I'm sitting here this morning, bleary-eyed and body sore and trying to organized an intense whirlwind of education from the last three days into something anybody would want to read. I just got put through the Rec Triox machine, and I came out the other side a little the worse for wear, and stuffed to the gills with indigested information. But I'll try to hit the high (or were they low?) points.
In a nutshell: This is a great class. It's not easy, and there's a ton of material that's covered in the academics, and packing it all into three days creates a real pressure cooker. For those who have taken Fundies: Fundies is drinking through a straw. Rec Triox is swallowing the output from a fire hose. And not only are the things you are asked to do more difficult, but the standard you are held to in executing them is higher. I am SO glad I did this, instead of trying to take a Tech 1 class.
I'm not going to be able to do a chronological account of the class, because it's all kind of a blur right now, so I'll try to describe what we covered, and what we did.
We had academic (classroom) and in-water sessions each day. Friday began with academics. We started with a rapid Fundies review, including going over the equipment setup. Each of us had to take a piece of the rig and describe what the important qualities were to look for, and why they were important. We reviewed equipment checks and the dive briefing, and went through the "GUE EDGE" mnemonic. I think we did some gas planning calculations that morning, too, and we talked about monitoring consumption and calculating SAC rates (which Kirk and I have gone through before, but the other two guys hadn't). We went over minimum gas determinations, tank factors, and gas matching. Steve gave us his expectations of us as far as gas monitoring during the dives. We also went over the critical skills we would be doing in that day's underwater work.
About noon, we headed for Cove 2, joined by Richard, who was acting as Steve's assistant for the class. To my disappointment, there was no video during this class, although I have no idea when we would have found time to review it, anyway.
We started out by dropping and doing valve and S drills. Although it was not pretty, I did manage to get to all my valves. S drills went fine. Steve actually praised us for how we did here. It was the last praise we were to get for quite a while.
Richard and Steve laid a course, with a bag for an upline, and a line run maybe a hundred feet or so. We worked in teams of three, which meant there was one odd man out, who buddied up with Richard and observed. This meant that at any given time, we had two people who were used to working together, and a third relative stranger, and this proved to be one of the challenges. One lesson I got from this class is that there is TREMENDOUS value in working together as a team before you face anything stressful.
The format for the dives is familiar to anybody who's done a GUE class. You descend and start the dive. Things happen, and you deal with them. Steve was particularly good at taking advantage of the openings we gave him -- If you turned around and got your fins near somebody's face, they probably lost their mask. If you weren't watching a team member, he'd get lost. If somebody's fins got in the silt, it got "helped along" a little. If you made an error in managing a valve failure, most likely the person with the failure would go out of air.
I think we may have set records for the number of mistakes, blunders, screw-ups and generally poor performance we managed to come up with. We lost buoyancy, lost trim, kicked up silt, failed to reach valves (except for Kirk, who can reach his in his sleep, which turned out to be valuable later on). We misidentified the failure we were being given (My response to a right post failure at one point was to take my mask off and hand it to Steve, which nonplused him, as mask removal does not tend to stop the bubbles) and when we identified it correctly, we often took precisely the wrong steps to solve the problem. The worst blunder was attempting to turn off the post our buddy was breathing, and almost everybody tried that at one point or another. In fact, on the second day, somebody succeeded in turning off Kirk's right post when he had already shut his left one. Kirk being Kirk, he sucked the regulator dry and calmly reached back behind him and turned the post back on. His composure and sang-froid underwater is just amazing.
After each dive that day, Steve would try to get us to run through the sequence of events in detail, including the time things happened and what our gas was. He quickly realized that just living through the scenarios was pushing our limits, and expecting us to store that much data wasn't reasonable, because the requests for that information were gone by the second day.
The high point of day one for me was being the "observer" on the last dive, which meant I was paired up with Richard, and our job was to clean up the line and bag at the end. Because the tide had come in, the upline bag was almost underwater, so Richard had to loosen the line a little bit at the very beginning, which meant the other guys got out of sight before we started down the line. So our dive was swimming to the end of the line, and then I got (at my request) to handle the reel for cleanup. Richard took the ties off, and I reeled up the line. No failures, no lost buddies, no OOA's! I was a happy camper until I realized I hadn't checked my gas once while I had the reel in my hand . . . Ah, there went the situational awareness.
