First Day of LACO ADP 2009

[leabre]

I decided to assist this year. Having graduated in 2007, I always wanted to come back and help out. This year we have a large class: 38 students. It was a nice warm day in Los Angeles. The pool temperature on my Gekko read 86*.

We started off with a brief introduction on the history of the LA County Scuba program and then did a gear review for the students. There are all kinds of configurations. This year LACO is more receptive to divers in technical configuration than I have observed in previous years. I myself am in configuration and have to start dealing with what to do with my long hose when I'm always ditching & recovering or doing bail-outs. Former ADP graduates have the option to be trained as a NAUI Assistant Instructor this time around and it'll fully count towards DM if we persue it with the instructors after the program completes.

We then kicked off into a lecture on equipment from Hal of Hollywood divers. He covered everything from various types of tanks to valves to diaphragm to piston regs and more. Hey, it sounded almost like the first 2 chapters of the NAUI Master Divers manual only much more intriquing. He is an excellent instructor. Because ADP will be certifying NITROX divers this year, Hal left cards for each student for 5 free NITROX fills after they get certified. How generous.

After the very informative equipment lectures we proceeded to a lecture on Emergency Response from a Registered Nurse (I will update this with her name once I get that info, I didn't take notes). She discussed neurological exams, evaluating the condition of the victim, differences between DCS I/II, DCI, etc. Covered some info about embolisms, pnuemathorax, etc. Locations of Hyberbaric chambers in LACO and so on. Even LA County's relevant regulations regarding response to SCUBA incedents.

About noon-time we headed to the 50 meter swimming pool to do swim evaluations and basic scuba skills. As an AI, I wasn't particularily drilled on skills, just acting at this point as a Safety Diver. But I we did participate in the swim eval. It was a 400 yard swim (so they say, it was actually 4 laps in a 50 meter pool), timed, and then 50 feet breath-hold swim, on to a 10 minute surface tread. When I did ADP in 2006, it took me 18 minutes to complete this swim but since then I've taken Triathalon swim lessons. This time is was roughly 8:15 but tired me out quickly as I haven't practiced since about 6 weeks ago.

I became buddy with one student and practice OOA drills. Everyone on my team got to see what a long-hose deployment looks like. Everyone else on the team was primarily in Rec configuration but with more BP/W's than I'd noticed in previous years. Mostly new, even for the instructor, though, so everyone is getting comfy doing drills with these BP/W's & Crotch Straps. They are allowing single-tank tec configurations this year openly (as opposed to previous years) as long as we know how to use the gear and are comfortable with it during rescue situations. I have this config with a long hose and 2 other students I believe.

Then staff briefing and instructions for tomorrow. We will be doing skin diving and other under water excercises tomorrow in preperation for the 1st ocean dive next week.

It was good to see the familiar faces of former ADP grads I'd met from previous years and all the usual instructors that are always at any LA dive event. This will be a great program this year!


Thanks,
Shawn

 

[leabre]

Day 2:

So we arrive back here for the second day. There is a lot of staff here. Must be at least 1 instructor or assistant for every 2 students, or even better.

So we start the day of with a lecture on Fitness for Diving by personal trainer (by Gretchen Ashton - scubafit.com). This was an interesting lecture. She discussed various excercises taylored to scuba divers in particular, special consideration triathaloners have to make when deciding to scuba, statistics on effectiveness of certain excercises and otherwise good health information. The spent some discussion on the importance of excercise, proper dieting, hydration, relationship of obesity and diabetes, arthritis and so on to adverse effects of diving, and how proper excercise can help with endurance and breathing rates (which affects nitrogen loading).

I was not able to attend the majority of this lecture because of a staff meeting simultaneously taking place elsewhere. But what information I did get was very interesting. Gretchen has done some amazing and very thorough research in this area. We are all thankful that she donated her time to share her knowledge and wisdom with us. She herself is an avid diver so her personal fitness training is directed at divers and swimmers in particular.

Our second lecture was "Decompression Theory" by Dr. Tabby Stone, M.D. He discussed Caisson Disease (Bends), AGE, DCI and DCS and the various differences between them. After briefly discussing the various laws (Boyle's, Charles', Dalton's, Fick's, and Henry's), how it applies to divers, then moving on to dissolved gasses and how bubbles form what they are, and how it causes DCS. He then discussed various symtoms (general, musculoskeletol, cardio, neural, etc. How you can avoid them (never go diving!) (er, minimizing the risk), then how tables and bubble theory came to be, halftimes, and so on, and then treatment via hyperbaric chamber. He then discussed a bit about various risk factors for DCI (obesity, dehydration) and mitigation (excercise, hydration, etc). Dear God there's a lot of info jam packed into this lecture. I might need to hear it again to obsorb it completely. Next, on to heat, AGE, PFO, importance of oxygen in diver treatments, and then concluded with Nuemen's Law: "it doesn't matter what table or computer you don't use".

