Recreational Diving - Level 2

[Adobo]

Recreational Diving - Level 2

I apologize in advance. Writing is not something I am very good at so if all you have to suffer through are some grammar issues, run on sentences and the occassional mispelling, consider yourself lucky.

A few weeks ago, I along with 3 other eager divers took a class that I thought I would share with you. The class is quite unique and was put together by the innovative folks at Breakthrudiving (formerly 5thd-x). Breakthrudiving is relatively well known in Northern California as providers of extensive technical diver training. Last year, they came up with a workshop (Essentials of Recreational Diving) for recreational divers that allowed a diver to learn some of the techniques used by tech and cave divers. This class allowed a diver to learn alternative propulsion techniques, dive planning, team approach to diving, etc.

After taking Essentials and spending many dives improving on my dive technique, I was at a loss as to what to do next to further my dive education. If you look around, most of the next level of education from your typical dive shop is geared towards divers that are relatively inexperienced. While I am far from being an expert, I had knowledge and experience in many of the specialties offered at the dive shop. (drysuit, nitorx, boat diving, etc).

The only other direction that is generally available is the tech route. Personally, I do not feel ready for a truly demanding tech class nor do I really care to add the complexity/risk that normally comes with tech diving. With divers like me in mind, Breakthrudiving designed a level 2 class for recreational divers.

Class Structure

The class was held over 3 days in Monterey, CA. We started out on Friday morning with a hefty lecture where we covered:
1. Review of basic skills
- propulsion techniques, trim, bouyancy
- SMB deployment
- OOG drills
- maskless drills
2. Team positioning
- how position yourself relative to your buddy (or buddies if you have a 3 man team).
- how to position in wall dives
3. Light usage/communication
- how to indicate your status to your buddy, whether it be okay, look here, emergency, etc.

Then we took to the water. I don't really know how to count the dives we did on Friday. You could say 4 short dives or you could say 1 really long dive. I dunno.

I had gotten accustomed to doing drills as part of regular fun dives. My buddies and I would usually do a quick out of gas (OOG) drill before starting out on our shore dives. But in this class, we did something a little more complex. We were asked to do multiple drills simultaneously. In other words, we would do an OOG drill which results in an air share. Before ascending, one of the divers would deploy a surface marker buoy.

I have practiced air sharing with other buddies many times. I had gotten quite good at it actually. However, air sharing and deploying a bag really put me towards the edge of how many tasks I could manage at one time. Fortunately, the other topics covered during the rest of the dives were less complex.

The day ended with a review of the dives. The instructor covered what we did well and what needed improvement. For me, there wasn't a shortage of material in the "needs improvement" category.

 

[Adobo]

The second day followed the same format. We started with a lecture to discuss what topics we would cover that day, we dove and then we finished with a lecture to cover more material and to talk about the day's dives.

The second day covered:
1. Mid water drills
- Doing the same drills as the day before except this time, doing it in mid water with no visual reference as to your depth
2. Navigation
- How to use your compass and natural features together to find your way around.
- Different "exploration" techniques
3. Gas Planning
- how to split up doubles
- how to estimate run time
- how to use gas usage as an indicator of something being wrong
- Toxing Diver Rescue
- Crisis Management

The second day's dives were far more challenging than the first day's dives. (And honestly, I got my butt kicked on the first day.) Though we were doing the same drills as before, we were not asked to do some elements of the drills in mid water with no visual cues as to the depth. This is really where the buddies needed to tranform into a team. One diver would hold depth and be the visual cue. The other diver would be doing whatever task and using the buddy to check to make sure that he was not ascending or descending. Imagine two divers in mid water air sharing and deploying an SMB at the same time with no visual references. Yes, it was a lot of fun.


Day two brought two other challenging topics. First the simulator. Our instructor would swim with a dive team and essentially simulate some type of failure. If memory serves, my team had a lost mask, an out of gas diver and a diver with a valve failure. To simulate the lost mask, the instructor would swim up to one diver (the one following, not the one leading the team) and stick his hand in front of the diver's mask. This was the cue to say, "your mask is coming off in 3 seconds." The maskless diver would then use his light to signal to the leader to turn around and look. At the point the leader would swim back to the maskless diver to render assistance. The other drills were just as much fun.

