sabbath999
Contributor
We completed our Rescue Diver class yesterday, and man it was a blast.
We did it in the Rolla, MO quarry, which had excellent vis yesterday (25-30 feet in places, 15-20 everywhere).
Y'all had me worried about the stuff they were going to pull... I've been reading the horror stories and thinking "man, that would be harsh".
No need to worry. Yeah, they were sneaky and yeah they enjoyed going a bit nuts on the panic, but they also had done a really good job in the pool and classroom so we were ready to rock.
I think what helped us out more than anything is that we are both cyclists and (even though I certainly don't look it... I am quite hefty) we are both very fit cardio-wise... Our two other classmates were not, and they were really struggling with the towing and the lifting. Still, when it came to the technical stuff they did OK.
Hmmm... stories to tell...
Basically, how they ran their scenarios were "we are going over there and going down... when we release a big burst of air, come over and deal with whatever it is your find"
Well, my wife had a tough one... she had a rescue off the "wreck" (training platform at 15 feet) where she had to raise an unconscious OOA diver from the bottom, strip his gear and tow him to shore (150 feet or so) by herself. The hard part was that she is a TINY person (5'4, 115) and wears a small BC with a limited amount of lift. The "victim" was WAY overweighted (intentionally, they wanted to make it challenging) and she didn't have nearly enough lift in her BC to get it up. He had disconnected his inflator (to show he was OOA) so she pretty much had the choice to drop his weight or orally inflate. Additionally, he had COMPLETELY emptied his BC so there was zero lift available, and it was a big BC. His weights were all in one batch so it would have been an all or nothing drop, which would have made him a missile... so that was out, so she got to orally inflate him enough to get enough lift on him. I was along as an observer, equipment gatherer (we were trying hard not to lose any equipment) and safety person in the case of a rapid uncontrolled ascent. Anyway, she got him to the surface, and started taking off his stuff... she unhooked his BC and that sucker was GONE... sank like a stone, and down I went on a mad chase to keep it from getting lost.... when I got back up to the surface, it was done... she was FAST at getting him over there.
They were very careful about going through each of the slates to make sure every skill was checked off, and we ended up doing several of them more than once.
As I have gotten more into training, I realize how really, REALLY good my original OW course was... a lot of the stuff the other students were learning for the first time in Rescue Diver including things like the panic cycle, we had in our basic OW. We actually practice as a team a lot of the skills we were going over including swimming through obstacle courses, ascending and descending while sharing air... CESA's and OOA panic diver drills up to and including the other person randomly ripping the reg out of your mouth as you are just swimming along. We generally do 10 minutes of every dive working on at least one basic skill... and that practice really helped with rescue class.
The class was a lot of fun though... I personally saved "Ralphy" 10 times from everything from entanglement in a wreck... (we had to do the rescue without actually entering the overhead environment), heart attack under water, OOA, panic, broken leg and who knows what else. Ralphy needs to find a new hobby, something like stamp collecting... he probably would get into that, and bleed to death from a sever paper cut, as accident prone as he is...
Since I am a new diver (less than one year's experience) I only comment on what I know from my own experience, and I can tell a couple things I learned about taking rescue class... one, it really helps if you are in good cardio shape... we were doing tow after tow 200-250 feet, shucking off gear and rescue breathing along the way, then dragging Ralphy (a LARGE fellow) around on the shore. Some of my classmates were totally gassed just from all the swimming... to the point where my wife and I were getting concerned that they might actually start having problems health-wise.
Another thing that helps, I think, is to be comfortable in the conditions you are training in... i.e. in my case, in murky quarry where the bottom is COLD. One guy in our class was a strictly blue water diver, and all he had was a 3 mil shorty. Those are fine in the top 6 feet of the water where it was a nice 80 degrees... but that training platform was about 60, and that was the "wreck" where we spent a lot of time doing recoveries. To his credit, the guy did pretty well but the cold was putting him in a world of hurt.
I still had 1500 left in my tank (this time I had a full fill at 3100, a rarity for me) when training was done, so while the other class members and instructors packed up to leave the wife and I got geared up again to go for another dive... they thought we were insane, but hey, I got another 30 minutes underwater and got to shoot a few pretty good pictures of fish out of that last 1000 of available air, so it was all good.
I was feeling good about the shape we came through the class in... until this morning... MAN... I woke up sore as all getout, and have a couple really NICE bruises from my old buddy Ralphy from where he tried to hop on top of me (he tried REALLY hard to dunk me good, but didn't quite pull it off).
Then I felt better when I got the postmortem letter from the lead instructor... which included these words: "I was very impressed by both Jeanne and you with regard to your diving skills so early in your diving careers." (emphasis placed was his, not mine).
Rescue class was a blast. The physical and diving part of it were challenging but not really as exhausting as I was afraid they would be (we went at it a good 6 hours in the OW and did several more scenarios than required for the degree). The mental part was tricky, and I made several mistakes that I had to correct. I messed up not calling for help once, I messed up rescue breathing once, I totally zoned out for a minute or so during one scenario and let the crowd get out of hand (sneaky instructor snuck off on me after we "rescued" him and came back as an insane and aggressive bystander who jumped into the middle of the scene) but fortunately the team members helped cover for me so that was good.
I personally really enjoy training and developing my skills, and now we have a whole new bunch of skills that will need to be perfected as much as possible... I like to do "fun" dives but I also like to do "workout" dives where we just train on our basic skills.
Everybody should have a goal, and one of my diving goals is to be "that guy" in the sentence "I want to dive like 'that guy'" This class will definitely help me do that.
