickly, I called to Tim, the manager of Vobster as he, almost simultaneosly, spotted the same incident and decided to launch the RIB.  The student was fine after 15 minutes of oxygen; examining the dive profile showed that the ascent hadn't been quite as rapid as first thought.  

Today I supported three dives.  The first, to the Joaquin, was straightforward, the sudent was completing his wreck speialty and was tying off lines on the wreck.  The second was an attempt to take the student on his deep specialty on the dive he'd got stressed by yesterday.  I was accompanying Pippa as DM with Garry as instructor.  the student again headed to the surface.  Garry was quickly in control and took him to a nearby bouyed line and we slowly took him to the surface.  Garry and I took him for a shallow swim later and he did well and is well up for further diving although he will postpone the deep specialty for now.  I can't say I blame him, Vobster is still cold but the algae are responding to the increased light levels and have cut visibility to 2-3 m max. Below 20m light levels are low and the quarry is pretty dark and dismal.

The weekend finished by supporting Pippa in the pool doing a DSD in the pool.  I doubt if I helped much but I learnt from watching an instructor really encouraging a student who, after the session, signed up with great enthusiasm for an Open Water course.

My hands don't like cold water

Continuing with Thursday evening theory sessions.  No problems with the tests as the questions are pretty well covered in the lectures.  Also bagged the equipment specialty along the way; while most of the content was familiar there were some pearls of wisdom and the chance to explore some kit configuration issues.  

Things have been fairly quiet at the centre so not many opportunities to do much DM'ing although I enjoyed tring to support Pippa doing a Discover Scuba Diving session - I probably helped a bit but I found myself all over the place and working hard to figure out the best place to be to help the students... it looks easy when an experienced DM or instructor does it!

I took the Night spec the other day (or night to be more exact).  Three dives in one evening at Voster in 5 degree water.  Everything apart from my hands were toasty but they became numb soon after starting each dive - 3mm, 5mm, fleece lined - I used all three of my pairs of gloves and none really helped.  Apart from that it was a great session with Kelly as instructor, Les as DM and me as the sole student.  Much fun was had by all.  I thought I knew Vobster reasonably well now - touring it at night certainly showed I have much to learn about even my local flooded quarry.

You work all weekend and don't even get wet!

Like the post title says. The pool is closed for repairs so on Saturday I took the equipment specialty where I picked up some sound tips and got the chance to ask a few questions that I'd been saving up. This was followed by a session on the diving environment. This was a bit of an odd assortment covering boats, navigation, waves, currents and dive safety; fortunately nothing much that you wouldn't have picked up from experience and doing the rescue course and a few specialties.

7.30 am Sunday saw us wrapped in our warmest clothes queuing to get into Vobster. I'd "volunteered" for safety cover so my job included checking students and monitoring the dive. Apart from contracting 3rd degree frostbite -2 deg C on the surface and not much more apparently in the water, a pretty straightforward task. Tim and I had intended doing more measurements for the map task but after he'd done two dives to complete his DSMB spec neither of us fancied a dive so that scuppered that one - still I didn't need to wash any kit when I got back - club night tonight at the Lamb at Weare so what with one thing and another an odd weekend dominated by diving but not actually doing any!

Early days

Done a couple of classroom sessions now, had a go at the mapping task and done a skills session in the pool. The equipment lecture was interesting but all the various types of regulator passed me by although the facts obviously stayed in my short term memory long enough to score 100% in the test.

The pool session was a nice intro to the skills aspect of DM - in some cases the first time I'd done a skill since my OW training... CESA anyone? Thinking about the skills and breaking them down to be able to demonstrate them effectively is something I'm looking forward to developing.

The best bit so far was the mapping exercise. Tim, fellow DM in training, and I went to Vobster one icy day to map a site just off the 6m platform. Two chilly dives later and all the bearings distances and depth were transferred from marker board to paper. While at Vobster I bought some of the Fourth Element gloves everyone says are so good. They look cool and it's easy to don kit and handle gear, including marker pens underwater with them but I can now safely say that, despite assurances, the 3mm gloves do NOT provide the insulation that most 5mm gloves do!! Perhaps running my frozen fingers under the hot tap in the changing room contributed to the agony of returning circulation but whatever the cause it hurt. Now looking for a pair of their 5mm gloves and in the meantime back to my old faithful Seac Sub gloves.