Next, the toxing diver rescue. Toxing diver rescue is taught at just about every level of breakthrudiving's classes. For those who are not Nitrox trained, oxygen toxicity is a hazard that is present to those who dive with Nitrox. In most recreational diving situations, how much risk is quite questionable. But when you dive on the same boat as tech divers, there is a chance that you could witness such a thing. Toxing diver rescue is pretty much a wrestling match. When a diver experiences an ox-tox, they might go into convulsions and then go limp. Either way, it is incredibly difficult to render assistance in such a difficult and unfortunate scenario. My first attempt at helping a diver in the ox-tox drill essentially made me realize that controlling a 200lb diver with 100lbs of gear on under water will take lots and lots of practice.

As before, the day ended with a lecture and the inevitable "you guys dive like monkeys playing football" comments. Okay, it was put in a far more diplomatic way but that was essentially the message.


Day 3 was our big day. We had two days of lecture on how to plan dives and 2 really long dives (or 8 really short ones) to work on our technique. On the third day, we hopped on the Escapade to do some real diving.

The intent here is to have the students put into practice the dive planning skills covered over the past two days. As each student in the class was diving doubles, we had a little added complexity of how much gas we would resever for each dive. We also had to figure out our estimated run times and also discuss our navigational/exploration plan.

The first dive was conducted at a site with a max bottom of 90 or so feet. Dive 2 was a shallower spot with a max bottom of around 65 feet. The dives in themselves were outstanding. And after 2 gruelling days of drills and lectures, it was a welcome change.

We wrapped up the day with yet another lecture to discuss all the lessons learned and to summarize everything.

 

[Adobo]

Personal impressions

Not everybody will be able to take this class. And not everybody will want to. It is truly "advanced" training for recreational divers with well developed skills and experience. At the time I took the class, I had roughly 65 dives under my belt. And quite frankly, I felt like I wasn't ready. This class is only offered by the gang at Breakthrudiving. To take it, you need to spend a long weekend in Monterey or pay to have one of their top notch instructors to go to your area. To get the most out of the class, you will want to have taken fundies, breakthrudiving's essentials, or some intro to cavern course where presumably you would have been exposed to the basic skills for which this class will build upon.

The Breakthrudiving gang firmly believes in standards and team diving. If you are into solo diving, this class will likely not offer you much. If you are not into sharing tasks and responsibilities as part of your diving, this class will likely not be enjoyable for you. And if you think that recreational diving requires just a minimum amount of skills and training to be enjoyable, then htis class is definitely not for you.

However, if you are looking for truly advanced recreational diving training, you gotta give this class a look.

 

[TSandM]

Sounds like great fun, all except the air-sharing bag shooting in midwater . . . shudder. And yes, I know that's in my future, but I'm managing not to think about it

 

[Jasonmh]

Great write-up, sounds like a good class. Thanks for sharing.

 

[H2Andy]

adobo, sounds like a wonderful way to "push" your diving skills and expand your tool kit. wish there were more classes like that available to divers.

Sounds like great fun, all except the air-sharing bag shooting in midwater . . . shudder. And yes, I know that's in my future, but I'm managing not to think about it

don't worry about it ... you'll get it

in flying, they have a saying "fly the plane." it means, your priority is flying the plane. don't get sidetracked by the radio, or navigation, or whatever, and neglect flying the plane.

i think of it in diving as "keep your position," which means my primary task is to always be aware of how deep i am, my trim, my trend (up or down), and my buddy.
that's my primary focus, and i check that constantly.

for example, check depth and buddy, unclip bag, check depth, remove bag from pocket, check depth, unclip spool, check depth and buddy, attach spool,
check depth, etc...

that way, i never let myself get so concentrated on one task that i forget about my position in the water.

it's easy to do once you get in the habit