Then came the introduction to Rescue/Emergency procedures (intro to rescue at this point). Unfortunately I was not present during this lecture so I cannot summerize. I was in a staff meeting. It was in this staff meeting where I learned how the various instructors and assistants will be divided into which groups. I'm in group 3. I also learned that I'll be trained as NAUI DM (instead of Assistant Instructor). So we spent time discussing the requirements and the types of leadership we'll be expected to demonstrate and be trained on throughout the program (with the priorities of the class being first to our own training needs, of course). The DMIT's (Called Assistants or team leads in this program) will be having a part in the upcoming 3R's on the skin diving instruction topics. The DM training is completely optional. Some assistants are not opting into it, some are.

So after the rescue lecture concluded, we were back at the swimming pool. I had become considerably sunburned from yesterday so I decided to use my 8/7mm wetsuit (in 100+ weather and 86* pool). Knowing we have to do a 450 meter swim in 10 minutes, I decided to start practicing. I made 8 laps but I don't know the timing behind it. Wow, was I hot and tired. Lifeguards stopped me and said to prevent heat exhaustion he didn't want me to continue swimming in the wetsuit.

So we reviewed swimming again. I got to work with some students that needed to become comfortable swimming. They made remarkable improvements with the right tips and techniques. It is wonderful to see such improvements in only 30 minutes time and to be the one involved in contributing to it.

Then we re-reviewed various drills (mask purge/clear, buddy breathing and air sharing), and various DnR's. I'm not sure we did bailouts yet. I opted not to demonstrate because my gear configuration (with long hose) has not been practiced so I will be doing that in my own pool during my own time. We also practiced entries (giant stride, front roll, back roll) and the pike tuck, kelp and so on. Then the last 15 minutes or so demonstrations of rescue were performed in the pool.

With that we had our debriefing and it'll be Cabrillo Beach next week on Saturday. We must bring a float and flag. I'll donate mine to the program during the remainder of it. Mine was used for my 2006 ADP where I was a student.

 

[desidiver]

Hi Shawn,

Excellent Report, I plan to write a blog on ADP and would like to copy some text from these posts, hope you don't mind.

Looking forward to the beach dives.

Nayan

 

[leabre]

Nayan, I began writing a blog on my experiences as a student in 2007. I never published it, because some days I didn't keep notes then lost the schedule so couldn't match the locations and dates and then forgot about it. It will be awesome to have a student's perspective and a leaders perspective for those who wish to seach on the topics in the future, right now there is little out there.

You may copy anything I write freely. Please at least credit me, though. Also, would you happen to know the name of the registered nurse that spoke on Saturday? I'd like to credit her in my OP.

 

[leabre]

Day 3: (Week 2), Saturday July 18, 2009

Wow, was today a fun one! So I head over to Cabrillo Beach (I've never been there before), it was easy enough to find without a GPS device. I leave my house at 6:55am but arrive at 8:05am. The class is already getting ready to enter the surf for skin diving excercises. I completely missed the dive briefing so today I will have to wing it.

Didn't have a chance to eat or drink anything since the night prior where I prepared for the day. Due to the size of each team we must have 3 dive floats per team. I offered mine. I think staff is mostly providing floats this year, during the year I attended (2006/2007) students must provide it. So I was up late the Friday night preparing my float. I concocted some PVC square to allow me to wind up the anchor line without entanglement. I also marked every 5 ft. up to 35 ft. (50 ft. nylon rope) with a notch indicating the multiples of five so we can know our depths. I almost passed out from the PVC glue fumes that I used for ink.

So I arrive, gear up, put a water bottle in the float so I can drink something while I'm out there, and attend the tail end of a dive briefing where I'm instructed to take the floats out to about 15-20 ft. I do so then head back for surf entries. In this excercise we're helping the students learn to navigate the surf (sideways for low surf break and under for high and cresting and breaking waves) and timing. Always fun if you're not used to this; but this is SoCal, you'll do more shore diving than boats. We're fins on and backwards/sideways until deep enough to kick out.

I remember learning this excerise at Vets just a few years prior. It was much more interesting. It was there that I continued to lose my weight belt each time a wave move past me. How frusterating! I decided to angle myself where the opening latch faced the shore instead of the ocean. It did stop the weight belt from unlatching each time a wave passed it. I passed this knowledge onto the students though the waves were not big enough to unlatch any belts.

In my actual diving I don't donn my fins before entering surf -- I head out past the surf and donn out there where I'm not being tumbled; if surf is too far, too deep, it only takes me about 3 seconds to have my fins and I'm gone. Doing so is a sure way to become tumbled or to finally get to the drop point by the time my buddy has finished his dive already (ha ha ha). So it took me some getting used to but I am easily adaptable and want to demonstrate and assist according to the instructors rules. I do know this, sometimes at high-tide on rocky places (Ole' Marine Land, White Point, etc.) I might (MIGHT) dawn my fins, crawl enter the surf, and kick out. We do White Point in a few weeks so we'll be going over that later.

