DIR- GUE Post-Lockdown Swiss Fundies - Report in Episodes
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Than I must have passed your house many times when I am doing my walks by the lakeI usually walk from the train station down Bahnhofstrasse to the lake and walk to the right or left for few miles and then back. Couple of times rented a paddle boat in the lake but never thought of diving it. Does it get better visibility and underwater scenery further out on the opposite direction?
The closest to my place is a spot next to Lindt factory, but I’ve never seen it with good vis. Other side is better, one can have some acceptable divest at Küsnacht. At ca 25-30 m a vertical wall starts and, we’ll, you can see a vertical wall and grey fishes. #exciting
S01E03: It wasn't me, it was an OWD class.
Third day of the course. Of course weekend equals forecasted rain, so we meet at the same spot under the bridge. Fortunately we are the only ones around at 8am, so we get the parking spots at the lake-side of the street.
Plan for today: V-drill and SMB deployment. We do a quick dry run of the former, and hop into the water. My knees still go down during the flutter kick and when I’m in cave in a current I could silt the bottom. Well, not happening anytime soon.
Repetition of the S-drill. That goes well, we no longer entangle ourselves in the long hose, and I proudly bring my buddy to safety 10 meters further.
The Jason demonstrates the valve drill. I’m mostly busy staying in place. Then it’s my buddy’s turn. He’s done in some 30 seconds without ever moving in the water. My turn I start waving my torch and reach to the right post, when Jason stops me and without words explains that the attention signal needs to be slightly larger than 3 degrees and preferably not underneath me. I guess I’m naturally a shy person.
With that in mind my first valve drill goes fine. It takes ages, I grab the middle post as if my life depended on it, but everything opens, closes and I do not lose the sight of my team too much.
Then the dreaded free-water ascent while sharing gas. We do it twice, each of us being OOG. Both times I manage to not blow the 6 and 3 meter stops, which makes me very proud of myself.
Surface break and SMB deployment. I was happily diving with a pre-rigged buoy, but apparently we’re gonna be assembling it underwater before deployment. Still, after these 4 dives before it doesn’t seem too challenging.
But first more valve drills. Now, here comes the fun part. After changing tanks, I got doubles of Jason’s partner, who apparently wanted the middle valve angling away from her head, to make more space for the head itself. With my 2x DS4s already not allowing my head to go as far as it really could (though I guess my neck is grateful for that), that makes the valve quite far. And so the dance begins, with me going almost vertical trying to reach the handle. Well, no chance. I can get a finger on it, but it doesn’t really allow for turning it too well. In the meantime, while bending over backwards quite literally, I manage to accomplish 0 vis. Hey ho, gotta make your instructor proud.
To finish the dive, SMB shooting. I start assembling mine, one hand here, other there, suddenly already 2 meters of line unrolled. Roll it somehow back, shoot up, and we try ascending. It goes up to 6 meters, and then suddenly I’m on the surface with a lot of line around me. My buddies have somehow not surfaced with me though, I guess they have a longer deco obligation due to their age.
Theory on deco and gases afterwards and I’m back home for dinner courtesy of the best girlfriend ever.
S01E04: Training is bought.
The final day of the course. We meet at a new spot, next to a charming meadow, with a civilised toilet and water fountain. And no rooftop, but with a pouring rain.
Today: saving unconscious buddy, valve drill repeated, SMB repeated.
Saving buddy was cool, especially when you get to pretend you’re unconscious. My buddy took Jason’s instructions about being firm and decisive very literally, but I guess I won’t have bruises.
With the middle valve pointing towards me, I manage the valve drill acceptably. The visibility is fine afterwards, valves have been opened and closed. I’m not sure how much gas would be saved in the process, but slow is smooth, so at least that part I got right.
SMB rigging and shooting - be my guest! Takes a while, but from 5 meters the buoy went to the surface, and I didn’t, which is quite some improvement. And we manage to surface with it including the 3m stop. Yay!
And now comes the swim test. Jason allows us to choose whether we want to swim in the drysuits, or just trunks. We clearly go for no drysuits. My buddy turns out to be well prepared with a nice thin wetstuit, me and Jason not-so-happily jump into the 10C water. 10 minutes later we’re out, neither 275m on the surface nor 15m beneath it turning out to be much of a problem. Needn’t have practiced before.
Last theory (short), exam (passed) and debriefing. My flutter still leaves something to be desired, and I’m not exactly rock stable, but apparently my performance earned me a Rec Pass.
My buddy gets a very much deserved Tec one.
S01 Epilogue:
And so I’ve passed the Fundies. Was it the most challenging course I’ve ever had? No doubts about that. Was it really extremely hard? On the Rec level I don’t think so. The content and requirements do not seem to be excessive, and coming with my Rescue an 100 dives under the belt of course I had to concentrate and make an effort, but at no point did I feel like it’s unreasonable or too much. It’s certainly great to get feedback on the basics, and in a long run it will probably benefit my diving more than any of the Specialty courses I could have taken at that point.
Value for money? Sure, the course is not cheap at the 890 CHF (c.a. USD890). However, in Switzerland it’s on par with Rescue (890CHF exactly as well), and roughly twice as much as any 2-day Specialty, so price per day is absolutely standard. It does however bring you great quality instruction, teaches doubles and/or drysuit* and nitrox and buoyancy and trim and SMB (that’s like 5 specialties? ;-)). Overall I did feel it’s a fair value.
*I did dive dry before, but it was my first time with doubles. I presume it would be much harder without previous experience with a drysuit.
Third day of the course. Of course weekend equals forecasted rain, so we meet at the same spot under the bridge. Fortunately we are the only ones around at 8am, so we get the parking spots at the lake-side of the street.
