Well, now its 3 days down and 1 to go, I wont get too excited just yet though until I have finished.
We dived the Dredger today, in the morning we descended in pairs, intructor leading with one pair and me descending next with the DM, spooky ! vis was around 3 - 4 metres, sea temp was 17 degrees, of course we dont have our bouyancy dialled in just yet, but managed to gently come to the bottom and not embed ourselves into it ! The bottom was at 10 metres.
This mornings dive was nothing too demanding, basically getting us used to the ocean and not the pool, (we did our bouyancy checks before the descent by the way) we did partially flooded mask clearing, my favourite subject - I cannot for the life of me partially flood my mask, particularly wearing gloves, for me its all or nothing if trying to flood it myself !! so I had to try a couple of times, but got there eventually. Fin pivots, all of this went well. This was pretty much it for dive 1 of the OW dives, the rest of the time was spent finning around in our buddy pairs ( me being buddied with the DM ) and of course we all got introduced to the concept of stirred up bottoms and silting, it was fun though, lots or Wrasse around, and Spider crabs galore.
One thing I couldnt get my head around at first was finning along fine - then suddenly I would be rising - or falling, so of course I adjusted my wing to compensate, what a numbskull - the bottom of the sea is not a pool, it goes up and down ............ no wonder I would suddenly be heading for the seabed or the surface after wrecking my fin pivot bouyancy ! too busy thinking newbie thoughts, it wasnt until the DM told me what was going on that I realised my disorientation.
Talking of DM - he had an LP hose failure during this dive, it was the hose to his drysuit (we were all wet) and it parted company with the connector at the suit end, the fitting on the hose just about came off completely. So we both did an impromptu surface to replace the hose and then went back down. As to surfacing I am quite proud of myself today, every ascent (including with the DM and his burst hose) I managed to come up really slow, finning gently from the bottom and venting the wing as we neared the surface to keep it that way. We did have the shot line for visual reference though.
2nd dive was the same wreck, same temp' and near enough the same depth, this time round we got through bouyancy checks again before descending, descending the shot line but not touching it, more fin pivots, and OOA / Alternate air sharing, the OOA and alternate air we did with the instructor watching of course, but when that excercise was complete we did it again - signalling OOA to the instructor, who then shared air with us, and so linked together with the instructor we then ascended the shot line as an alternate air ascent. This was quite good fun, we managed to get hung up on the shot line, the Instructors primary hose (reg in my mougth) getting fouled, but as we were not rocketing to the surface I managed to keep the reg in place and she freed it in a few seconds. Big OK's on the surface for that one - then she went back down for the next one, leaving me on a safety line running out the back of the boat.
When we all got back up we hung off of the boat for a minute or 2 - so everyone could relax and then we did the surface skills - cramp removal, tired diver tows using 2 methods, and switching from reg to snorkel on the surface while swimming between two bouys. Then it was back into the boat and back we went, end of day two.
I cant remember what my air use was yesterday as my logbook is in the classroom, but this morning I started with 220 bar, dive time was 34 minutes and I ended with 90 bar.
The 2nd dive this afternoon, I started with 220 bar, dive time was 47 minutes and I ended with a hair over 100 bar.
Tomorrow to go, fingers crossed it will be ok, Dredger in the morning, in the afternoon we go down on the Countess of Erne
Countess of Erne Depth 1014m. Small wreck lying upright, easy to navigate around but can get silty. Dive at any time
Details on Portland Harbour dive sites here..............
http://www.cgsac.supanet.com/weymouth.htm