Now for something completely different...

[lv2dive]

OK Steve... so us FL/FL-ish gals are waiting for the dates for the class you promised us?!?!?! When is the class going to be, already???? <stomping foot impatiently>

 

[JamesK]

OK Steve... so us FL/FL-ish gals are waiting for the dates for the class you promised us?!?!?! When is the class going to be, already???? <stomping foot impatiently>

Ummm, yea, am I still allowed?

 

[haumana ronin]

*patiently waits until whatever it was that happened in this workshop gets trickled down and around to us recreational divers.*

:zen:

 

[Jim Lapenta]

I see it happening for sure with my students and any other recreational diver in my area that wants it to.

Sent from my DROID X2 using Tapatalk 2

 

[lowviz]

*patiently waits until whatever it was that happened in this workshop gets trickled down and around to us recreational divers.* ./. :zen:

Problem.


OK, I was planning to contribute via a new thread, but your post changed that rather quickly. I&#8217;m re-casting my input as suggestions/reading for recreational divers that are &#8220;tech curious&#8221;.

First, be clear of where you want to get with respect to diving. The &#8220;sweet spot&#8221; for me is the netherworld between the &#8220;by the rules&#8221; recreational diver and true technical divers. I want to dive places like the Arundo (140&#8217; in the NE Atlantic) with the skill and confidence that are required to actually belong on that dive. This puts me as a either a rogue recreational diver or a &#8216;wanker&#8217; tech diver. Neither side is interested in diving with me.

Waiting for skills courses to come to you is futile. So my suggestion is to grow some scar tissue and start training and associating with divers that have the skills you desire. Hard road. Kind of makes you feel like a kiss-up or a groupie, but know that you can drop off when you have achieved your goals.

Background:
I started out diving with my ADHD son and I was the &#8216;safety diver&#8217; from dive one. Subconsciously trained that a buddy was a liability that you dare not compromise. Ill fortune (seasickness) allowed me to make a few solo dives along with all the other regular divers. Like it or not, whether you splash in pairs or not, solo is pretty common on the NE Atlantic. Couldn&#8217;t believe that I could just do what I wanted to do, no pressure, no worries, totally unreal. As I progressed with my buddy he grew up and started his own life. Left me solo for real. However, I couldn&#8217;t shake the creepy feeling that I really wasn&#8217;t as prepared for this type of diving as I should be.

Lots of diversity in my training, public safety (PSD), wreck diving, ice, real rescue, cave, and so on. No regrets with any of it. Atlantic wreck diving and PSD diving gave me courage and survival skills, but did so without much input on buoyancy and trim. Cave was a beast. I never felt so incompetent in my life. So, obviously, my focus is now on getting trim and buoyancy totally squared away. Looked for buoyancy and trim dive instruction, -no such animal in the recreational world using Atlantic wreck gear. So I was faced with taking tech courses. Tech stressed the ins and outs of decompression over the more mundane trim and buoyancy skills. Personal problem, I don&#8217;t &#8220;fake it&#8221; very well. So if I look stupid trying to learn something, I&#8217;m not likely to quit just to lower the entertainment level of the day. Acquiring skills is central and core and there is no one right way because people are different. I am an experiential learner, overdo my bookwork, then try everything to get it right.

I finally realized that my rig did not allow me to properly position my tanks and wing using my backplate (backplate was originally selected for my son, I was given same one too). So I recently designed a new backplate to fit me, had it laser cut and bent by Fred Tagge (great guy!!!) and learned how to finish stainless steel. Got it done about a week before Steve&#8217;s clinic and practiced with it as well as time allowed.


Keeping all of this in mind, now for a short class report:

First, all great people and a great clinic!

...//...The skill drills were fun and informative. I never imagined that practicing stuff that could save your life could involve so much levity. ...//...

I went into this with a lot of misgivings and serious second thoughts as I had just replaced my entire rig. The misgivings came from being fully aware that that the idea was to show up in gear that you are comfortable diving.
My old rig with all its &#8220;baroque embellishments&#8221; is no more. Replaced it with something that was designed to be much cleaner and offering a greater range of tank adjustment. I can now position my tanks so I&#8217;m either head heavy or tail heavy.

In the water:
We all ran through Steve&#8217;s drills (never did THAT one before&#8230 then worked on the particular &#8220;issue&#8221; that each was uncomfortable with. I was totally focused on trim and buoyancy due to the new rig. I had either the tank or wing placement off a bit, and was somewhat tail heavy. My dive plan was to swim laps around the platform while watching and dodging all of the other interesting activity that was coming at me from all directions. Amazing what you can pick up by just watching. Dutch has sizeable platforms and one corner happened to be very much warmer than its diagonal corner. Thus, I gained about 10 feet every time I passed the warm corner. My continuous laps were more of an elliptical path with a 10-foot tilt above the platform at the warm end.