So four crestfallen students debriefed the dives with Steve, and we then repaired to the Thai restaurant across the street for more academics. The restaurant wasn't busy, thank goodness, but we got some very strange looks from other patrons as Steve set up his laptop and Powerpoint presentations among the dishes and the silverware, and began to hold forth on breathing gases. We broke up about 9:30 and I went home to die.
The following morning was earlier, because we had to start at the shop since we hadn't filled tanks the night before. That morning was gas mixing calculations, and we had to calculate what we needed to put in our tanks to get a full load of 32%. We went down and labelled our tanks, and when Richard came in, he filled them for us while we were doing gas consumption, minimum gas, calculating thirds, tank factors, gas matching and dissimilar tanks. We then packed up and headed out to Cove 2 yet again.
The second day's dives were much like the first. We had a course, and were given failures to cope with. Once again, we floundered and made mistakes and generally failed to distinguish ourselves. I proved to be utterly unable to reach my isolator under stress, and unable to hold my trim while reaching valves in general, except when allowed to do it under the gentle pace of a formal drill.
One of the pits I fell into that day was trying WAY too hard. I was trying to anticipate the next failure, so I could have a strategy already in place for it, and as a consequence, I made judgment errors. Having been asked to practice bag shooting as the formal skill for the day, and having also been told that, should we have to make a free ascent, we were to shoot a bag, I was expecting a scenario that would lead to a free ascent, and when I thought I had one, I signalled that. Steve pointed out to me later that, since we were diving thirds, the implication was that a free ascent was NOT an option, something which had passed completely over my overachievement-focused, overdriven brain. That was embarrassing. Lesson number two: Don't try to outthink the instructor. You're not there to be clever. Real dives aren't going to give you problems that you can anticipate and be ready for, except by being adept at coping strategies in general.
After the dives, we went back to the shop for more academics. Pulmonary physiology, breathing gases, oxygen toxicity (both central nervous system and pulmonary) and narcosis. CO2 toxicity and the role of catecholamines in facilitating CNS oxygen toxicity. DCS/DCI, predisposing factors and WHY they may increase risk. Calculation of ENDs and EADs, and why GUE uses the equations it does (considering oxygen narcotic). And we made a beginning on decompression theory. We broke off at about ten, and went downstairs to do filling calculations. It was amusing to watch four very tired people struggle through some elementary arithmetic, or it would have been amusing had we not already been so frustrated and annoyed with ourselves.
In a nutshell: This is a great class. It's not easy, and there's a ton of material that's covered in the academics, and packing it all into three days creates a real pressure cooker. For those who have taken Fundies: Fundies is drinking through a straw. Rec Triox is swallowing the output from a fire hose. And not only are the things you are asked to do more difficult, but the standard you are held to in executing them is higher. I am SO glad I did this, instead of trying to take a Tech 1 class.
I'm not going to be able to do a chronological account of the class, because it's all kind of a blur right now, so I'll try to describe what we covered, and what we did.
We had academic (classroom) and in-water sessions each day. Friday began with academics. We started with a rapid Fundies review, including going over the equipment setup. Each of us had to take a piece of the rig and describe what the important qualities were to look for, and why they were important. We reviewed equipment checks and the dive briefing, and went through the "GUE EDGE" mnemonic. I think we did some gas planning calculations that morning, too, and we talked about monitoring consumption and calculating SAC rates (which Kirk and I have gone through before, but the other two guys hadn't). We went over minimum gas determinations, tank factors, and gas matching. Steve gave us his expectations of us as far as gas monitoring during the dives. We also went over the critical skills we would be doing in that day's underwater work.
About noon, we headed for Cove 2, joined by Richard, who was acting as Steve's assistant for the class. To my disappointment, there was no video during this class, although I have no idea when we would have found time to review it, anyway.
We started out by dropping and doing valve and S drills. Although it was not pretty, I did manage to get to all my valves. S drills went fine. Steve actually praised us for how we did here. It was the last praise we were to get for quite a while.
Richard and Steve laid a course, with a bag for an upline, and a line run maybe a hundred feet or so. We worked in teams of three, which meant there was one odd man out, who buddied up with Richard and observed. This meant that at any given time, we had two people who were used to working together, and a third relative stranger, and this proved to be one of the challenges. One lesson I got from this class is that there is TREMENDOUS value in working together as a team before you face anything stressful.
