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Ouroboros Mod 1 Course Report
This in reality is part three of an ongoing series of reports I’ve compiled. The first two were the IANTD Advanced Nitrox course report I did in July and the rebreather try dive from August. I had played with the idea of going down the rebreather route for some time so I knew that Advanced Nitrox was a pre requisite for Mod 1.
My thinking at the time was do Advanced Nitrox, if nothing else it teaches valuable lessons that you can take with you to anything you may want to do later, then do the try rebreather soon after. If it didn’t suit then I could go down an OC trimix route to achieve what I wanted. On the other hand if all went to plan and I enjoyed the rebreather try dive I could kick off with Mod 1 and with time work my way through to the natural progressions. This was confirmed when talking to the instructor from the Advanced Nitrox course who said to go all the way through to OC trimix and then to go down a rebreather route didn’t make a deal of sense. He suggested that once I knew for sure that a rebreather was what I wanted to stick to the relevant courses on the rebreather and not to waste time and money on OC courses.
So, I did the rebreather try dive and was convinced (or hooked, whichever way you want to look at it). So there I am after the try dive wondering where did I go from there. A quick look around found several rebreathers on offer, all the usual suspects, APD models old and new, Megs, various Kiss models, I looked at Submatix, read about Mk 15.5’s, CIS lunar machines and several others. Suffering with information overload I went back to the instructor who taught my Advanced Nitrox course.
Phill Short is not only a Technical Instructor, he is a Technical Instructor Trainer; as he joked himself, he’s spent years trying to earn respect in the diving industry and he becomes a TIT! He has been involved in the diving industry for 15 years and benefited from the experience that brings. His credentials are exemplary, he doesn’t just teach courses, he actively dives on expeditions around the world with many highly respected explorers and has done so for several years. He also cave dives and only this summer spent weeks in some God forsaken place in Russia ferreting around in some deep hole, miles from civilisation. He also gives sound advice based on that experience. So after a few e mails and ‘phone calls I outlined what I wanted to do, gave a time scale I wanted to achieve it in and discussed the options available to me. As a result, I chose to learn to dive the Ouroboros rebreather. Developed by Kevin Gurr (no diving slouch there either) and manufactured by his company, Closed Circuit Research Ltd, it is a relatively new unit on the market, only being available to buy from the beginning of this year. So the bullet got bit, I sent off my 50% deposit to CCR (ever wonder if the APD lead time would be reduced if you had to pay a large deposit on order?) and was told the unit would be ready in about two months, just in time for the 14th November course start with Phill at Stoney Cove.
So with the usual nerves I turned up at 9:00am last Monday to take possession of my unit, Ouroboros #43. Phill kicked off straight away showing me around the unit. I have little experience of other units but straight away you can’t fail to be impressed with the Ouroboros. Stainless steel piping, delrin all beautifully machined. Poseidon Extreme first stages tucked neatly out of the way all in a carbon fibre case, that at the moment looks way too shiny and new. First task was for me to learn how to pack the canister, and Phill’s methodology for this was the same as it was for the rest of the week. He demonstrated every thing for me then supervised as I did it myself. We then moved on to assembly of the unit and getting ready for the first dive. Other rebreather divers will know the importance of pre dive checks of the unit and with the Ouroboros you are prompted by the Primary Display through a number of screens to complete these checks. After each screen you have to acknowledge you have at least read the screen by pressing the “tick” button. This moves me on to the Primary Display. Similar in appearance to a VR3 (no surprise there as Kevin Gurr was responsible for this as well) its operation is very similar to that computer, being based on a combination of short and long pushes on the buttons in response to icons appearing on the screen. Apparently I was the first user of an Ouroborus who had no previous experience of a VR3 so I was something of an experiment to see how things turned out. I think it’s fair to say I struggled with this initially but once I had got to the end of day 3 with Phill shouting at me underwater as I screwed up the controls yet again I felt I was starting to get the hang of it.
In to the water for the first time…..all inflation for the wing and dry suit is run off the bailout cylinder along with a necklaced bailout reg. This in itself presents challenges on the course, especially when it comes to the skill of stage removal and replacement, having to first disconnect the hoses, unthread them from underneath the harness and then do the operation in reverse. Like all things though, the more you practiced these things the more second nature it became. On this dive (max depth was supposed to 12 to 13m, I failed on the buoyancy front and ended up at 17m) that was 136 minutes long (P valve essential) I did bailout drills, mouth piece clearing, learned how to turn the ADV on/off, how to manually inject O2 and diluent, in this case air and then went on a long swim so I could get the feel for the unit. At the end of this I had to do a no mask swim, trying to remember you can’t breathe out through your nose on CCR without dumping your buoyancy. For the exercise I found it easier to pinch my nose. Speaking of buoyancy I experienced the worst buoyancy control I’ve had since I learned to dive and fought an ever increasing battle with trying to achieve a ppO2 of 1.0 when the set point was set for 0.7. At the time I just couldn’t work out why despite all my efforts at injecting O2 to get it close to 1.0, a few seconds later it would fall again!
That first dive is a steep learning curve. I came out a little shell shocked. Nicola witnessed my walk up the car park after the dive and said I looked to be the most miserable man on the planet. I didn’t feel that way, in fact I felt quite relieved that I had finally started. Phill sent me home that night with instructions to make slight alterations to my kit, mainly to re arrange the rigging on my bailout so it all ran a lot more neatly.
