My hands are pretty much back to normal, so I can type this out.
Training Day 4
Day started at CCDS, where we did some academics and lecture. This lasted until right before lunch, so we headed to Ginnie for lunch, and land drills. At 3pm we splashed for dive 1, swimming to the ear. This would be my first time entering the ear, the flow was a fire hydrant as usual. But somehow I pulled myself into the cavern. Reggie showed me where to tie off my reel, placements and tie offs, before making it to the main line. Unfortunately we had to cross under another team's line, as they tied off in the ear, and then crossed from the wall through the center. After tying off we made out way to the ceiling of the gallery to the lips. At the lips Reggie signaled to turn the dive, I actually remembered to return the signal, and we turned the dive heading back to the surface for debrief. As one would imagine the exit was much easier than the entry, instead of fighting the flow you are making sure that the flow doesn't slam you into the narrow exit.
We get to the surface and Reggie asked "Do you know why I am not happy?" And he explains that I should've been in front of him since he was leading the dive.
Dive 2:
The last dive was mostly about seeing if I can handle the flow. Now we are back to the meat and potatoes of the course. We re-enter through the ear, first we make our way to the Catacombs to lay the line that will be needed for the level 1 line drills. We exit the Catacombs and swim through the top of the Gallery through the Lips, and on to Keyhole. At Keyhole we turned the dive, and shortly there after we start another lost buddy drill. Cookie goes on the line followed by the arrow, while I pull my safety reel out Reggie swims off. I check my gas consumption to see how much I have to spare for the search. And I do my simulated wall to wall search, reach Reggie, send him down the line, reel up my safety reel, and pull my line markers.
Shortly after everything is cleaned up my primary light fails (simulated), my first instinct is to go for the light I put in my tight pocket, which has the Dive Rite QRM, so I can place in on soft handle that I have my primary light on. But it is buried under my spare mask and safety spool. So I go for the one in the light in the light pouch on my belt. Turn it on, unclip it, and deploy it, now we exit the cave on my backup light.
It all goes well until we reach end of the Gallery. I see a team stacked up in the exit. While we are waiting Reggie notices that my safety spool was hanging out of my thigh pocket from before and we fixed that. After waiting an additional couple of minutes I peek around the corner and see that there is enough room for us to sneak over the top of the team. As I pass over I see that it is the team that tied off in the eye, and I see two of their divers trying to brace themselves against the flow trying to get their primary tie off undone. Which was a great illustration about why you tie off in the area just inside the cave which is mostly sheltered from the flow.
We surface uneventfully, and Reggie says no real performance issues with those drills, since it is fairly late, we decide to pull the primary reel, leaving the Catacombs reel in place. Quick dive to do that, and we head home.
Thoughts on Day 4:
I can see the advantages and disadvantages of sidemount today. The ear and the catacombs are very narrow, just wide enough for divers in doubles, so in sidemount I have to turn to my side to make it through some of these passages. This will become an issue tomorrow, when we actually have to do the drills in the Catacombs.
Overall today went well, since it was mostly covering ground that I've already done, tomorrow the clown shoes come out.
Dive Profile:
Dive Time: 116 minutes
Bottom Time: 91 minutes
Average Depth: 48ffw
Max Depth: 72ffw
No air consumption numbers, because Macdive is acting weird, and is reporting that I had the exact same numbers across both computers.