elgoog
Contributor
Bonus content: Learn to dive doubles.
My aspirations were starting to exceed the limits I was under diving single tanks, primarily wanting to do DPV shore diving to sites slightly farther away and kinda-sorta-maybe cave(rn) training. I did a 2 day doubles workshop with Beto Nava with the intention of also working on improving my drysuit skills.
Day 1 started off with equipment setup and going over the working of the manifold, regulator setup, what's on which post and why, weighting options, etc. I had done a fair bit of reading on this and so it went pretty quickly. All this was done on Beto's already setup rig, following which we set mine up from the ground up. I have Apeks DST 1st stages without the bottom 5th port - this was totally workable but needed slightly different hose lengths than what I had on my singles setup. Some pawing through the random parts bin min, and harness adjusting later, I was good to go. The main things we were going to work on today were just getting used to having two tanks on my back and the dreaded valve drill. I was a little nervous about this because of everything I'd read about it and specifically gotten the DGX long neck manifold to make things easier. After some dilly-dallying to play with the cat (and waiting for the rain to subside a bit), we headed to the Breakwater. The plan was to do one dive to feel things out a bit and try a valve drill, come back out to adjust the harness as needed and dive again to work on the skills some more and figure out weighting and any trim adjustments with close to empty tanks. I have to say that after the first few minutes, it didn't feel that much different than what I was used to in singles (apart from the "oh crap" moment when I realized I needed to add a LOT more gas to the wing after the descent to avoid cratering in the sand). Basic 5 and the kicks went totally fine. And then came the signal for the valve drill. If there's one thing I can honestly say I impressed Beto with it's the range of motion in my shoulders. Even with my elbow sticking out perpendicular to my body and my head not quite looking up, I was easily able to do the valve drill. Not that I'm satisfied with doing it this way, it's just a huge mental sigh of relief knowing now that I can do it without killing myself in my drysuit and thick Thinsulate undies.
I also found out exactly how sneaky GUE instructors are. I've read reports from tech and cave classes where they sidle up next to/above/below you unnoticed to steal stuff and initiate all kinds of failures. In my case, it was unexpected drysuit inflation - not a little puff either, he had my inflator activated for a few seconds while I was attempting a back kick before I realized what was happening. Doesn't sound like a lot but at 20ft it required some concerted action on my part to not pop up to the surface.
The other thing I need to mention was just how insanely amazing of a dive it was. We had at least 40-50ft viz in blue water and tons of jellies everywhere - salp chains, pyrosomes, hula skirt jellies, sea butterflies, egg yolk jellies and the ubiquitous sea nettles. Probably a lot more species that I just don't remember or can't ID. And, um, a couple of seals. More on that at the end.
> 1hr48min, 27ft, 53F
Beto seemed reasonably satisfied with how my rig was working for me and day 2 essentially became what would have been the first ocean day of a Fundies class. I've dilly-dallied for over a year and a half after finishing Fundies 1 so there was a fair bit of new stuff for me - S drill, DSMB, deployment, no mask swim, etc. I had seen videos of all of this but it was really good to go over it step by step with an instructor and practice all of those in the water a couple of times. A bunch of skills run-throughs and ascents later, I was feeling a lot more confident in the doubles and drysuit.
> 2hr9min, 58ft, 55F
We covered a lot of lecture material that's in Fundies that evening as well as a lot of details and dive profiles specific to our area that are now viable for me with doubles.
New lessons learned (for me) from the dives and the ensuing video reviews -
Back kick - If your hips move significantly and it looks like you're humping an imaginary something, you're not going to move backwards.
Helicopter kick - Jerking your torso violently to the side and muscling the tanks into position kinda gets you moving in the right direction but is not recommended more than a couple of times a day. Also, if you rely on the frog kick half of the helicopter turn instead of the back kick half, you end up moving in a small circle instead of turning in place.
DSMB deployment - I am now extremely familiar with task fixation. Also, I have giant lungs or something. Even with a half breath from the reg to inflate the DSMB, I got it all the way full at 45ft and was still going until I noticed Beto signaling me to stop and let it practically rocket out of my hand.
Valve drill - Staying within the vicinity of where you started the drill is preferable. Definitely do not end up 30ft away.
No mask swim - If you have your eyes open during this drill and look comfortable doing it, your instructor will attempt to run you into a rock.
Stretch those legs out - Dual HP100s want to put you head down and having your heels touch your butt doesn't help.
After the debrief, Beto told me I should practice the new skills for a couple of months and aim for a tech pass when I come back to finish Fundies
The photo below is far more flattering than how I actually looked and felt in the water. Beto cherrypicks screen captures of moments when you look good and sends them to you post-class to make you feel better about yourself.
It was a great couple of days overall. Days with GUE instructors are long, jam packed and super busy but I got so much figured out with the doubles and drysuit with Beto that I don't think would have been possible on my own.
And now the reason you read this far into the post - dealing with horny harbor seals, the GUE tech instructor approved method.
Harbor seals in Monterey tend to go for your fins first. Not moving them is not an option as they just keep going. Moving them around riles them up even more and then that very quickly escalates. What you do is wait for them to get into, um, position behind you. Then, go head down, stretch your legs out and try to get 'em in a scissor hold. This tends to drive them off. Try it next time. Guaranteed to let those horndogs know your momma raised you right and that you ain't no floozie.
Unfortunately for me, Beto's technique was so good that the seals left us for good and I was not able to demonstrate this technique in order to get the card.
Don't believe me? Watch this video - it was shot by a local GUE diver a few hundred feet from where my dives were. He doesn't do the correct technique because this distinctive specialty was not yet developed when the video was shot.