The following day was an 8:30am kick off. We used the remains of the canister from the day before and got another 95 minutes from it. The skills moved up a notch with OC bailouts at 25m and ascents whilst switching the Primary Display from rebreather to OC mode so it could keep track of deco information (not that we had any deco). At the end of the dive we had to change the lime in the canister and Phill pointed out the difference between the lime in his which was slightly damp in places from condensate that easily pored out of the canister whilst mine was a sodden clump that had set like cold porridge. I was clearly doing something wrong. Phill identified it as me being sloppy when changing back to CCR from OC or when I was clearing the loop. I needed to purge the mouth piece of all water better before opening the mouth piece. It didn’t help that I removed my mouth piece at least once like an OC reg, forgetting to close it off first. The resultant gurgling in the loop for the remainder of the dive was as a stark reminder to remember about mouth piece closing being essential. Dive two that day was a brief (?) 79 minutes before packing up and shooting off to the B & B for a couple of hours theory, a bit of dinner in the Bluebell and back for another hour of theory. You don’t realise how hard you work on a course until you sit at 9:30pm feeling yourself nodding. An early night set us up for an early start to day three.
By day three, as mentioned earlier, I felt I was getting to grips with the control of the unit via the Primary Display. The unit warns you of numerous things as they happen such as low/high ppO2, canister life etc. The alarm buzzes and vibrates at you. You can then go to a summary screen where it lists the recent alarms. You can also turn an alarm off from this screen. I knew I was getting better at using the Primary Display as Phill wasn’t shouting at me quite as much under water. By the end of day three I’d added another 152 minutes to my rebreather experience. It wasn’t over yet though as there was another stint of B & B theory to do.
Next day saw our first sortie to the bottom of Stoney Cove. Down the road, round past the Blow Out Preventer to the 24m box, then down the line to the top of the hydro box in 30m. Once there a few more skills on top of the box, diluent flush, check ppO2 against depth and then drop off the box to 36m with the intention of pushing into deco, which the neat little HUD told me about by flashing red, the indication to ascend. The vis down there was atrocious despite the cold surface temperatures. It seemed all the sediment had settled suspended in the 32 to 35m depth range, Lights were essential. As you ascend the HUD red light goes solid when you reach your ceiling. You get your deco information off the Primary Display which allows you to move when the HUD flashes red again. We stayed at 24m even though the unit suggested a further ascent. The unit gave us credit for this depth and quickly cleared any outstanding deco. Flying the unit on the HUD is so easy. The second outing that day was a less ambitious outing to the Stanegarth where the big female pike entertained us in the wheel house whilst we racked up the minutes. Half way through this dive Phill started shouting at me again, I couldn’t understand why, unusually I wasn’t doing anything stupid at the time, ‘till it dawned on me that he was telling me we had racked up 10:00 hours in the water, enough to complete the course! I was supposed to do a unit removal and replacement at the end of this dive which I thought Phill had forgotten about when he told me to get out. I wasn’t that lucky though, that joy was still to come. I did drop a couple of kilos at the end of the dive and found I could still descend though.
Friday, the fifth and final day. One dive planned to bring the number up to the required eight for the course. Another one to the top of the hydro box, this time with no deco. A quick trip down the hole, over to the helicopter where I launched my brand new halcyon SMB then another skill of injecting O2 manually before an ascent to keep the ppO2 high to prevent it from falling too rapidly as you ascend. (Need more practice at that one). Then finished off with a unit removal and replacement at the surface whilst. Phill did a good job of not heckling and giggling at my performance, well not much anyway.
So there it was, all done bar the shouting. In the restaurant afterwards I found I had scraped through on the exam and we filled in the documentation to certify me as Mod 1 on the Ouroboros.
So, on reflection what can I say? Well, this was certainly the most challenging course I have done since I learned to dive 18 years ago. There may be an element of “old dog and new tricks” in there, but once you get yourself in to a CCR mind set you find you can transfer some of your previously learned OC skills to this new game. The theory at this level is remarkably straight forward though. Again you can use some of the basic OC theory and apply the rules to CCR. This was made easier for me because Phill is an outstanding Instructor. This is now the second course I have completed with him. It’s never plain sailing though, on this type of course it’s only a matter of time before you screw up, and when you do he doesn’t pull any punches. You are left in no doubt as to what a twonk you are when you do get it wrong. I was forever asking questions about theory and “what if” scenarios. Phill doesn’t answer these questions, he points you roughly in the right direction and shoves you on your way on a journey ‘till you’ve found out yourself the answers you need. In my mind that’s the way it should be. You have to know though that being a cave diver he is one of the lowest forms of life of the diving evolutionary species
If you are contemplating rebreather training then I have to say (again) you won’t go wrong if you contact Phill Short. He can be found via his website: Phil Short Technical Diving He is very busy though, so leave a message or e mail him, he will get back to you.
So if there are any old CCR lags out there that would like any advice on how to dive a rebreather then contact me now whilst it’s still fresh in my head. After all, I’m now an expert, I have over 11 hours on the unit!
All joking apart, now I’ve finished the course my next big step is to dive my new baby without the supervision of an Instructor. It’s quite intimidating really. The course gives you basics, the essentials. I suppose it’s a bit like when you learned to drive, you learned as much after passing your test as you did on the run up to it. If anyone out there is up for it I’m looking to get as many hours on the unit over the winter so I can really get stuck in next season.
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Thanks for the encouraging comments... 
