GUE Fundamentals Class Report (22 APR 2019)

[Compressor]

All the dives were between 109 and 116 feet.

EAN30 is perfectly appropriate. I would dive it too since I am not Trimix certified and my all the teaching I've had in the past told me that its not a problem @ all.

 

[stuartv]

EAN30 is perfectly appropriate. I would dive it too since I am not Trimix certified and my all the teaching I've had in the past told me that its not a problem @ all.

I agree. Personally, I don't bother with helium, for OC diving, until the plan is for deeper than 150' (or if there are extenuating circumstances, mainly involving work or wreck penetration or something like that).

But, having no GUE training myself, I can only say that it seems like what I have gleaned is that EAN30 is not a Standard Gas, so it would be not approved for use under GUE gas guidelines. And it wouldn't be approved for use deeper than 100' anyway, because it has no helium.

But, like I said, I have no GUE training, so that is just hearsay.

 

[Griffo]

The questions you raised are the same as I did during my training. I won't try to articulate the response because i'd do a poor job and don't represent GUE. But suffice to say I've dived below 40m (130ft) since training without helium as do many other GUE trained divers. It comes down to risk and availability.

Am I going to drop to 40m on 25% to see the stalactites in the Blue Hole? Sure. Am I going to plan a dive to 40m on air in a penetration dive and invite a team of GUE divers along? Ah no.

 

[CheckedBubbles]

GUE Tech 1 Diver here. It's just a toolbox designed to help make things safer and easier. Having a competent teammate is safer than solo diving. Adding HE to your gas lowers your work of breathing and helps you keep a clear head which gives you more capacity to deal with stress underwater. The GUE standard gasses make things simpler; decompression planning is trivial when you can have a small set of profiles to generate and then eventually memorize.

There's no GUE police and we're welcome to dive any way we want post-class (I believe there ARE more strict conduct rules for instructors). Would I skip a dive while traveling because they only have EAN 30 and/or no helium? Almost certainly not. I went to Belize and did the blue hole on air. It was totally fine, but we were just casually cruising. I would MUCH rather be on 21/35 if I had to do any complex decision making or if I had to work significantly harder.

I never had questions quite like the OP, but part of the mission of the class is to communicate the benefits of GUE's system and Mer is probably attempting to gauge the success of that. Drinking the cool-aid isn't part of the evaluation criteria, but the instructor does have to assess if the person has the skill capacity and mindset to behave as expected when diving as a member of a GUE team.

GUE doesn't have a monopoly on creating competent divers, and not everyone likes having such a rigid set of guidelines. I personally think that having more structured gear configurations and SOPs frees more brain-cells to focus on enjoying the actual diving, but I don't need others to agree with me. Dive and let dive.

 

[seeker242]

That mostly makes sense. I guess you wouldn't want to ask someone "do you consider yourself a GUE diver" right AFTER you tell them they failed the course. LOL

I can see how the first 3 questions would be relevant to course evaluation. I do not understand, though, how the student's answer to questions 4 and 5 help them evaluate the course. Well, unless part of the course mission is simply to get divers to self-identify as GUE divers - i.e. accomplish a Marketing mission as well as the more obvious goals. Which, on reflection, I guess also makes sense.

FYI, those questions aren’t part of the actual course. They are the instructors own personal thing. They could easily be for her, to evaluate herself, in teaching the course.

 

[Lorenzoid]

FYI, those questions aren’t part of the actual course. They are the instructors own personal thing. They could easily be for her, to evaluate herself, in teaching the course.

Well, I believe they aren't "part of the course" just as you do--as I said, it seemed to me to be more related to the course evaluation we later were asked to fill out--but to play devil's advocate, so far we have nothing to base that belief on exception our own intuition. No GUE instructor has chimed in. I really don't know for sure what those questions are for. I received the same questions from a different instructor, so it's apparently not specific to Mer.

 

[seeker242]

play devil's advocate, so far we have nothing to base that belief on exception our own intuition.

I'm basing it on the fact that I never got such questions and my instructor was a stickler for following all technicalities.

 

[Ayisha]

...4. Do you consider yourself a GUE Diver?
No.
5. Why or why not?
I don't believe that Nitrox is required for every dive - air is fine for many dives at recreational depths. I would generally choose the Best Mix for a dive, rather than limit myself to a Standard Gas. And, I believe that Solo diving is perfectly acceptable for people with the right training, skills, mindset, and equipment.

Do you think you would still have gotten your Rec pass? Would someone who otherwise qualified still get a Tech pass?

I am quite sure that even if your skills were all solid, if a GUE instructor had an inkling that you didn't agree with core philosophies, they would have a conversation with you, and once they're sure, you would not get a rec OR tech pass. It would be chalked off to being an unsafe diver.

I wasn't asked those questions in writing, but they definitely asked us about various parts of the philosophy and pursued the matter if they had any concerns. For me, it seemed obvious they were absolutely evaluating mindset.

 

[chillyinCanada]

@PullYourselfTogetherMan,

Thanks so much for sharing your well done report and I say "well done!" for your pass on the course.

Now get out and dive! Spend your money on that for awhile and see what comes.

 

[RainPilot]

Instead of speculating, maybe we ask @mer what the reasoning behind those questions is and then go from there.

Caveat for below: Not a GUE diver, but was a "DIR-diver" for a fair bit. I suspect that my views do reflect a majority of GUE/UTD/DIR-divers.

Being a "thinking diver" is a MASSIVE part of the various courses. There are many ways to de-fur the problematic feline and not all of them will be the best or most appropriate on a given day, but at other times they are.

Example: myself and a teammate are going to go dive a 130' , NDL dive to go photograph some huge seafans. In our pre-dive discussion, we will look at the site (flat sand, hard deck at 130', no current). We will look at the environment (warm water, clear, rash vest and shorts type diving). We will look at the task (getting 2-3 minutes of gopro video).

Based on that, I would say that helium is not a necessity, redundancy is (easy to pick up a bit of deco at that depth and no harm carrying extra gas in case the ascent ends up taking longer for whatever reason) and we would go dive. If we had some leftover light trimix from a previous dive, we might decide to use that but no He would not cancel the dive.

The next day, I am doing a 110', cold, current-y, offshore dive with a deeper hard deck, and we are going to a site we have not dived before, maybe exploring a new wreck. I would probably add some helium on that dive if available and I would definitely make more effort to find some.

Make it a 160' dive in those conditions and I would rather not dive than go without some mix.

Make sensible decisions that your team agrees with, think through ALL the implications and then do what makes sense.