Tec Courses in Dry Suit (or not?)

[suricatasuricata]

Mr G and his compatriot Jimmy are already gone. Area9 Mastery Diving Research Center
Buddy Dive Tech is now under the leadership of two other folks.

I was trying to figure out where Mr G had gone, wish I had found the Area9 site before! Well, next time!

Solo with doubles will be challenging, since part of the course is a 600 ft surface swim.

Yeah, I am also not a very good swimmer but I think I am going to have to get way better at that anyways! Monterey from what I saw does involve way more swimming on the surface to get to dive spots.

If you can try and work in Advanced Nitrox and preferably Deco Procedures as well; that will really move you into new capabilities and give you some extra depth and deco credentials.

I have to talk to the people at TDS Bonaire about Advanced Nitrox/Deco Procedures. Currently, we have planned out 4 days of training, so I am not sure I will have time to do that as well and also do some R&R. I am only there for ~8 dive days.

 

[rhwestfall]

I don't want to buy more tanks, 8 is enough I think.

Yeh, right.. keep telling yourself that....

 

[Boarderguy]

Yeh, right.. keep telling yourself that....

2 more 119s, 2 more 100s, a few 40s for adv deco bottles... dammit, now it's in my head

 

[john120283]

Have you considered taking your fundies class in doubles? A lot of the doubles skills are taught in the Fundies class anyway.
Are you thinking about getting a tech upgrade in the future?

 

[loosenit2]

Everyone is approaching this question a lot differently than I do in my mind.

The fundamental question to me is whether or not you can dive your doubles as a neutral rig. In other words can you be less than 10lbs negative with your doubles on in a wetsuit? With Steel 100s I seriously doubt it, but have to allow for the possibility.

If you can't dive your doubles such that they are configured as a neutral rig you need redundant buoyancy. Usually that is a drysuit but could also be a double bladder wing (except GUE and UTD think double bladder wing is a four letter word), or the old "i have a lift bag for redundant buoyancy" which I think is an impractical solution.

 

[lostsheep]

Everyone is approaching this question a lot differently than I do in my mind.

The fundamental question to me is whether or not you can dive your doubles as a neutral rig. In other words can you be less than 10lbs negative with your doubles on in a wetsuit? With Steel 100s I seriously doubt it, but have to allow for the possibility.

If you can't dive your doubles such that they are configured as a neutral rig you need redundant buoyancy. Usually that is a drysuit but could also be a double bladder wing (except GUE and UTD think double bladder wing is a four letter word), or the old "i have a lift bag for redundant buoyancy" which I think is an impractical solution.

OP isn't talking about HP100 doubles and wetsuit. OP is going to warm water for doubles training where presumably he'd receive AL80s; the HP100s were for when he's at home with his drysuit.

 

[happy-diver]

I am going to have to move from a tiny apartment to something proper with a garage/workshop!

Hey mate I had to buy another house

do you really think you need a course when you're only adding a tank and a couple of valves to your gear

 

[suricatasuricata]

Have you considered taking your fundies class in doubles? A lot of the doubles skills are taught in the Fundies class anyway.
Are you thinking about getting a tech upgrade in the future?

I am doing a split course: Fundies P1 and P2. Depending on how I do in P1, I have considered doing P2 in doubles. In an ideal world, I do P1 in a drysuit + single tank, get way more comfortable with my drysuit and then do the doubles course in Bonaire, then come back to do P2 in doubles.

Yes, I want to go down the tech path, but as a rec diver, I am well aware that that might not happen right off the bat and I will have to try again!

Everyone is approaching this question a lot differently than I do in my mind.

The fundamental question to me is whether or not you can dive your doubles as a neutral rig. In other words can you be less than 10lbs negative with your doubles on in a wetsuit? With Steel 100s I seriously doubt it, but have to allow for the possibility.

If you can't dive your doubles such that they are configured as a neutral rig you need redundant buoyancy. Usually that is a drysuit but could also be a double bladder wing (except GUE and UTD think double bladder wing is a four letter word), or the old "i have a lift bag for redundant buoyancy" which I think is an impractical solution.

Yes as @lostsheep mentioned, I am planning to do warm water training with doubles (presumably AL80s), but my home base is going to drysuit.

I have an Evolve doubles wing with 40 lb lift that I plan to use. I did a PADI drysuit course last weekend and was not very happy with using a drysuit as a buoyancy control device tbh. So I'd want to try to avoid that. So it is a happy situation that GUE is also thinks about adding in just enough air to avoid the squeeze.

Hey mate I had to buy another house

do you really think you need a course when you're only adding a tank and a couple of valves to your gear

I mean. I don't know what I don't know. From the POV of someone who happily took an OW PADI + Nitrox course, I was shocked when I realized how awful my training was when I took an IANTD essentials course.

I was initially planning on just doing the Solo diver course with TDS Bonaire, it does involve working with a redundant air supply. Then, they suggested working on this while doing sidemount or doubles instead of learning how to use a Pony bottle. I am not ready to do sidemount now, doubles seems like a far more useful skill, especially considering that my local tech community is mainly GUE. So spending a couple of days on this will in the best case train me to manage doubles, do valve drills and make that one less task to deal with when I go back home and do more GUE stuff. Worst case, I find out that this is all super easy and that I am way better than I thought.

 

[john120283]

I am doing a split course: Fundies P1 and P2. Depending on how I do in P1, I have considered doing P2 in doubles. In an ideal world, I do P1 in a drysuit + single tank, get way more comfortable with my drysuit and then do the doubles course in Bonaire, then come back to do P2 in doubles.

Yes, I want to go down the tech path, but as a rec diver, I am well aware that that might not happen right off the bat and I will have to try again!



Yes as @lostsheep mentioned, I am planning to do warm water training with doubles (presumably AL80s), but my home base is going to drysuit.

I have an Evolve doubles wing with 40 lb lift that I plan to use. I did a PADI drysuit course last weekend and was not very happy with using a drysuit as a buoyancy control device tbh. So I'd want to try to avoid that. So it is a happy situation that GUE is also thinks about adding in just enough air to avoid the squeeze.




I mean. I don't know what I don't know. From the POV of someone who happily took an OW PADI + Nitrox course, I was shocked when I realized how awful my training was when I took an IANTD essentials course.

I was initially planning on just doing the Solo diver course with TDS Bonaire, it does involve working with a redundant air supply. Then, they suggested working on this while doing sidemount or doubles instead of learning how to use a Pony bottle. I am not ready to do sidemount now, doubles seems like a far more useful skill, especially considering that my local tech community is mainly GUE. So spending a couple of days on this will in the best case train me to manage doubles, do valve drills and make that one less task to deal with when I go back home and do more GUE stuff. Worst case, I find out that this is all super easy and that I am way better than I thought.

You'll likely come out of P1 with some things your instructor wants you to work on, so taking some time to practice before going back for P2 will help. One thing to keep in mind is that GUE is very prescriptive in the way that they teach of their skills, so it's possible that the instructor in Bonaire may not teach you to a valve drill the way you would be expected to do it in a GUE class.

 

[suricatasuricata]

You'll likely come out of P1 with some things your instructor wants you to work on, so taking some time to practice before going back for P2 will help. One thing to keep in mind is that GUE is very prescriptive in the way that they teach of their skills, so it's possible that the instructor in Bonaire may not teach you to a valve drill the way you would be expected to do it in a GUE class.

I did mention my future plans to him. He is not GUE certified, so yes that is entirely possible! Let us see.