Quote:
| Originally Posted by Pierre Farrugia Hello Padowan,
Thanks for this report and you made me jelous apart from diving these wrecks, I still have to wait for an others 4 weeks until I have mine. Just want to ask you some questions, are you trimix qualified? Have you had problems in filling the diluent with mix? I can understand the urge you had to try it deeper, me that's why I am getting the unit in winter as we do not do deep dives in winter due to weather and so will keep me away from deep sites 
Regards
Pierre Farrugia |
Hi Pierre,
Yes I'm OC Trimix certified, and have dived deeper than these depths in the UK on open circuit trimix in much more challenging conditions - the conditions you get out there are a walk in the park in comparison. It's amazing how much, (probably false) confidence you have when you can see for miles and are considerably less encumbered (wetsuit, no gloves, no hood, no need for torches), and in your mind if there is a problem, the fact that you have no environmental factors clouding your mind I felt confident that I could deal with it.
There was no problem getting the fill on the boat, the boat is a TDI tech facility, and had all the gasses available, and the dive guide had seen us in the water, we'd talked about it, and he was happy that we could proceed as planned (we';d signed all the waivers at the start of the week). The £7 gas bill for the 17/20 heliair mix made me smile when I thought about paying about £30 for this in my twinset in the UK
It was also a gradual build up over the week, diving 4 times a day does keep the skills quite fresh in your mind, and the deepest 2 dives were on the last 2 days. Back in the UK I will be doing 25-35m stuff for another 20 dives or so before extending the depths in UK conditions - up to the same OC limit that I set myself for non-trimix gasses. On OC if a dive is over 45m I will use Trimix, if it's shallower, I'll use an air-top on a mix prefererably, but will happily do it on air. So applying the same methodology to my CC diving, I'll be limiting myself close to the 40m air limit for probably enough time to build up the experience and dive hours to get the Trimix certification on it (which I will definitely do), at which point I will then start doing the deeper stuff in the UK.
The oncoming winter months will also allow me to spend lots of hours in lakes and quarries practising MOD1 skills and drills and start thinking about MOD2 drills (bailout gasses and configuration, SCR operations etc) in preparation for the Trimix course.