On July 29th - 31st, 2005 4 students (all members of the
DIR-NL community) met in diveshop
Aqua Diving, Veenendaal with GUE-instructor
Andy Kerslake aka the "Master of Disaster" :evil: for the DIR-Fundamentals course. Due to having to travel to France for a Cave1 course Andy wanted to start the class on friday morning.
Since the focus was to be on teamwork and buddy awareness we all had done a few dives together so that we would not be complete strangers for each other.
The majority of our group was already diving with doubles, drysuits and cannister lights. Only one student used a wetsuit and a single tank (that would be me
). Certification levels ranged from NOB Club Instructors (a CMAS-affiliate) to IDD/NAUI Rescue Divers. Everyone had at least 150 dives under their belt under varying circumstances.
Friday:
Fitting the harness proved to be an interesting hour. Wearing our exposure suits in the blazing sun was just a bit exerting.
Then it was on to the divesite:
de Beldert, Zoelen.
Valve- and safety drills were done on dry land.
Before the first dive Andy told us: "Thing may go wrong." And they did. :11: If he had the idea that you were not paying enough attention to your buddy he would lose his mask, go out of gas, have his wing inflated or a combination of problems. It would be an understatement to say they those dive were the most stressed dives I've ever had.
Jacuzzi time:
at the end of our second dive we were asked to reduce the pressure in our tanks to 30 bar to check your weighting creating a nice jacuzzi effect in the water. The amount of lead used turned out to be too much.
Saturday:
Saturday started with some more theory before moving back to the water for the swim tests. These were not done in a pool but in open water. The only problem was that while the water temperature was pretty warm, the wind was rather cold. So while Andy and Frank were donning their drysuits we were freezing our *** off. The swim tests were easy.
After the third dive we were asked once again to check our weighting. A reduction to 3 kilos still wasn't enough. 2 Kilos was good but may needs to be checked for a possible further reduction.
The video footage that caught me swimming away with my primary unclipped while receiving gas bought the instructors a round of beer. :11:
Sunday:
Some more theory and the debriefing. The debriefing was done per team. We were found lacking in the awareness department. Bummer. I guess that makes me a GUE-trained diver, working to be a GUE-certified diver.
The results:
# Passed: 2
# Provisionals: 2
# Failed: none
