C1 vs T1 GUE

[jadairiii]

My tech instructor (and later best friend/dive buddy) always told me I should do Cave. Never listed. Did all my tech training the years later I took Cave 1. He was right!

You can get away with a lot of "sloppy" trim in Tech no matter who your instructor is, not in Cave. Even if you dont want to really do cave, you come out of Cave 1, Tech 1 will be a joke.

 

[chthonicly]

Which one you think is the best one to do in first. I’m located next to Alexandria Bay. For caves I need to travel. I know I kind of answer my question but curious to see people review on both course!

I mean, what are you interested in? Do which ever one first which more closely aligns with the kinda diving you love most.

I did C1 first because I'm mostly interested in shallow, decorated Mexican caves and I doubt that I will ever do T1 because I have very limited interest in deep salty water, despite it being what's near by where I live.

That being said, as everyone has noted, there's a fair amount of overlap. My C1 teammate did T1 first and he didn't have an issue with the failure drills.

 

[R.Chisholm]

My experience (Vancouver Island T1 course) is that the reel is primarily there as a tool to add task loading. It was explicitly billed as not a line-running workshop - we spent about 30 minutes on dry land messing about with the reel, and then for most of the skills dives, we tied off the reel to a cinder block at 10m and ran the line out into the sand. While we were running the reel out, some bubbles would undoubtedly appear, and then we'd have to deal with the failures while also not getting wrapped up in the line.

In reality, we were taught enough about using a reel that if you descended a shot line in poor viz and couldn't find the wreck, you could handle tying off the reel and run a line over the sand while looking for your target. There was zero practice of running a line through any kind of complex environment, and I think we only practiced a secondary tie-off or a final tie-off once each.

I'm not sure learning to use a reel in a T1 course should be considered as pure task loading. On a T1 dive to the wreck of the Argo the operator suggested running a reel if we wanted to dive both parts of the wreck & if no fixed line was present (as it happens - there was)

His reasoning - the parts are too far apart to be seen & he'd much prefer divers to return on the shot line tied to the first half of the wreck and ascend there - rather in the middle of the ocean using a DSMB due to the number of commercial fishing boats in the vicinity. Trying to navigate back to the shot line using a compass would have risked loosing the wreck if there had been any current at depth.

 

[floppa]

I'd agree with the advice to do what you are more interested in. I did C1 first purely as an accident of who I got my tech pass with. I didn't think I'd enjoy caves as much but I enjoyed my brief trips into the Mexican caverns so I figured I"d do it.

My T1 was a breeze (in that I could focus more on acquiring competency in learning about deco theory rather than get overloaded by skills).

But, doing C1 just purely to make T1 easy seems pointless. Do it because you have some interest in that stuff. Level 1 GUE classes are no joke (especially to the uninitiated). Doing it for something you have no interest in seems umm rough.

 

[Hungcyon]

In my opinion. Doing T1 before C1 will generally make your T1 experience more challenging but your C1 much more enjoyably paced because you'll know how to deal with failures.

Doing C1 before T1, your T1 experience won't be as jarring as you will already have had done a course with some valve failures and critical thinking skills involved.

 

[Lorenzoid]

In my opinion. Doing T1 before C1 will generally make your T1 experience more challenging but your C1 much more enjoyably paced because you'll know how to deal with failures.

That was my initial thinking, as I said in a comment above. If you have done some failure handling in T1, you may be in a better position in C1. But as pointed out by some instructors, the seemingly constant stream of failures in C1 is as much about slowing you down and getting you to stop, stabilize and reference the line as anything else. So I'm not so sure how much having done some failure handling in T1 prepares one for the onslaught of failures in C1. Some, perhaps.

 

[Hungcyon]

That was my initial thinking, as I said in a comment above. If you have done some failure handling in T1, you may be in a better position in C1. But as pointed out by some instructors, the seemingly constant stream of failures in C1 is as much about slowing you down and getting you to stop, stabilize and reference the line as anything else. So I'm not so sure how much having done some failure handling in T1 prepares one for the onslaught of failures in C1. Some, perhaps.

I took T1 before C1 and it could have just been that my T1 instructor was a sadistic beast who lived off the stress of divers but the amount of failures thrown our way were much more than we had during C1, and the T1 failures got.. pretty creative..

I like to joke with my teammates "C1 after T1, The same great flavor you know and love but now with 30% less PTSD" both were excellent instruction and training, just different experiences.

 

[steinbil]

I took T1 before C1 and it could have just been that my T1 instructor was a sadistic beast but the amount of failures thrown our way were much more than we had during C1, and the T1 failures got.. pretty creative..

I like to joke with my teammates "C1 after T1, The same great flavor you know and love but now with 30% less PTSD" both were effective instruction and training, just different experiences.

I guess that's one of the differences between instructors. It's outlined what you have to go through in the class, but it seems like some instructors really like pushing the failure drills. My T1 class was not that crazy. As far as I can remember, we had 1 dive with some reel work and a lot of mask and light failures, and another dive with reel work and manifold failures. Then we did lost deco gas and gas sharing on another dive. Other than that it was mostly real or imagined failures (knocked loose 1st during valve drills, lose hose on stage reg, imagined bubbles, shutting the valve after gas change). We had no failures on the experience dives. As opposed to the C1 class, where we had some kind of failure on every dive but the very last one.