Later at home, on transferring the data onto a sheet of paper I produced a map that will probably do but isn't all that accurate - the wreck of a 6m boat is, when plotted to scale only 4.5m long. Some might call it anal retention, I prefer stickler for accuracy, but I want to go back and check the bearings again and add more detail including extending the map to include one of the aircraft sections nearby so it makes the map big enough to cover a decent route for a whole dive... hope I chill out on some of the other tasks or I'll be of pensionable age before I finish the DM programme.

First session

Had the first session at Scube Scene with Ian  a few evenings ago and met two other new divemasters in training (DITs).  Tim I've dived with before but I hadn't met Laura until now. Ian says there are three more DITs at the moment who I am yet to meet. 

I joined the group at short notice so I hadn't done any preparation - it was going through the first review from the manual and getting an oversight of the programme - even though I hadn't prepared it was straightforward stuff on the role of the divemaster. It seems that we'll be doing the internship but with elements of the shorter programme as well.  

A few days later Santa brought the course materials and sad beggar the I am I actually spent part of Boxing Day working through the manual and getting my head around the materials.  I can't fault the PADI system of training but I personally don't find it that easy.  I like to learn visually and hands on, so reading books, even if I do make notes and conscientiously fill out the tests, reviews and quizzes, doesn't fix things in my head. However, from what Ian says, it will be a very practical, hands on experience so I reckon I'll get there OK in the end.

Anyway, off to Plymouth for an ordinary social dive or two tomorrow - could be the last for a while!

So why divemaster?

Looking back I've spent a lot of time learning stuff and diving is the focus for most of my recent learning so part of it is simply "because it's there". I don't see myself dressed in all black kit hauling a twinset and side mounts down to dodgy depths whilst breathing squeaky voice gas, so the tek route doesn't appeal (yet). I doubt I'll ever want to be an instructor but I am hoping the divemaster experience will help me to be a better dive leader and really get the skills I admit I haven't practiced that much into shape.

Divemaster isn't a cheap programme so I'm hoping Santa will be bringing a pack of materials down the chimney in a few days. Actually, he'd better do so because I've already attended the first session and been handed the honorary team T-shirt by Ian at Scuba Scene!

Why, oh why oh why!

In my youth scuba diving was my passion. Those were the days before drysuits, nitrox and BCDs; when a Fenzy ABLJ was cutting edge technology, you made your own wetsuit using sheets of neoprene and miles of seam tape in a contrasting colour and your dive knife was big enough to affect your buoyancy! Diving influenced my life to the extent that I read Marine Zoology at university although I never did much work in that field afterwards.

After a number of years more diving, in North Wales, the Lake District, Stoney Cove, Cornwall, Devon and even Victorian bottle collecting in the Ouse, clocking up  several hundred dives and a lot of stories, life, jobs, family intervened and I slowly became an ex diver. Until a couple of years ago that is, when the chance to spend a month in Hawaii came up and the idea of re-training entered my head so I could experience the tropical seas around the idyllic Hawaiian island of Kauai.

In the many years since I'd dived before, an upstart organisation called PADI invaded the country. They had existed as a training organisation in my early years of diving but only for the folks across the pond. Here in the UK, apart from a few independent clubs, it was BSAC or nothing. I originally trained to BSAC 2nd Class - no idea what that translates into nowadays, but never having been a "clubby" person and, having dropped out from BSAC as soon as I could find buddies outside the club, I welcomed the chance to follow the PADI route to help me into my second incarnation as a diver.

After doing OW with PADI in the chilly waters at Vobster I spent my month in Kauai and did the advanced OW over there, amongst lots of other diving. Sadly I was hooked again so various specialties and rescue diver followed over the next couple of years culminating in the acquisition of Master Scuba Diver status and a rapidly filling log book.

Apart from Kauai my diving has included trips to Lanzarote and others around the south west coast of the UK; a good range of training, wrecks, reefs, deep and shallow (under Swanage Pier and Babbacombe Bay). So on to the next challenge.