The format for the dives is familiar to anybody who's done a GUE class. You descend and start the dive. Things happen, and you deal with them. Steve was particularly good at taking advantage of the openings we gave him -- If you turned around and got your fins near somebody's face, they probably lost their mask. If you weren't watching a team member, he'd get lost. If somebody's fins got in the silt, it got "helped along" a little. If you made an error in managing a valve failure, most likely the person with the failure would go out of air.
I think we may have set records for the number of mistakes, blunders, screw-ups and generally poor performance we managed to come up with. We lost buoyancy, lost trim, kicked up silt, failed to reach valves (except for Kirk, who can reach his in his sleep, which turned out to be valuable later on). We misidentified the failure we were being given (My response to a right post failure at one point was to take my mask off and hand it to Steve, which nonplused him, as mask removal does not tend to stop the bubbles) and when we identified it correctly, we often took precisely the wrong steps to solve the problem. The worst blunder was attempting to turn off the post our buddy was breathing, and almost everybody tried that at one point or another. In fact, on the second day, somebody succeeded in turning off Kirk's right post when he had already shut his left one. Kirk being Kirk, he sucked the regulator dry and calmly reached back behind him and turned the post back on. His composure and sang-froid underwater is just amazing.
After each dive that day, Steve would try to get us to run through the sequence of events in detail, including the time things happened and what our gas was. He quickly realized that just living through the scenarios was pushing our limits, and expecting us to store that much data wasn't reasonable, because the requests for that information were gone by the second day.
The high point of day one for me was being the "observer" on the last dive, which meant I was paired up with Richard, and our job was to clean up the line and bag at the end. Because the tide had come in, the upline bag was almost underwater, so Richard had to loosen the line a little bit at the very beginning, which meant the other guys got out of sight before we started down the line. So our dive was swimming to the end of the line, and then I got (at my request) to handle the reel for cleanup. Richard took the ties off, and I reeled up the line. No failures, no lost buddies, no OOA's! I was a happy camper until I realized I hadn't checked my gas once while I had the reel in my hand . . . Ah, there went the situational awareness.
So four crestfallen students debriefed the dives with Steve, and we then repaired to the Thai restaurant across the street for more academics. The restaurant wasn't busy, thank goodness, but we got some very strange looks from other patrons as Steve set up his laptop and Powerpoint presentations among the dishes and the silverware, and began to hold forth on breathing gases. We broke up about 9:30 and I went home to die.
The following morning was earlier, because we had to start at the shop since we hadn't filled tanks the night before. That morning was gas mixing calculations, and we had to calculate what we needed to put in our tanks to get a full load of 32%. We went down and labelled our tanks, and when Richard came in, he filled them for us while we were doing gas consumption, minimum gas, calculating thirds, tank factors, gas matching and dissimilar tanks. We then packed up and headed out to Cove 2 yet again.
The second day's dives were much like the first. We had a course, and were given failures to cope with. Once again, we floundered and made mistakes and generally failed to distinguish ourselves. I proved to be utterly unable to reach my isolator under stress, and unable to hold my trim while reaching valves in general, except when allowed to do it under the gentle pace of a formal drill.
One of the pits I fell into that day was trying WAY too hard. I was trying to anticipate the next failure, so I could have a strategy already in place for it, and as a consequence, I made judgment errors. Having been asked to practice bag shooting as the formal skill for the day, and having also been told that, should we have to make a free ascent, we were to shoot a bag, I was expecting a scenario that would lead to a free ascent, and when I thought I had one, I signalled that. Steve pointed out to me later that, since we were diving thirds, the implication was that a free ascent was NOT an option, something which had passed completely over my overachievement-focused, overdriven brain. That was embarrassing. Lesson number two: Don't try to outthink the instructor. You're not there to be clever. Real dives aren't going to give you problems that you can anticipate and be ready for, except by being adept at coping strategies in general.
After the dives, we went back to the shop for more academics. Pulmonary physiology, breathing gases, oxygen toxicity (both central nervous system and pulmonary) and narcosis. CO2 toxicity and the role of catecholamines in facilitating CNS oxygen toxicity. DCS/DCI, predisposing factors and WHY they may increase risk. Calculation of ENDs and EADs, and why GUE uses the equations it does (considering oxygen narcotic). And we made a beginning on decompression theory. We broke off at about ten, and went downstairs to do filling calculations. It was amusing to watch four very tired people struggle through some elementary arithmetic, or it would have been amusing had we not already been so frustrated and annoyed with ourselves.
Good luck in April!
