jees week 7 just two left , phase two

[spongebobb]

hi folks ,
jees its been a while but here is the last 3 weeks installments from sunny dunoon .
week 5 , we were surveying the academys dive vessel the sleat . this involved starting with cleaning the underside , doing a anode survey ( condition and location ) and then taking a reading of the hull thickness with a cygnus reader . this was at half a metre spacings . we did this over a few days , and then had a 24 hour shift thrown in for good measure . oh how we laughed !!!
week 6 , we were on tools this week , we got to use lift bags , an airlift , an angle grinder , chainsaw , brushcart and a hand polisher . we were also running dive ops out of a trailer .
week 7 , rescue week . we have spent most of this week doing rescues from in water and doing jumps from the vessel deck . we were also doing the rescues from out the cage and at varying depths and distances. by the end of the week we had this all off to a fine art . we are also running the chamber on board doing surface decompression .
along with all the activities of the last few weeks we were running all topside operations , and we are regularly thrown scenarios involving anything from diver casualities , unconcious divers , rescues ( jumping standbys ) to hauling out divers from the water to the deck of the boat using ropes . air supplies failing at source , out of air situations under water , all at times when we obviously least expect them !!! AGAIN ALWAYS BUSY !!!
week 8 this week and onto the deep diving phase . and our final exam on surface supplied .
more to follow next week ....

[David]

your just living the dream :-)

[BigHairyAl]

You'll enjoy week 8 and the deep diving!

I spent a whole 5 minutes at 50m monged out of my head attempting to drill though a steel plate with a drill set on reverse.

Strongly suggest (if you are able to, I think my record was about 20 seconds down the wire) racing down to 50m as quick as you can, the effect is much better than if you just crawl down to depth. This is probably why my buddy (who took 2 minutes longer than me to get down) realised immediately that my drill was set incorrectly

[stew]

sounds like your having fun.
the final surface supplied exam is a good one

we assembled a 6 sided rectangular metal box with threaded bar and nuts at 50m, no idea how long we were down there for though.. but it looked better at 50m than it did at the surface

[yazzyfooty]

This is a question thats been bothering me since I had a dry dive to 50 metres at Roebucks in York.
As a commie diver and if doing regular deep dives do you eventually stop being affected by narcosis. To myself, I compare it to drinking. Someone that rarely drinks gets drunk sooner then an alchie who is at it every day. And how do you work when your narked out your nut?

[BigHairyAl]

Originally Posted by yazzyfooty

This is a question thats been bothering me since I had a dry dive to 50 metres at Roebucks in York.
As a commie diver and if doing regular deep dives do you eventually stop being affected by narcosis. To myself, I compare it to drinking. Someone that rarely drinks gets drunk sooner then an alchie who is at it every day. And how do you work when your narked out your nut?

In practice, commie air dives to 50m are very rare indeed - too little time available at depth to get much done, and chances are the diver will be cock-a-loop. Bad enough if he gets happy narcosis, but even worse if he gets the impending sense of doom style instead.

Since leaving Fort Bill, deepest I've been is 18m below a super tanker.

[stew]

Originally Posted by yazzyfooty

This is a question thats been bothering me since I had a dry dive to 50 metres at Roebucks in York.
As a commie diver and if doing regular deep dives do you eventually stop being affected by narcosis. To myself, I compare it to drinking. Someone that rarely drinks gets drunk sooner then an alchie who is at it every day. And how do you work when your narked out your nut?

from a sport diving point of view i would say you probably handle it better if you dive deep regularly, i dived to 45m on a regular basis before becoming a commie and was none the worse for wear for doing it.
on a dry dive to 50m with other non divers, well lets just say it looked like they had just been through a session down the pub while i felt like i had to run them all home.
like BHA says, deep commie diving is not something your going to do too often inshore, my depest dive since quallifiying is about 12m and my longest dive is 3 hours.
not sure about off-shore depths, probably quite a bit deeper when required but obviously less time at depth.

[Sandman]

My deepest commercial dive in the last few months has been to 45 metres for 35 minutes on a salvage job off Ireland, raising a trawler. My first few minutes on the bottom where a complete mystery to me, I was supposed to be rigging a tugger line to pull a heavy steel strop under the bow. I had to come up the shotline and go back down again before I was any good. After the first dive I was ok and went on to do a few more dives and controlled the lift on a night dive.

A few days later we were lifting a second bigger trawler which was upside down in 35 metres and my longest dive was 90 minutes and I left surface at 1 am and came out of the pot at 4am. The diving went on around the clock as we had to roll the wreck over on the bottom before lifting it and the crane barge was costing €40,000 a day.

Just for the record 4 ex PDA students were involved on this job so it is possible to get deeper dives inshore but most of your work is inshore civils involving concrete and big nuts and bolts.

Cheers

[Dangerous Dan]

Some interesting things are coming out of this thread.

Just today I have booked on my Surface Supply course at the PDA in Dunoon. Will be up there from mid August to mid September.

Dan

[Kogeko]

Dan,
I'll be up @ PDA doing SCUBA/SS/TOP UP during that time. Are you doing the Top Up as well??

Phil