Plan for today: V-drill and SMB deployment. We do a quick dry run of the former, and hop into the water. My knees still go down during the flutter kick and when I’m in cave in a current I could silt the bottom. Well, not happening anytime soon.
Repetition of the S-drill. That goes well, we no longer entangle ourselves in the long hose, and I proudly bring my buddy to safety 10 meters further.
The Jason demonstrates the valve drill. I’m mostly busy staying in place. Then it’s my buddy’s turn. He’s done in some 30 seconds without ever moving in the water. My turn I start waving my torch and reach to the right post, when Jason stops me and without words explains that the attention signal needs to be slightly larger than 3 degrees and preferably not underneath me. I guess I’m naturally a shy person.
With that in mind my first valve drill goes fine. It takes ages, I grab the middle post as if my life depended on it, but everything opens, closes and I do not lose the sight of my team too much.
Then the dreaded free-water ascent while sharing gas. We do it twice, each of us being OOG. Both times I manage to not blow the 6 and 3 meter stops, which makes me very proud of myself.
Surface break and SMB deployment. I was happily diving with a pre-rigged buoy, but apparently we’re gonna be assembling it underwater before deployment. Still, after these 4 dives before it doesn’t seem too challenging.
But first more valve drills. Now, here comes the fun part. After changing tanks, I got doubles of Jason’s partner, who apparently wanted the middle valve angling away from her head, to make more space for the head itself. With my 2x DS4s already not allowing my head to go as far as it really could (though I guess my neck is grateful for that), that makes the valve quite far. And so the dance begins, with me going almost vertical trying to reach the handle. Well, no chance. I can get a finger on it, but it doesn’t really allow for turning it too well. In the meantime, while bending over backwards quite literally, I manage to accomplish 0 vis. Hey ho, gotta make your instructor proud.
To finish the dive, SMB shooting. I start assembling mine, one hand here, other there, suddenly already 2 meters of line unrolled. Roll it somehow back, shoot up, and we try ascending. It goes up to 6 meters, and then suddenly I’m on the surface with a lot of line around me. My buddies have somehow not surfaced with me though, I guess they have a longer deco obligation due to their age.
Theory on deco and gases afterwards and I’m back home for dinner courtesy of the best girlfriend ever.
S01E04: Training is bought.
The final day of the course. We meet at a new spot, next to a charming meadow, with a civilised toilet and water fountain. And no rooftop, but with a pouring rain.
Today: saving unconscious buddy, valve drill repeated, SMB repeated.
Saving buddy was cool, especially when you get to pretend you’re unconscious. My buddy took Jason’s instructions about being firm and decisive very literally, but I guess I won’t have bruises.
With the middle valve pointing towards me, I manage the valve drill acceptably. The visibility is fine afterwards, valves have been opened and closed. I’m not sure how much gas would be saved in the process, but slow is smooth, so at least that part I got right.
SMB rigging and shooting - be my guest! Takes a while, but from 5 meters the buoy went to the surface, and I didn’t, which is quite some improvement. And we manage to surface with it including the 3m stop. Yay!
And now comes the swim test. Jason allows us to choose whether we want to swim in the drysuits, or just trunks. We clearly go for no drysuits. My buddy turns out to be well prepared with a nice thin wetstuit, me and Jason not-so-happily jump into the 10C water. 10 minutes later we’re out, neither 275m on the surface nor 15m beneath it turning out to be much of a problem. Needn’t have practiced before.
Last theory (short), exam (passed) and debriefing. My flutter still leaves something to be desired, and I’m not exactly rock stable, but apparently my performance earned me a Rec Pass.
My buddy gets a very much deserved Tec one.
S01 Epilogue:
And so I’ve passed the Fundies. Was it the most challenging course I’ve ever had? No doubts about that. Was it really extremely hard? On the Rec level I don’t think so. The content and requirements do not seem to be excessive, and coming with my Rescue an 100 dives under the belt of course I had to concentrate and make an effort, but at no point did I feel like it’s unreasonable or too much. It’s certainly great to get feedback on the basics, and in a long run it will probably benefit my diving more than any of the Specialty courses I could have taken at that point.
Value for money? Sure, the course is not cheap at the 890 CHF (c.a. USD890). However, in Switzerland it’s on par with Rescue (890CHF exactly as well), and roughly twice as much as any 2-day Specialty, so price per day is absolutely standard. It does however bring you great quality instruction, teaches doubles and/or drysuit* and nitrox and buoyancy and trim and SMB (that’s like 5 specialties? ;-)). Overall I did feel it’s a fair value.
*I did dive dry before, but it was my first time with doubles. I presume it would be much harder without previous experience with a drysuit.
. 
So to get the Tech pass, you need to come back and show improvement on these 4 skills? Can you go back and get the Tech pass?
You don't have to go to the Tech1 course just because you have the Tech pass in fundies.
Just four days of training??? I thought it was longer than that, perhaps 6 days.
Yes, in principle at some point in the future I can go and upgrade to Tech pass, I don’t have to retake the whole course. But then I wouldn’t probably bother without the intention of enrolling in a tech course.
Given that we were only 2 and my buddy required hardly any input, these 4 days were quite enough. I can imagine a team of 3 divers on my level would require much more input making the days much longer, but it’s still only 6 dives.
Given that we were only 2 and my buddy required hardly any input, these 4 days were quite enough. I can imagine a team of 3 divers on my level would require much more input making the days much longer, but it’s still only 6 dives.
Ayisha
Contributor
Well, this is the most entertaining Fundies report I've ever read. I really wasn't sure which way your course was going to go. We've all been there and it's great to be able to laugh about it. They are really long but fun days, and well worth it.
Congratulations!
Congratulations!
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