My Journey So Far
In the “Why the Blog?” post, I summarised how I got into diving, stopped diving, and subsequently started diving again after a 4088 day surface interval. The plan, as it stands, is to become an instructor and head into technical diving. The steps to becoming an instructor sound simple enough:
- Dive Guide
- Dive Master
- Assistant Instructor
- Instructor
Of course, that’s just the beginning of the dive professional journey. I should probably mention at this point – without getting into agency wars – that I’m training on the SSI pathway.
Not shown on that list is Step 0: Fulfil the Prerequisites to start the Dive Guide course. These are, broadly summarised:
- be 18 or over,
- have logged 40 dives, totalling at least 25h under water;
- have the SSI Stress & Rescue certification (or equivalent);
- have certification or experience in:
- Deep Diving
- Navigation
- Night & Limited Visibility
- Pass a fitness test
So, that all seems fairly straightforward. First things first, get the qualifications sorted. This meant a course package, consisting of the following courses:
For good measure, we added Decompression Diving and Science of Diving into the mix as well.
Now that I’m about to start working on the Dive Guide course, it’s time for a recap of the last 6 months. In total, I’ve done 31 dives, 17 of which were courses, so “only” 14 fun dives, but to be honest, all of them were fun (a couple may have been Type 2 fun though). More statistics at the bottom of this post for you number lovers. 
SSI Master Diver
One of the nice things about the SSI training system is the progression system and diver recognition. When you’ve done 2 specialities and have 12 dives, you’re a Specialty Diver, 4 specialities and 24 dives makes you advanced, 4 specialities and Stress & Rescue plus 50 dives makes you a Master Diver.
So, while it’s still only really a baby-diver certification, I’m still quite proud of obtaining the Master Diver recognition.
Science of Diving
This was an online course that I remember blazing through fairly quickly. Really interesting overview of the physics, physiology. decompression and oceanography involved in diving as well as a chapter covering how diving equipment actually works.
This was all content that I remembered from my original CMAS Open Water course, but it was good to have another refresher. It was definitely a more interesting couple of hours than some mind-numbing series on Netflix. 😉
React Right
This was a classroom-only course that we did in the Anglesey Dive Centre. As we all had first-aid training, it was mainly focussed on diving specific concerns and then Leanne put a number of scenarios together which Hanna and I went through, with Will as our casualty. An awful lot of laughs, but a lot of learning too. Good fun day.
Navigation
This is one I took twice. I had done navigation as part of the rescue training back in 2011, but that was a long time ago, and it was good to see where my shortcomings are currently. The first time I did this with Will, last November, the visibility in the quarry was shockingly bad (less than 1m in parts) which definitely made it far more challenging. My buoyancy control was also not very good, which didn’t really help either. Without a useful timer, some of the geometric courses Just Didn’t Work™ as I kept losing count of my fin kicks. So when we did a triangle course from the southern boat and managed to find it again, it felt like a great achievement.
The second time round, in February, was so much better. Visibility was better, my buoyancy control was good – with the exception of one floaty episode on the second dive, and we neither got lost nor had to surface to reorient ourselves. It was good to be able to reinforce and practice the skills again.
Night Diving & Limited Visibility
I really enjoyed this course and the whole experience – the quarry looks so different at night! The water was really clear, so we had great visibility and the torches didn’t have the snowstorm effect. We went through light signals, torch handling, lost buddy procedures, etc. Saw loads of eels, some sleeping fish as well. One of the exercises Clare did with us was to turn the torches off while at the 6m platform, just to experience what it’s like when the lights go out, that was a bit eerie just seeing everyone’s beacon pulsing gently. The centre’s rental fins are all white or light grey, and that made me appreciate why tec divers prefer things to be black – accidentally lighting up someone else’s fins is blinding… 😂
Looking forward to doing more night dives in the sea later this year.
Deep
This was my first trip to Stoney Cove, back in February. I liked Stoney Cove, it was rather nice that there weren’t that many people there, with it being early February before most of the warm weather divers have come out of hibernation. The first dive of 3 was eventful, despite it only being a short dive: drysuit flooding (not mine), drysuit squeeze (also not mine), SAC check at 5m gave me 40l/min which seems a bit wrong – I may have got my math mixed up or read the numbers wrong (Subsurface calculates the whole dive at 25.1l/min). We surface swam over to the Stanegarth and dropped onto the wreck, which was a fantastic experience. I got slightly disoriented on the safety stop when another group of divers swam through below us, so I had a bit of a floaty moment. First time I’ve seen a deepstop on my computer for a very long time, so trying to stick to the (non-mandatory) stop at 10m was good practice as well.
The second dive was an interesting experience with narcosis: Craig & I were supposed to drop to 25m on the Aquabox buoy line, then swim to the quarry wall and follow it back up. I had a falling sensation while descending and thought my feet were getting floaty, so didn’t catch the descent until 28m. Craig then asked me for my NDL time, as discussed, and it took me around 3 times of him asking before I remembered what he wanted when he kept tapping his computer. He then signalled that I should lead off to the quarry wall, so I set off in the direction I thought it was, and then checked my compass. I thought my compass was completely wrong, but managed to catch myself before turning the bezel and turned myself instead. We found the wall, my watch suggested a deepstop at 14m, which we did while on the road to the bus-stop.