Fun stuff indeed!
We did it in the Rolla, MO quarry, which had excellent vis yesterday (25-30 feet in places, 15-20 everywhere).
Y'all had me worried about the stuff they were going to pull... I've been reading the horror stories and thinking "man, that would be harsh".
No need to worry. Yeah, they were sneaky and yeah they enjoyed going a bit nuts on the panic, but they also had done a really good job in the pool and classroom so we were ready to rock.
I think what helped us out more than anything is that we are both cyclists and (even though I certainly don't look it... I am quite hefty) we are both very fit cardio-wise... Our two other classmates were not, and they were really struggling with the towing and the lifting. Still, when it came to the technical stuff they did OK.
Hmmm... stories to tell...
Basically, how they ran their scenarios were "we are going over there and going down... when we release a big burst of air, come over and deal with whatever it is your find"
Well, my wife had a tough one... she had a rescue off the "wreck" (training platform at 15 feet) where she had to raise an unconscious OOA diver from the bottom, strip his gear and tow him to shore (150 feet or so) by herself. The hard part was that she is a TINY person (5'4, 115) and wears a small BC with a limited amount of lift. The "victim" was WAY overweighted (intentionally, they wanted to make it challenging) and she didn't have nearly enough lift in her BC to get it up. He had disconnected his inflator (to show he was OOA) so she pretty much had the choice to drop his weight or orally inflate. Additionally, he had COMPLETELY emptied his BC so there was zero lift available, and it was a big BC. His weights were all in one batch so it would have been an all or nothing drop, which would have made him a missile... so that was out, so she got to orally inflate him enough to get enough lift on him. I was along as an observer, equipment gatherer (we were trying hard not to lose any equipment) and safety person in the case of a rapid uncontrolled ascent. Anyway, she got him to the surface, and started taking off his stuff... she unhooked his BC and that sucker was GONE... sank like a stone, and down I went on a mad chase to keep it from getting lost.... when I got back up to the surface, it was done... she was FAST at getting him over there.
They were very careful about going through each of the slates to make sure every skill was checked off, and we ended up doing several of them more than once.
As I have gotten more into training, I realize how really, REALLY good my original OW course was... a lot of the stuff the other students were learning for the first time in Rescue Diver including things like the panic cycle, we had in our basic OW. We actually practice as a team a lot of the skills we were going over including swimming through obstacle courses, ascending and descending while sharing air... CESA's and OOA panic diver drills up to and including the other person randomly ripping the reg out of your mouth as you are just swimming along. We generally do 10 minutes of every dive working on at least one basic skill... and that practice really helped with rescue class.
The class was a lot of fun though... I personally saved "Ralphy" 10 times from everything from entanglement in a wreck... (we had to do the rescue without actually entering the overhead environment), heart attack under water, OOA, panic, broken leg and who knows what else. Ralphy needs to find a new hobby, something like stamp collecting... he probably would get into that, and bleed to death from a sever paper cut, as accident prone as he is...
Since I am a new diver (less than one year's experience) I only comment on what I know from my own experience, and I can tell a couple things I learned about taking rescue class... one, it really helps if you are in good cardio shape... we were doing tow after tow 200-250 feet, shucking off gear and rescue breathing along the way, then dragging Ralphy (a LARGE fellow) around on the shore. Some of my classmates were totally gassed just from all the swimming... to the point where my wife and I were getting concerned that they might actually start having problems health-wise.
Another thing that helps, I think, is to be comfortable in the conditions you are training in... i.e. in my case, in murky quarry where the bottom is COLD. One guy in our class was a strictly blue water diver, and all he had was a 3 mil shorty. Those are fine in the top 6 feet of the water where it was a nice 80 degrees... but that training platform was about 60, and that was the "wreck" where we spent a lot of time doing recoveries. To his credit, the guy did pretty well but the cold was putting him in a world of hurt.
I still had 1500 left in my tank (this time I had a full fill at 3100, a rarity for me) when training was done, so while the other class members and instructors packed up to leave the wife and I got geared up again to go for another dive... they thought we were insane, but hey, I got another 30 minutes underwater and got to shoot a few pretty good pictures of fish out of that last 1000 of available air, so it was all good.
I was feeling good about the shape we came through the class in... until this morning... MAN... I woke up sore as all getout, and have a couple really NICE bruises from my old buddy Ralphy from where he tried to hop on top of me (he tried REALLY hard to dunk me good, but didn't quite pull it off).
Then I felt better when I got the postmortem letter from the lead instructor... which included these words: "I was very impressed by both Jeanne and you with regard to your diving skills so early in your diving careers." (emphasis placed was his, not mine).
Rescue class was a blast. The physical and diving part of it were challenging but not really as exhausting as I was afraid they would be (we went at it a good 6 hours in the OW and did several more scenarios than required for the degree). The mental part was tricky, and I made several mistakes that I had to correct. I messed up not calling for help once, I messed up rescue breathing once, I totally zoned out for a minute or so during one scenario and let the crowd get out of hand (sneaky instructor snuck off on me after we "rescued" him and came back as an insane and aggressive bystander who jumped into the middle of the scene) but fortunately the team members helped cover for me so that was good.
I personally really enjoy training and developing my skills, and now we have a whole new bunch of skills that will need to be perfected as much as possible... I like to do "fun" dives but I also like to do "workout" dives where we just train on our basic skills.
Everybody should have a goal, and one of my diving goals is to be "that guy" in the sentence "I want to dive like 'that guy'" This class will definitely help me do that.
Fun stuff indeed!
