vancouverdiver
Contributor
The Tech 1 Journey
It has been a long journey, but I am pleased to report that the 3 of us satisfactorily completed the final assessment dive for Tech 1. So tomorrow we look forward to our deco graduation dive with a max depth of 130 on 25/25 and using O2 for deco.
The UTD Tech 1 course ran from April 27 to June 6, 2009. I entered the course recognizing that I was going to experience a significant learning curve as I had great difficulty in reaching my valves, had just switched to doubles, and had no experience with deco bottles. Being a sucker for punishment I decided to proceed with the course and take it with my dive buddy Mike Barass. I would simply work hard, do my best and learn as much as I could. Gary Friesen and Mike Barton also joined us to round out the class at 4.
The class sessions were routine, but admittedly, sometimes a lot of information was downloaded to us. We had some difficulty in grasping some concepts, but a very patient Todd Powell rectified that. We were starting to get tired of those subway dinners. Our first water session was in the pool. While we were wearing our dry suits, I did not wear the bulky undergarments and to my pleasant surprise, I could reach all the valves! There was hope for me yet! Further subsequent tinkering with the harness, undergarments, and greasing the valves really helped. We did some basic skills and did a scenario, which involved one diver with a failed post, one diver out of air and two divers with no masks. At least we had an smb. Despite the fact that we were in confined warm water with unlimited visibility, we did not anticipate the compound failures, and needless to say we made mistakes and some of our dive buddies died. That was a taste of what was to come.
Through the month of May we did another 5 water sessions at Whytecliff with a lot of practice sessions in between. The differentiator in this course is the focus on developing the thinking diver through numerous scenarios with multiple failures. There was less emphasis on protocol, and more emphasis on what makes sense in priority order to resolve the failure. The analogy of a diver as a cockroach emphasizes the actions to survive vs. necessarily wasting time following certain protocol. The trick was to develop judgment to decide what was a waste of time, and what needed to get done to avoid descending further into an incident pit where the situation becomes fatal.
Throughout the scenarios we experience five fingered white rubber gloves descending from above and behind taking our masks off. After we successfully put on our back up masks we barely had time to congratulate ourselves before we lost the backup masks too! We had left post failures, right post failures, manifold failures, out of air, line entanglement, failed dive computers, failed lights, and silt outs courtesy of a zealous application from ToddÃÔ stage bottle. Initially it was rather unnerving to hear a roar of bubbles streaming from your manifold at your ear. Each independent failure is only an inconvenience, but compounding failures often stressed the team such that the correct decisions were not always made. Yes, mistakes were made but we learnt from them. We also learnt to dive as a team, and our communication skills, positioning and problem resolution continued to improve. By no means have we finished our learnings. However, we have learnt to deal with the failures as mere inconveniences that turn the dive. Still, the course has highlighted the need for continuous learning and regular post assessment of dives so that one can learn from each dive to become a better diver and a better dive buddy.
To assist in the learning, we de-briefed and watched the video with many laughs and expressions of horror. When sitting on a sofa analyzing the scenario we have visual clarity of the various scenarios. We could kick ourselves for some of our Brain farts?
I learnt a lot about myself as the course highlighted my strengths and embarrassingly accentuated my weaknesses. I thought my biggest hurdle was reaching the valves, but that was only the beginning. I quickly recognized I needed to quickly improve on communication, assertiveness, awareness, positioning, buoyancy & trim, and problem resolution. Gee, did I leave anything out? I can't emphasize enough - continuous learning. I'm pleased to say, that in my opinion, I'm a better diver today, than I was a month ago.
I have to say this was an invaluable course conducted by Todd Powell. While we demonstrated a propensity to kill each other, Todd demonstrated an enormous capacity for patience. He gave us an incredible amount of time to see us through the course and that would not have been possible if he had a different disposition or was on a restricted schedule. It was obvious that he was silently cheering for us, doing his best to make it an enjoyable learning experience, and hoping things would click and we would progress. The other amazing thing is that no matter how bad a scenario was conducted, he would search for something, anything positive to say. i.e. "You did a good and thorough buddy check in the parking lot!" "You descended as a team" Or even if you lose buoyancy and you are fighting to hold your stop he would say "You are a survivor, can't fault you on that" Of course he also pointed out learning moments, and as you can gather there were many. On occasion we did manage to leave Todd speechless. All Todd could muster was "wow, what did you think of that dive?"
My only regret is that our fourth classmate did not finish before he had to go out of town for work. He will complete the course upon his return.
It was an experiential course that I highly recommend. Many thanks to Todd for his instruction, Blair & Kathryn for videoing, and special thanks for the support of my classmates. Without their support I would not have a shoulder to cry on and could not have completed the journey.
Best wishes for safe diving. Look out for blowfish and five fingered white gloves: they are the only things one needs to worry about. Everything else is just an inconvenience!
