Pool Practice Report: - Fun and Games

[DocWong]

My buddy Greg and I did a practice session in my pool last night.

After starting out with the Basic 5 and the new Valve Drills, we worked on our back kick. Hey, we should do a back kick competition? Just for giggles!

Then I wanted to see how far we can swim on a breath hold with full gear on, so I found out that I could do about 1 1/2 laps in my pool. Hey to qualify to take Fundies, we had to pass a breath hold swim test.

Next was our gear familiarity, Doffing and Donning our doubles rig. That was very funny. Greg watched intently as I doffed and donned 3 times, each time my long hose kept getting behind my back so that it was no longer a long hose. I could hear his laughing as I struggled over and over again to get it right. Of course when I took my doubles rig off, I had to hang onto my doubles to not float away, but it wasn't that bad.

I remember doing this in my NAUI open water class in 1974 in the ocean and loved doing it then. I'm not sure how practical this is to practice, but it was fun and funny to do. Of course after Greg watched me do it, he was able to vary the technique so his long hose was not entangled.

It was a bit task loading to be upside down, putting my doubles back on, my mask filling with water and when removing and replacing my reg upside down causing some water to be sucked in at the same time. Glad this was in only few feet of water!

To top it off, I just got a set of Worthington 120s and was diving them and loved it. They were more feet heavy than my Faber 85s so all I have to do is reposition my V-weight and I think I'll be pretty trim with them! They didn't seem that much heavier than the Fabers and I'm glad of that!

Am I going off the deep end??

 

[Tanked Monkey]

Am I going off the deep end??

Practice is always good.

Mike

 

[ScubaMilo]

My team and I regularly practice in the pool.
Especially now that we are getting ready for the Tech2 adventure.
We find that it is much easier to take multiple stage/deco bottles into the pool than to drag every thing down to the beach and lug it through the surf.
Glad to hear we are not the only crazy DIR divers doing this sort of thing.
Good for you guys for showing the dedication to practice.
See ya,
Milo

 

[Glycerin]

Sounds like fun to me

 

[TSandM]

Sounds like great fun.

I'm going through training dive withdrawal . . . I haven't been able to hook up with my practice buddy for almost a month. There's just something so addictive to doing drills

 

[DocWong]

Cool, then I'm going to confess my penchant for training, drilling and pool games. Here's the rest of our itinerary for our pool work:

DIVE TEAM PRACTICE POOL AND SHALLOW OPEN WATER SESSIONS

The goal is to continually improve our diving proficiency so that we can be prepared to better handle unforseen real diving emergencies, do super well on our Tech 1 class in 2007 and of course to look cool in the water and have much more fun! ;-)

The other goal is to task load ourselves in the pool and in shallow open water conditions.

Every Pool Session starts with:
Basic 5, Valve Drills and S-Drill

Then we add the specialty items:

___1. Maskless Basic 5, Valve Drills and S-Drill
___2. Kicks: Back Kick, Helicopter, Frog, Modified Frog, Flutter, Mod Flutter
___3. Gas Failures: Valves, Regulators, (using an air gun to sumulate free flow.) Runnaway Drysuit and Wing Inflators
___4. Stage and Deco Bottle handling: Gas Switch Protocols, Handling a 3rd Stage Bottle and rotating it with your other 2 Deco Bottles. Practice of deploying and stowing a Stage/Deco regulator.
___5. Shooting an SMB
___6. Gear Familarity I: Removing your rig and then putting it back on.
___7. Gear Familarity II: Deploying and stowing:
Contents of each pocket
Belt knife, large SMB in M/C Pack
Argon Bottle
Drysuit Inflator
Wing Inflator

___8. Think you're good? Do all the above without a mask! ;-)

___9. Maskless ascents while air sharing

-------------Added for more fun! ------------------------------

___10. Swimming with full gear on a breath hold, one Doc Wong Pool Length.
___11. Donating your Primary Reg to an OOA diver, going to your backup and finding it's not working because your left post got turned off from bumping into the overhead environment.
___12: Getting a reg ripped out of your mouth.
___13: Getting your Primary ripped out of your mouth and then finding it again.
___14. Timed ascents with multiple failures
___15. Shoot a bag from 50-70 feet.
___16. Ascend to 20 feet as team, stopping 1 min each 10 feet
3min at 20, each do a valve drill hanging at 20, 3 min at 10'
___17. Each do an S-drill at 20, where each person donates and receives at least once.
___18. 6 min ascent to surface
___19. Tic Tack Toe while ascending at stops
___20. Toxing Diver Rescue
___21. Blind OOA ascents
___22. Blind OOA ascents with valve and reg failures

Fortunately, my team (Todd, Greg and I) love the torture!

If anyone has anything else to add, I'd appreciate it so I can add it to our list.

 

[Data]

If anyone has anything else to add, I'd appreciate it so I can add it to our list.

yeah, when are you going to fire JJ and take over?

 

[TSandM]

Oh, Doc Wong, REMOVE that post with the list before Kirk sees it . . . !!!!

 

[albane]

doc must have the best cool aid ever

 

[Diver0001]

If anyone has anything else to add, I'd appreciate it so I can add it to our list.

Nets.

You haven't lived until you have one diver on the inside of a big net, maskless, entangled and with his/her gear off and trying to work out how to get the heck out while the buddy on the outside tries to communicate what to do.... To make it really interesting, try air sharing your way out of that.....

R..