Nothing gets past Steve:

...//... ... surprisingly relaxing day... punctuated with some genuine belly laughs... No Names, No Packdrill but one of the highlights was the boomarang swimming style of at least one of the participants!

(I had to look up "no names, no packdrill") -no worries either, Steve. I can take it&#8230;

I got my laugh today when I looked at my DC profile. Yeah, I probably looked just like a boomerang. He had to be taking about me...
On an amusing note, now I know that 0.79 is my 80 minute stressed swimming warm-cold-warm-cold-warm-cold... SAC.

A big takeaway for me was Steve's day-long explanation of the whole &#8220;buddy&#8221; thing concept. I&#8217;m starting to get it.

Thanks, Steve!


( and THANKS W&F for the offer to practice with you guys!)

 

[SeaHorse81]

*patiently waits until whatever it was that happened in this workshop gets trickled down and around to us recreational divers.*

:zen:

See my post (#38) on page 4 of this thread. I am purely a recreational diver with no aspirations to ever be a tech diver, so that's the point of view you're getting in my posts. As far as I know, I was the only such creature present at the workshop. If you need more specifics on the day, just ask, and I'll be happy to provide anything additional that I can from the recreational diver point of view.

 

[ffdiver]

I like to think that I just have excellent navigational skills and was able to get back to the platform without even trying.

The workshop for me was awesome. We all got to try things we were uncomfortable with and "got the fear out". There was no pressure to have to do the drills, everyone there wanted to do the drills and be challenged. After you do them, you realize, as long as you can breath, no worries.

First dive I practiced with my stage and deco bottle, taking them off and on over and over again. Then we swam around with one fin and then no fins. Changed deco regs underwater and did buddy breathing deco reg. then I simulated bcd failure and practiced diving with only my drysuit as a bcd.

As I was in sidemount my valve drills were pretty easy, but I swam around the platform feathering my tanks. Then I dropped a stage, closed my eyes and followed the platform feathering valves until I got back to my stage and switched to it. All followed up by no mask smb deployment.

After a long surface interval, we got back in the water and did tired diver tows, bringing up a toxed diver and air sharing with free flow regs and swimming. I was supposed to lead back to the entrance but my excellent navigational skills lead us right back to where we started.

More air sharing, no mask ascents, swimming without tanks on and so on and then we all called it.

Overall, I think we all had a great day, and each of us had a different take home lesson. What was cool was even though Steve has all the certs and experience in the world he himself was going over drills also, making him the loudest rebreather diver I have ever heard. You couldn't hear bubbles but you heard tons of beeps coming up behind you, and knew someone was about to mess with you.

I'm glad I went and have already incorporated some of the lessons in my own class.

 

[SeaHorse81]

That may be the single best thing about this workshop: From the most basic to the most advanced diver among us and regardless of the variety of gear configurations being used, I think we each got exactly what we needed out of the experience. No more, no less, no pressure. I know I went in with some basic personal goals, and fine-tuned what I wanted to think about based on the lengthy surface discussions we had. Because I knew what I needed, I knew how to focus my time and I was free to practice to my heart's content, until I felt like I got it. There was help when I needed it, and freedom to do my own thing otherwise.

The more I think about it, the more impressed I am with how it turned out. Great job, Steve.

 

[randy88k5]

I had a great time. I learned a lot from this seminar, and met a lot good people. I loved the idea of the knotted line indicating line length on a spool or reel. It makes a lot of sense for different situations. I also really liked the idea of carrying a double-dog clip with a short length of line. It can be used for a john line, or other things. I got some feedback on my equipment configuration, which I will implement soon.

Thanks for the great workshop Steve. I hope to attend the next one too.

 

[SeaHorse81]

Here's another piece that I should have mentioned: I've gotten the point from Steve's various writings and got it again from this workshop that you can avoid the vast majority of equipment mishaps by simply inspecing your gear regularly and keeping it serviced. It's easy to tell when an O-ring's damaged, or a hose is aging badly, or a valve doesn't operate smoothly, for example. It takes seconds to assess these things, minimal expense to fix them when needed, and brings your risk of gear failure as close to zero as you can make it. It is unbelievably easy but I know I, for one, have been inexplicably lazy about it. No more. It's too easy to not do it, and the payoff is huge.

I rent gear when I go on vacation, and there have been times when I noticed some things that weren't horrible, but weren't as good as they should have been either. I have now seen why you need that stuff in really proper order at all times. Not only is it less likely to fail, but if something does fail, you may be a lot less able to cope with it if a valve is particularly hard to operate, for example. Henceforth, I will not hesitate to ask for adjustment or replacement as necessary. Yes, it may be "okay" the way it is, but it's not supposed to be "okay," it's supposed to be correct, and for good reason. I see that more now than I ever have before.

By the way, if any of the other workshop participants want to use this thread for more debriefing/processing about the workshop, I think we'd get even more out of what we did, and make this thread that much more educational for anyone watching. Besides, you were all really nice people and I'd like talking with you some more.