☺
It has been a long journey, but I am pleased to report that the 3 of us satisfactorily completed the final assessment dive for Tech 1. So tomorrow we look forward to our deco graduation dive with a max depth of 130 on 25/25 and using O2 for deco.
The UTD Tech 1 course ran from April 27 to June 6, 2009. I entered the course recognizing that I was going to experience a significant learning curve as I had great difficulty in reaching my valves, had just switched to doubles, and had no experience with deco bottles. Being a sucker for punishment I decided to proceed with the course and take it with my dive buddy Mike Barass. I would simply work hard, do my best and learn as much as I could. Gary Friesen and Mike Barton also joined us to round out the class at 4.
The class sessions were routine, but admittedly, sometimes a lot of information was downloaded to us. We had some difficulty in grasping some concepts, but a very patient Todd Powell rectified that. We were starting to get tired of those subway dinners. Our first water session was in the pool. While we were wearing our dry suits, I did not wear the bulky undergarments and to my pleasant surprise, I could reach all the valves! There was hope for me yet! Further subsequent tinkering with the harness, undergarments, and greasing the valves really helped. We did some basic skills and did a scenario, which involved one diver with a failed post, one diver out of air and two divers with no masks. At least we had an smb. Despite the fact that we were in confined warm water with unlimited visibility, we did not anticipate the compound failures, and needless to say we made mistakes and some of our dive buddies died. That was a taste of what was to come.
Through the month of May we did another 5 water sessions at Whytecliff with a lot of practice sessions in between. The differentiator in this course is the focus on developing the thinking diver through numerous scenarios with multiple failures. There was less emphasis on protocol, and more emphasis on what makes sense in priority order to resolve the failure. The analogy of a diver as a cockroach emphasizes the actions to survive vs. necessarily wasting time following certain protocol. The trick was to develop judgment to decide what was a waste of time, and what needed to get done to avoid descending further into an incident pit where the situation becomes fatal.
Throughout the scenarios we experience five fingered white rubber gloves descending from above and behind taking our masks off. After we successfully put on our back up masks we barely had time to congratulate ourselves before we lost the backup masks too! We had left post failures, right post failures, manifold failures, out of air, line entanglement, failed dive computers, failed lights, and silt outs courtesy of a zealous application from ToddÃÔ stage bottle. Initially it was rather unnerving to hear a roar of bubbles streaming from your manifold at your ear. Each independent failure is only an inconvenience, but compounding failures often stressed the team such that the correct decisions were not always made. Yes, mistakes were made but we learnt from them. We also learnt to dive as a team, and our communication skills, positioning and problem resolution continued to improve. By no means have we finished our learnings. However, we have learnt to deal with the failures as mere inconveniences that turn the dive. Still, the course has highlighted the need for continuous learning and regular post assessment of dives so that one can learn from each dive to become a better diver and a better dive buddy.
To assist in the learning, we de-briefed and watched the video with many laughs and expressions of horror. When sitting on a sofa analyzing the scenario we have visual clarity of the various scenarios. We could kick ourselves for some of our Brain farts?
I learnt a lot about myself as the course highlighted my strengths and embarrassingly accentuated my weaknesses. I thought my biggest hurdle was reaching the valves, but that was only the beginning. I quickly recognized I needed to quickly improve on communication, assertiveness, awareness, positioning, buoyancy & trim, and problem resolution. Gee, did I leave anything out? I can't emphasize enough - continuous learning. I'm pleased to say, that in my opinion, I'm a better diver today, than I was a month ago.
I have to say this was an invaluable course conducted by Todd Powell. While we demonstrated a propensity to kill each other, Todd demonstrated an enormous capacity for patience. He gave us an incredible amount of time to see us through the course and that would not have been possible if he had a different disposition or was on a restricted schedule. It was obvious that he was silently cheering for us, doing his best to make it an enjoyable learning experience, and hoping things would click and we would progress. The other amazing thing is that no matter how bad a scenario was conducted, he would search for something, anything positive to say. i.e. "You did a good and thorough buddy check in the parking lot!" "You descended as a team" Or even if you lose buoyancy and you are fighting to hold your stop he would say "You are a survivor, can't fault you on that" Of course he also pointed out learning moments, and as you can gather there were many. On occasion we did manage to leave Todd speechless. All Todd could muster was "wow, what did you think of that dive?"
My only regret is that our fourth classmate did not finish before he had to go out of town for work. He will complete the course upon his return.
It was an experiential course that I highly recommend. Many thanks to Todd for his instruction, Blair & Kathryn for videoing, and special thanks for the support of my classmates. Without their support I would not have a shoulder to cry on and could not have completed the journey.
Best wishes for safe diving. Look out for blowfish and five fingered white gloves: they are the only things one needs to worry about. Everything else is just an inconvenience!
☺
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