So the current really picks up and now the floats are drifting quite a bit. I never use my float, so I'm not up to speed with the best way to secure them. I will be adding about 5' of chain to help weigh the rope down and prevent it from drifting. So we began practicing pike dive, tuck dive, kelp dive, and did a sking diving bouyancy check.

Some of the students were a bit positive, some neg. I handed 6 lbs. off my belt to one of the stedents, and took 6 lbs off anothers, and also handed 2x 1lb to another. That helped the particular students to perform more comfortably and get a handle on the skin excercises.

After some time we donned our gear and reviewed our basic skills (mask clear, reg retrieve, DnR, etc.) on SCUBA (in absolutely atrocious conditions) then we did some light rescue (do-sea-do and fin push). One group decided to descend before an Instructor could actually give instructions so I dropped with them (viz was about 3-5 ft.) so they wouldn't get lost. I tried to navigate them back to the anchor but could not find it. So we surfaced and had drifted about 50-75 ft. during the descent and ascent. Wow!

After this, the debriefing (not DiveVets style that involves a case of beer), got my light blue "Team Lead" shirt, lunch, LUNCH, L-U-N-C-H!!!! My I didn't have a chance to drink until this point (about 12:15). I sure was ready for some agua! So I pound a gallon of water and eat my strawberries, grapes, bananas, then my sandwich. (yes, I eat light). It was hot. But I felt really good. Not particularily exhausted or dehydrated, but was enjoying my time in the - what felt like - very cold water. Unusually cold compared to Laguna these past few weeks.

Then we headed off to the Cabrillo Museum. I won't write up about the Museum but I will say it was enjoyable, hot, and fun to off-gas around whale fossils and 2 week old lobsters hatchlings. While waiting before entering I check my voicemail (I don't live on my cell phone) and had a message from the lead instructor to arrive by 7am for staff briefing, students at 7:30. Oops!!! Missed that one! He left the message sometime after midnight or near that time, so I would have just finished with the float and head off to bed. Usually don't check my messages after 9pm.

Next week the students will have a full day of class and the DM candidates will have a pool session doing swim reviews and re-reviews of rescue to aide in the following week for the students rescue portion. I will not be there, I'll be doing an oil rig dive so I'm really bummed I'll miss it but I will have a make-up session (I hope).

Until next time...

 

[blue steal]

Just wanted to say I am enjoying your posts. I wanted to take your class this year, but it was already full. I rode my bike by the class and saw that you had a large group compared to last year. I signed up at the scuba show, but never heard anything and forgot to follow up. Oh well, always next year.............Went diving at Catalina this weekend, (terrible conditions VIS wise), and my buddy was a guy from Colorado who took your course last year.

 

[leabre]

Blue Steel: so sorry that the coordinators failed to follow-up with you. Conditions were not so good state-side, either. Good for training, but there were a few moments where I became nervous in such limited viz with some students that were attempting to decide whether they were comfortable or not. It all worked out. I have an oil rig dive next week, hope the conditions are good, I'd hate to miss my DM watermanship tests for a crappy rig dive. But its my first rig dive, so I'm both excited and apprehensive.

I did some boat dives this time last year and they dropped us in deeper than I was accustomed to water and left me to open ocean navigation and I wasn't comfortable. I can navigate shallower and more landmark-ridden waters impeccably, but didn't like being dropped in 90+ ft. water 600 ft. from my target and swift currents. Combined with malfunctioning dive gear, I'm grateful the boat operators refunded my trip expense (I had no idea they were even aware of my issues -- but I knew the DM that day). So being dropped with 600+ ft. ocean floors makes me nervous, but at least I'll have a decent landmark and I'm much more prepared mentally, academically, and physically for this. Plus, I have a familiar dive buddy who's been there many times before me.

Perhaps we'll bump into each other one day and share our passion for the ocean...

 

[desidiver]

I have put together my blog for this but only allowed to post url's after 5 posts on scuba board so here is the second or third one i think

Nayan

 

[leabre]

Day 4: Week 3, Saturday July 25th, 2009

I did not attend this day because I was diving the oil rig Eureka (Hunting Beach) and Catalina Island. Hopefully Nayan will post his retrospect of the days lectures on his blog so we can all see read about it.

Simultaneous to the student lectures was some pool work for the Dive Masters in training. Again, I was not there but it was mostly swim tests and brush ups for the rescue that will follow the following week.

If anyone is interesting in reading about my oil rig dive, you can follow this link:
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/basic-scuba-discussions/296184-my-first-oil-rig-dive.html

 

[blue steal]

Looking forward to your updates. I stayed over at the pool after my lap swimming and saw everyone setting up for the fin station and dry suit station.