This Weekend's 'DIR Fundamentals Course' - Nice to meet you all

[johnkendall]

Hmmm, well that was an interesting Drive back to cambridge through some really really shit weather.

Anyway, just a quick note to say thanks to all those on the fundies course this weekend for providing me with a little entertainment :-) It was good to finally put a few faces to names.

See Ya

John

[Mr T.]

Oi, Kendall!

Hey John,

any chance of a quick dive report for the masses?

Who was there?

What did ya do?

Did Davey Willo manage to kill anyone as 'support diver'?

Come on mate, don't keep us hanging!

[johnkendall]

Originally Posted by Bren Tierney

Oi, Kendall!

Hey John,

any chance of a quick dive report for the masses?

Who was there?

What did ya do?

Did Davey Willo manage to kill anyone as 'support diver'?

Come on mate, don't keep us hanging!

I'll try and knock together a quick report tomorrow if the others don't do it first. (Got to go sleep, start new job in morning :-) )

However, I feel that those taking the course should give their views on things. I was only there as a "video bitch", but I do think that everyone came away with a different view of it all to when they started. That said it was a laugh (At least from behind the camera)

IIRC we had Rick (frogman), will (??), Far too many Andys, Alistair, John, Jonathon, Josh. Appologies If I've forgotten anyone, I'm shit with names. (Oh and Andy C (And) as the other Video Bitch)

See ya
John

[Al_Star]

Well certainly was an interesting weekend. Great to meet some of the YD'ers who's posts I've been reading over the last few months. Despite previous reports, I was still surprised by how difficult the course was.

For those who don't know the format it starts at 7pm on friday night with lectures and powerpoint. On Friday night we also ended up lying on top of tables practising fin kicks. After half hour of that my legs and ankles were aching (much worse now after the 4 dives). Saturday ran 9am-8pm including 2 dives and more work in the classroom. Sunday was 9am-7pm including 2 dives, swim test at the local pool and some more lectures.

A pointer for anyone in the future - do NOT choose to try twin's for the first time on Fundy's. I discussed it with one of the instructors and in retrospect he admits it was bad advice to give it a go! Couple of the other guys on the course who often use twin's actually swapped back to singles because they didn't want the extra task loading. Anyway it wrote off dive 1 for me, I spent the entire dive head down with floaty feet. I didn't practice any skills and spent 25 minutes at the surface waiting for the rest of the group. The advice I got was to straighten my legs out - however my feet were buoyant so that only made matters much worse.

Dive 2 and I switched to a single but was really missing my ankle weights as this was only second dive in a drysuit without them - led to floaty feet again although not as bad as with the twins. However I was able to do some of the skills albeit often head down. I went back to the B&B on saturday night very fed up and pretty ready to give up.

Sunday morning I spoke to Andy K and his recommendation was Jet Fins. Adam Hanlon (training manager at Capernwray) lent me his own pair for dive 3 and 4 and they made a huge difference compared to my Mares fins. They put some negative buoyancy near my feet and actually made a lot of the kicks easier.

So dive 3 and I felt I could actually start to learn something and progress. Worked a lot on keeping our three man team together - we discussed it before the dive and resolved that would be the best thing we could do. We practised the different fin kicks and the various basic skills including long hose deployment and valve drills. We also had a few emergencies sprung on us. We tried some ascent drills, 1min at 6m, 1min at 3m, 1min head down at surface then back down in reverse. Three man teams did seem to make ascents harder to organise, it did get a bit easier with practise. All the skills are fairly easy but the difficulty arises from trying to do them horizontal a few feet off the bottom without changing depth or reverting to being upright (amazingly instinctive reaction).

Dive 4 and it's more skills, had a dismal loss of mask drill where I ended up on the surface. Also did an SMB deployment with a spool for the first time that was different. Caught sight of And and the video camera and started dropping things - long hose, spool, double ender! Still at least I provided some entertainment.

Next was off to the pool for 275m swim (any style) in 14 minutes which was dead easy, followed by a 20m breath hold which I found easy as well. Then it was back to the dive center for the video and debrief.

Overall I did learn a lot from the course, however poor kit and the daft idea of trying twins wrote off the first two dives for me. I built a little confidence on the second day but I've come away feeling very under-skilled. It's certainly made me rethink my own belief that I was a competent diver. I got the impression that this was partly the idea, they want to shake you out of complacency and really make you re-think how you dive.

Really did appreciate the help from the rest of the group and from our video helpers. We all managed to laugh at our appalling efforts on the video which did raise the humour level. The humming to the under water conducting (waving your hands all the time) was very amusing. And special mention has to go the underwater baptism's and praying (The praying followed a valve drill where having shut down his left post, a nameless individual had the misfortune to unclip his light head rather than his long hose and was rather surprised when he couldn't breathe from it) .

Don't know how everyone else did as I shot off straight after my debrief as I had a long drive back to Cheltenham. I got a provisional pass which means I need to go away and practice with some other fundy's training people and come back to have my skills re-evaluated.

[Digger]

Well, I popped in Saturday afternoon and saw Rick and Will, but didn't get to meet any of the other guys I'm afraid. Sounds like you were all pretty damned busy!

Nice report, good to see a frank appraisal of skills, it so rarely happens normally!

[Rick Huggins]

Here's my tupence worth.

Friday night was a laugh; after a brief intro from each student and a general intro into GUE & DIR we hit the tables, practicing frog kicks, modified frog kicks, flutter, modified flutter, helicopter right/left and backwards frog kick.. How funny was that!

So things looking good, we finished off about 2300 and headed back to our abodes. Me and Will stopped at the Kings Arms in Burton, reasonable accomodation and good food!

