I have been really trying to nail my navigation skills by holding a heading through blue water with a soft bottom to reach a part of the quarry we dive in. I have been having a lot of trouble keeping a depth. I slowly start to descend. Because my buddy wanted to stay above the thermacline, we were trying to keep the dive around 15 feet. I was afraid to add too much to my bc and have to try to let air out while watching my compass. I can usually alter my bouyancy by my breathing but without a visual reference it is difficult to do this. By the time my depth gauge registers a change I'm already to far to change it with breath alone. How do you guys keep a steady depth? One thing I have done different is, I added some trim weight pouches to the shoulder straps on my bc to help me float more horizontal. Not sure but I think this may be causing me to swim differently now
When under task loading, use chaining.
Task loading for all intents and purposes can be defined as doing more than one thing at once. In your case you're trying to navigate and keep your depth steady at the same time.
Chaining is doing multiple things one at a time by switching back and forth between them. This is kind of like how computers work. Most of them do one thing at a time but switch between tasks. A computer is fast so to us it looks like multitasking but most of the time it isn't.
So how do you apply this?
You need to keep a close eye on your depth or you won't be able to keep it steady without a visual reference. This isn't just true of novice divers, this is true of all divers. So in this case what I would do is to set my direction and kick a few times in that direction and then switch my attention back to my depth again. Get the depth right, switch back to the compass, kick a few times and then switch back to checking depth. etc etc. This constant switching takes some practice before it becomes second nature but you will eventually "automate" it.
To give you an example, I dive on a wreck fairly often that requires us to leave the bottom and swim back to shore mid-water without a reference. Using the technique I just told you I can swim for 20+ minutes through zero reference and my depth doesn't deviate more than 30cm or so from where I wanted it to be at any given time.
That's the basics. The more advanced option you have is to delegate different tasks to different team mates. During the swim I was just talking about, my buddy and I perform different tasks. For example, I will control depth and decompression stops and he controls navigation. We can both do it all but this is just easier. So what he does is look at me to see depth and he uses me as a visual reference to judge how deep he should be and I look at him to see which way I should be swimming. That way we can both give more attention to our designated tasks and it makes the swim more accurate in terms of both depth and direction.
hope that helps.
R..