The third dive was exciting. Colin joined us for this last one, and we raced down the road until we hit the drop-off over the wall towards the Aquabox and went in what felt like a free-fall down along the wall until we got to the Aquabox. This time, I remembered the briefing about signalling NDL time, and we started heading back to the wall and then slowly up the road. Deepstop at 17m along the way (good practice for hand-signals with Colin), and then when we got back to the 5m shelf, Craig had us send up our DSMBs. That is a skill I seriously need to practice again. There was nothing smooth or controlled about it – I didn’t quite get myself tangled up in my spool, but I probably wasn’t far off.
When we climbed out on the ladder, I got a massive cramp in my calf – probably due to dehydration and the 3 longish, fairly quick, surface swims we’d done. It took about a week to sort itself out again. Apart from that, this was the most enjoyable course to date.
Stress & Rescue
It took me 3 attempts to get started on this course… Originally scheduled in January, I had a major cold (probably more likely the flu), but was hoping it would have cleared enough for me to do the course. I drove up to the Delph, got kitted out, got in the water, and then my ears just wouldn’t play ball. So a lonely swim back to the entry point and dekitted. I hung around for the rest of the day and participated in the surface skills side of things, but knew I’d have to be doing it all again at some point.
The second attempt was a couple of weeks later, early February. This was my first time in the water again since the failed attempt, so I was slightly nervous. I was also still fighting with equipment setup, as my regulators hadn’t arrived and I didn’t have the best way of attaching things. I ended up getting flustered and frustrated, so all of the basic skills just failed. Clare broke off the session and suggested I get some more dives in to get comfortable again, and to practice some of the basic skills.
The next opportunity was in the Easter holidays, and I’d done Navigation, Deep, some fun night dives, and some other diving in the meantime. The first day was basically concentrating on self-rescue skills at the 6m platform. Alex & I both found it quite stressful – especially when I removed my wing and started drifting for the surface. My octo had also become trapped, so when we did the air-share exercises, I ended up having to use her octo while she was on my primary. All in all, not a very good dive, but we learnt a lot.
The second dive ended up being quite short, first we went through panicked diver scenarios, which all went well, but when we did the free-flowing regulator exercise, my primary regulator went into full free-flow mode and dropped about 110bar by the time I got to the surface (using my octo). That was the end of that dive, and we surface swam back to the exit. I noted in my log, “Really good dive, despite the free-flow, as it was effectively a real-world scenario. Enjoyed the whole day.”
Day 2, a week later, was scenario day. All the surface skills, using throwlines, rescue rings, etc. and then tired-diver tows in all the different ways. The dives were also scenario based, panicked diver, surfacing with an unconscious diver, more skills review (no-mask swim, etc.) on the 6m platform, then Clare was tasked with playing out different things that we had to cope with. With me, she played the part of a panicked diver, which was fairly easy to manage; Alex had to cope with a lost fin. On the second dive, we went through more scenarios. Clare went and got lost, then pretended to be unconscious. The final act was to get an unconscious diver (Clare again) out of the water in order to be able to start off the rescue chain.
It was the first nice weather day we’d had for a long time, and we had so much fun doing the course, basically didn’t stop laughing for most of the day. Alex & I both got a nice compliment from Leanne & Clare, “that was probably the best-handled scenario day we’ve seen on this course.”
This is now the most enjoyable course I’ve taken so far. Extremely intense, a lot of content to take in, so I was drained after both days, but so much fun and applicable to real-life too.
10/10 would recommend for any diver.
(SSI) Candidate Fitness Test
This test consists of:
- 700m swim with fins, mask & snorkel in less than 20 minutes
- 15 minutes treading water
- 25m underwater swim
- Towing an unconscious diver for 100m in full kit in under 8 minutes.
Leanne split this test into 2 parts: the 700m swim, treading water and underwater swim were all done in the pool, and the unconscious diver tow (which has to be done in full battle-rattle) was done in the quarry. I knocked the 700m swim off in about 12.5 minutes (Alex beat my time by about 20s). Treading water was fine, until Leanne decided we had to lift our arms out of the water for the last 5 minutes. See the spike in my HR graph below…
The underwater swim was easy – so much so, that Leanne asked us to do it again so she could video it to show other candidates that it’s not really hard.
We did the 100m tow in the quarry this past weekend. Going at a fairly steady rate, it only takes just over 4 minutes to cover the distance, which surprised me, I thought it would take longer.
What's Next
Now that we’ve passed the fitness test, it’s on to OW skills review, shore cover workshops, briefing and guiding workshops on different topics, and then a mapping project – for which we (probably Alex & I) still need to find a site as a team. Once we’ve passed all of those sessions, we’ll hopefully be signed off as Dive Guides/Masters and then the plan is to go into the Assistant Instructor training, but hopefully also be picking up some shifts as a guide.
I’ve also started a training course on the Mares Horizon, a Semi-Closed Rebreather (separate post to follow), for which I still need to get 65 minutes of runtime on the unit to be signed off as a user. Decompression is also still on the todo list, it’s a difficult one to organise, as there’s currently no-one else interested and there are only a limited number of personnel who can conduct and support the course. Hopefully I’ll be able to get that one knocked off before I go to the Faroes at the end of May.
Statistics
Everyone loves some statistics, right?
- 31 Dives, totalling 15:05 (17 on courses)
- Longest dive 55 minutes, shortest dive 14 minutes
- 7°C lowest temperature, 14°C highest, average 9.2°C
- Depths between 2.5-34m, average 14.9m
- SAC between 5.3l/min (SCR) and 74.2l/min (freeflow), currently averaging around 21l/min.
Subsurface also tells me I went through 28,351l of air, which is about the equivalent of a medium tanker lorry.