With a 0900 start on Saturday we continued with a slide presentation on the fundamentals, skills required. Backplates/Harnesses were set up (Correctly) etc then headed off to practice what we had learned.

The skills/experience of the students ranged from 20 dive novices to dive leaders and instructors with 300+ dives.

Once in the water (6m) all hell broke loose. The guys had layed two triangle lines for each of the groups. Single tanks/Double tanks. There were folk on the suface, folk at the bottom, some stuck in the silt, some upside down, some landing on top of others etc...total pandemonium.

We all got the thumbs and headed to the surface for a little chat with Mr Kerslake and Mr Walker.

Once clear what was meant to happen we descended in our groups and started practicing S-Drills, Finning techniques, valve drills etc. It was still chaos down there with plenty of buddy seperations, ascents, descents and line loosing. What a bag of sh*t I thought!

After a brief SI for the singles to get a fill, we were back in on dive 2. This was better, we had started to move in distinct teams within the teams, trim was better and bouyancy was getting there.

At this point, I must stress that I and others thought that there bouyancy/trim was pretty good prior to starting the course. At 6M one small deep breath whilst removing a mast will send you north wards all under the watchfull eye of the video bitches Andy & John. And they always seemed to be there when you least wanted them to, frustratingly

Anyway it all started to come together, well better than the previous dive.

Back to the class and continued the slide discussions. At the end of the day, I must say I felt a little disapointed by the lack of footage of myself and Will especially. Not being vein of course, but to criticise and analyse our postures/trim and dangly bits etc. (That was soon taken care of the next day by Andy and John and TBH I wished I had shut my big trap . Having read the fundamentals book and workbook, I truely didn't think I had learned a lot more from attending the course that I already had whilst reading researching DIR. Oh well day 2 down, what will tomorrow bring?

Back in the class for a brief spell then back into the water to practice all the skills we learned the previous day plus more.

This was really beginning to come together. Basic 5, Reg out, exchange, mask clear, mask removal, modified S-Drill. Then onto Full S-Drills, valve drills and bag deployment. Sound easy? Try all this totally horizontaly, facing your buddy/team, manouvering without hands (fin kicks only) without ascending because of a mis placed breath..But we were getting there.

On the way to the SI we finned past a group of trainee's by one of the large trailers at the cape. God knows what they must have thought as we went past with HID's lit and in V formation. I thought they were gonna spit their regs, LOL.

Anyway, Dive 4 was upon us and we went through the whole caboodle again, but this time it was really geared towards the team and it felt great. Everyone knew where everyone was this time around, drills were getting slicker, trim and bouyancy was becoming second nature. Still a few flaws but all in all...it was good.

Down to the pool for a quick swim and a breath hold (I should have stopped smoking long before the night before the course), then it was back to the class. Finished off the slides, watched the videos then we had our idividual debriefs.

To conclude.

A great course, well worth doing if you even have the slightest interest in bettering your skills. Now you might be thinking "my bouyancy is fine", Well we all thought that! Just seeing the likes of Andy and Rich in the water makes you realise that youve been or are doing something wrong which you can right with the correct instruction. I thing I speak for all the guys when I say that we all took something very important from this course, something you need to see to believe.

I personally got a provisional pass, which means I need to go away and polish the skills that I learned, come back and prove that I own the skills to be an efficient member of a DIR team. However, supposing I decide not to further my training with GUE, these skills are the simple building blocks of diving and I would urge anyone to go give it a try.

P.S I will continue with GUE and hope to do Cave 1 in Floriday sometime next year

P.P.S Need to cut my hands of first though

A big thanks to Andy K and Rich W for the course, all the guys on the course, the video men (stealthy back finners) And & John, Dave Willo and others who popped in to wish us luck and Adam for the coffee and scran.

ATB

[andy b]

Hi guys

I really enjoyed the course, and it was good to meet some of you.

The big things I took from the course were the focus on team work, and the standards which are expected of the students.

Alastair and Rick have given a good run-down on the course timetable so I can't say much on that.

Also, a thank you to John and Andy for their work with the cameras, providing lots of valuable footage!

Andy

[Rick Huggins]

Originally Posted by andy b

Also, a thank you to John and Andy for their work with the cameras, providing lots of valuable footage!

Andy

That's only because the angle they were at made your trim look spot on

Well done on the pass mate

ATB

[Mr T.]

Two things:

1. Congrats and 'Big Up' to everyone who made it through the course! Did anyone get an outright 'Pass'? Or are you all 'provisionals'? Anyone fail (er...sorry, ahem, 'Not pass')?

2. You've mentioned that some/all of you will 'have to come back at a future date to re-sit the course skills to the satisfaction of an appropriate GUE wallah' - will you have to pay for that next session, or is it included in the money you paid to take this initial course?

[johnkendall]

Originally Posted by Bren Tierney

Two things:

1. Congrats and 'Big Up' to everyone who made it through the course! Did anyone get an outright 'Pass'? Or are you all 'provisionals'? Anyone fail (er...sorry, ahem, 'Not pass')?

There was at least 1 outright Pass, but I wasn't around until the end, so don't know if anyone else got one.

2. You've mentioned that some/all of you will 'have to come back at a future date to re-sit the course skills to the satisfaction of an appropriate GUE wallah' - will you have to pay for that next session, or is it included in the money you paid to take this initial course?

I don't think anyone ends up paying anymore if they get a provisional pass. They just have to turn up and prove to the instructor that they have sorted out whatever issue they had (Normally Buoyancy). I think this is normally a 15-30minute dive, with a few skills thrown in.

See Ya
John