My aspirations were starting to exceed the limits I was under diving single tanks, primarily wanting to do DPV shore diving to sites slightly farther away and kinda-sorta-maybe cave(rn) training. I did a 2 day doubles workshop with Beto Nava with the intention of also working on improving my drysuit skills.
Day 1 started off with equipment setup and going over the working of the manifold, regulator setup, what's on which post and why, weighting options, etc. I had done a fair bit of reading on this and so it went pretty quickly. All this was done on Beto's already setup rig, following which we set mine up from the ground up. I have Apeks DST 1st stages without the bottom 5th port - this was totally workable but needed slightly different hose lengths than what I had on my singles setup. Some pawing through the random parts bin min, and harness adjusting later, I was good to go. The main things we were going to work on today were just getting used to having two tanks on my back and the dreaded valve drill. I was a little nervous about this because of everything I'd read about it and specifically gotten the DGX long neck manifold to make things easier. After some dilly-dallying to play with the cat (and waiting for the rain to subside a bit), we headed to the Breakwater. The plan was to do one dive to feel things out a bit and try a valve drill, come back out to adjust the harness as needed and dive again to work on the skills some more and figure out weighting and any trim adjustments with close to empty tanks. I have to say that after the first few minutes, it didn't feel that much different than what I was used to in singles (apart from the "oh crap" moment when I realized I needed to add a LOT more gas to the wing after the descent to avoid cratering in the sand). Basic 5 and the kicks went totally fine. And then came the signal for the valve drill. If there's one thing I can honestly say I impressed Beto with it's the range of motion in my shoulders. Even with my elbow sticking out perpendicular to my body and my head not quite looking up, I was easily able to do the valve drill. Not that I'm satisfied with doing it this way, it's just a huge mental sigh of relief knowing now that I can do it without killing myself in my drysuit and thick Thinsulate undies.
I also found out exactly how sneaky GUE instructors are. I've read reports from tech and cave classes where they sidle up next to/above/below you unnoticed to steal stuff and initiate all kinds of failures. In my case, it was unexpected drysuit inflation - not a little puff either, he had my inflator activated for a few seconds while I was attempting a back kick before I realized what was happening. Doesn't sound like a lot but at 20ft it required some concerted action on my part to not pop up to the surface.
The other thing I need to mention was just how insanely amazing of a dive it was. We had at least 40-50ft viz in blue water and tons of jellies everywhere - salp chains, pyrosomes, hula skirt jellies, sea butterflies, egg yolk jellies and the ubiquitous sea nettles. Probably a lot more species that I just don't remember or can't ID. And, um, a couple of seals. More on that at the end.
> 1hr48min, 27ft, 53F
Beto seemed reasonably satisfied with how my rig was working for me and day 2 essentially became what would have been the first ocean day of a Fundies class. I've dilly-dallied for over a year and a half after finishing Fundies 1 so there was a fair bit of new stuff for me - S drill, DSMB, deployment, no mask swim, etc. I had seen videos of all of this but it was really good to go over it step by step with an instructor and practice all of those in the water a couple of times. A bunch of skills run-throughs and ascents later, I was feeling a lot more confident in the doubles and drysuit.
> 2hr9min, 58ft, 55F
We covered a lot of lecture material that's in Fundies that evening as well as a lot of details and dive profiles specific to our area that are now viable for me with doubles.
New lessons learned (for me) from the dives and the ensuing video reviews -
Back kick - If your hips move significantly and it looks like you're humping an imaginary something, you're not going to move backwards.
Helicopter kick - Jerking your torso violently to the side and muscling the tanks into position kinda gets you moving in the right direction but is not recommended more than a couple of times a day. Also, if you rely on the frog kick half of the helicopter turn instead of the back kick half, you end up moving in a small circle instead of turning in place.
DSMB deployment - I am now extremely familiar with task fixation. Also, I have giant lungs or something. Even with a half breath from the reg to inflate the DSMB, I got it all the way full at 45ft and was still going until I noticed Beto signaling me to stop and let it practically rocket out of my hand.
Valve drill - Staying within the vicinity of where you started the drill is preferable. Definitely do not end up 30ft away.
No mask swim - If you have your eyes open during this drill and look comfortable doing it, your instructor will attempt to run you into a rock.
Stretch those legs out - Dual HP100s want to put you head down and having your heels touch your butt doesn't help.
After the debrief, Beto told me I should practice the new skills for a couple of months and aim for a tech pass when I come back to finish Fundies
The photo below is far more flattering than how I actually looked and felt in the water. Beto cherrypicks screen captures of moments when you look good and sends them to you post-class to make you feel better about yourself.
It was a great couple of days overall. Days with GUE instructors are long, jam packed and super busy but I got so much figured out with the doubles and drysuit with Beto that I don't think would have been possible on my own.
And now the reason you read this far into the post - dealing with horny harbor seals, the GUE tech instructor approved method.
Harbor seals in Monterey tend to go for your fins first. Not moving them is not an option as they just keep going. Moving them around riles them up even more and then that very quickly escalates. What you do is wait for them to get into, um, position behind you. Then, go head down, stretch your legs out and try to get 'em in a scissor hold. This tends to drive them off. Try it next time. Guaranteed to let those horndogs know your momma raised you right and that you ain't no floozie.
Unfortunately for me, Beto's technique was so good that the seals left us for good and I was not able to demonstrate this technique in order to get the card.
Don't believe me? Watch this video - it was shot by a local GUE diver a few hundred feet from where my dives were. He doesn't do the correct technique because this distinctive specialty was not yet developed when the video was shot.
