Day 5
Early onsite again as the NDAC is only 75 minutes from home, even in the 'baby carrier' as a couple of my mates have christened the hire car. A treat for the last day, a sausage bacon and egg sandwich, yummy!
A bit of theory to start the day off, including the basics (and benefits) of semi-closed in an emergency scenario. Time to get kitted up.
We planned to take everything down onto the pontoon and have a short surface interval down there so we loaded one of the many minibuses up with all we might need and off down the new (and much improved) concrete roadway.
Dive one was a standard descent and get settled down at 25m for a 15 minutes swim so we were able to work out our metabolic oxygen rate, mine worked out about 1lpm. Off over the drop-off to my deepest CCR dive at 35m until Rich turned it. Back over onto the shelf we were to run a simulated semi-closed drill by attaching our bailout cylinder onto the oxygen inflator nipple. Then using the bailout gas we did a return swim watching how long it took for the ppO2 to drop 0.2 before doing an O2 (or rather in this case bailout gas) flush. It took about 2/3 minutes for it to drop from 1.4 to 1.2. It caught me out the first time as I didn't exhale quickly enough as I was injecting and started to ascend but no major problems. Drill over I saw I'd used just 15bar of a 7L in 15 minutes, a great saving on gas over OC and now I could understand the theory which Rich went through earlier about CCR divers getting best use of gas at depth even in an emergency. After yet another bailout, we did an OC ascent drill up to 12m which wasn't too bad, remembering to quickly open the loop to release expanding gas. Sent DSMB up, deco stops, etc.
Quick bask in the sunshine out of the wind and run through the plan for dive 2, and I didn't like the sound of most of it!
Dive two was a bit hit and miss! I knew the plan and knew what I should be doing but getting myself to do it was something else! Skills
A quick swim away onto the 12m area and then Rich ran the line out, quite a way given I knew what was coming! We started fairly easily with each one of us (me and Mike) going OOG and bailing out onto OC, then onto donating OC to the other, swimming up and down the line. Then onto a harder one. Mike was at one end of the line, I was at the other. Mike wasn't going to swim to me but I had to bail off the loop and swim to him. The first time I didn't make it to him before I had to take a breath off my reg (which I had in my hand for safety obviously), Rich was watching me very closely at this point! So back down the line to try again, second time successful but I certainly wouldn't want a 25m swim to find gas at any major depth for real. Swim back and recover line. Another simulated deco free-ascent to 6m, then along onto the roadway. Then the rescue, hmmmmm. I had nightmares after trying this with nickb on our Trimix course! But after one false start we completed it fairly well, Mike didn't end up flying up like a missile and it was a fairly slow but steady pace.
That was it, get out and get the kit back up to the top. Kit sorted into cars and I got changed.
Then the final verdict. I won't say it was a surprise because I had a feeling during day four but it was
very very nice to hear both Rich and Mike congratulate me on completing
and passing my MOD1. Now I know I'm not a great OC diving (thanks the DIR boys!) and I even admitted to Rich before the course I didn't expect to pass and was doing the course for the experience rather than the qualification but I must admit I drove all the way home with a smile on my face
I found this course incredibly hard work (I'm not good at diving course and getting stressed so why do I do it?), not really what I was expecting given the course reports I'd previously read (hence this rather long and boring post) but today I'm very happy! And very very happy to be in the office for a rest
I think the logbook at a little over 10 hours will stay that way for quite a while as I'm very busy over the summer with other stuff and diving already booked (not newly qualified CCR diver compatible), but maybe in the Autumn I'll think about a unit but if anyone hears of a good quality well looked after Inspo for about 2k please let me know
One last word:
Thanks Mike for all the advice, all the assistance and all the pointers, you're so much more than just a "safety diver"
Thanks Rich for taking all the glory