Mark's Dive Log

I finished my PADI Enriched Air Diver course today. Not a particularly difficult course. Maybe I'm just used to pilot training, but scuba training seems pretty weak. Basically, for Nitrox training, you learn a couple of rules, learn how to read the new tables, and about oxygen saturation. It took me all of an evening to learn that on my own.

The class did provide for a good opportunity, however. The instructor is a technical diver and is trying to get people to take his "Technical Divemaster" course. This is basically a course that leads to a PADI Divemaster certification, but also gets you several specialties on the way, including PADI Nitrox, IANTD Advanced Nitrox, PADI Deep Diver, and PADI Cavern Diver. He also mentioned that you could end up with a couple others, like PADI Multilevel, PADI Underwater Naturalist, and IANTD Introductory Cave Diver. The dives are all done during a seven day trip to some of the Florida springs. I'm looking forward to that.

So now I'm Nitrox certified. I guess I need to go diving.

In an effort to make an excuse to go diving, I've signed up for every class Scuba Unlimited has to offer of the next two months:

Emergency First Response
DAN O2 Provider
Rescue Diver
Dry Suit Diver
Search & Recovery

Unfortunately, I may not be able to do the Search & Recovery (scheduling conflicts). Since EFR and O2 Provider are class room only courses and the Rescue Diver and Dry Suit Diver certification dives are on the same weekend, all of that (plus the Nitrox course that I just finished) only amounts to one weekend diving.

Scuba Unlimited is doing an Open Water Certification weekend August 11 and 12, so I'm going to go to the quarry with them that weekend to see if I can hook up with someone. Hopefully I can get five or six dives out of that weekend.

I also asked about classroom/pool course over the winter. I should be able to pick up Equipment Specialist and Peak Performance Buoyancy over the winter.

Last week my wife was talking to her cousin and somehow the topic of scuba diving came up. It turns out that Christina (my wife's cousin) has always wanted to learn how to scuba dive. Well, a few days later we were all sitting around the pool watching the kids swim and I brought it up.

Now, I've been trying to get my wife to get certified for years, but I haven't tried very hard because she really doesn't like the water and is somewhat terrified of it. Not exactly the prerequisite for a scuba diver. So as kind of a jab, I asked Christina what her husband and my wife would be doing with the kids back in the hotel room while we're off diving. It was just meant to be a joke, but I guess it must have bothered my wife because a little while later she said something to the effect of "I'll do it if you to it".

So now my wife wants to learn, but she's still deathly afraid of the water. I told her that she didn't need to do it for me, that I didn't want her to do it unless she really wants to, but she's made up her mind. So now I need to look into Open Water classes and a second set of equipment.

Saturday I decided to take my wife to the scuba shop to get a mask and fins so I could put her in the pool with the equipment to make sure she can handle it before we drop the cash on the certification course. I figured that she'll need those for our trip to Hawaii next year anyway, so it's not a total waste of money if she changes her mind. Of course, for just snorkeling I could have spent about a third of what I spent on Mares mask, fins, and boots, but worst case is I can sell them to her cousin if she decides that breathing under water should be left to the fishes.

So after lunch I hauled all the gear out to the pool for a little intro to scuba. I tested everything first, since the tank just got back from hydro and the regulator just got back from a rebuild. Once I verified that the equipment was in working order, Tracie got in the pool with her mask and fins and I help her into the BC. I figured floating the BC would be easier than trying to put it on her out of the water and then trying jump in with fins and mask and regulators flying. Especially since I have a big steel 95 that weighs close to 40 pounds empty! I also had 12 pounds of extra weight because when we went to the bottom of the pool, I wanted to make sure it would hold both of us down.

After getting the BC on and getting her balance she said she was ready to give it a try. I started off by having her just breathe through the regulator with her head out of the water and then stick her face in the water and breath through the regulator.

As a note to anyone teaching someone who is terrified of the water to use a regulator, this would have been much easier had we started out with just a mask and a regulator from a floating BC.

It took about ten minutes before she could get her face into the water and actually breathe. She finally figured it out and we moved on to swimming along the surface. We did that for about 15 minutes and then I brought her back up to the shallow end to try actually going underwater. This worked out about as well as could be expected, but she wasn't ready to try the deep end, so she spent a few more minutes swimming around on the surface.

Now she's really excited about scuba diving and can't wait to do more. Except for the whole living things in the water part.

That night she called her cousin to gloat that she got to go in the pool with the scuba gear and on Sunday Christina came over to give it a try. Having grown up swimming (unlike Tracie whose dad was paranoid that she would drown and instilled that fear in her), Christina took to it much quicker. I was able to take her down to the bottom of the deep end so she could experience actually being underwater. Tracie used up the rest of the air in my tank yesterday. She finally went down to the bottom of the deep end and is become pretty comfortable being underwater. Not bad for someone who grew up afraid of the water. Now if I could just figure out how to teach her to swim without a mask or holding her nose.

So they're both just chomping at the bit to get their certification. Meanwhile, I'm still trying to get some diving in this summer. By the time Tracie and Christina are certified, the season is going to be over. I want to go at least a couple of times in August and a couple of times in September. Next year my goal is to get at least six dives in every month from June through September. Plus a few more in Florida during the spring, if all works out.

While at the quarry this weekend for my Rescue Diver certification, we did the PADI Night Diver certification dives.

We started out with a descent to one of the training platforms at 20'. From there, each buddy team used a compass to navigate to one of the other training platforms. Once we were all at the second platform we swam around for a while, swam through some tubes and along the quarry wall. The visibility was pretty bad, even with all of those lights.

After a short surface interval we went to the bottom and turned off our lights for a few minutes. I suppose some people might have trouble with that, which is why they do it, but I found it fairly relaxing. I just lay down on the bottom and waited. After a full day of Rescue training, and a dive just for fun late in the afternoon, just doing nothing was nice.

Finally the lights came back on and we swam around some more looking for fish.

Probably the easiest course I've done so far. Next on the list, Search and Recovery.

I finished my PADI Rescue Diver training this weekend. It's been a long time since I've done a weekend quarry trip. It was a lot of fun, but I was pretty much exhausted by the time I got home.

I've heard others who have gone through Rescue Diver training say that it's the most fun of any of the classes they had taken. I would have to disagree with that. I've also heard people say it was the hardest. I suppose if you do OW, AOW, and Rescue, but nothing else, it may be the hardest. I think AOW was harder for me, but then again, I hadn't been diving in 10 years when I took it, so that might have something to do with it. Rescue was definitely the most physically demanding. Towing a diver to shore while giving rescue breaths and removing the diver's equipment will wear you out. I didn't really notice how tired I was until I was done, but then it hit hard.

We had a pool session before the quarry weekend to learn all of the new skills and review the self-rescue skills. Apparently this is a relatively new thing. I think it's a great way to do it. Our instructor said that it cuts out about two hours from each day. My viewpoint is that it's a better method for learning since you aren't trying to cram everything into a two day weekend.

I took the test today, expecting to pass, but not with a great score. The problem was that I had bought the book two or three years ago with the intention of doing the class then, but I never managed to find the time. They changed the book last year, so there were some new things and subtle differences between what I was studying and what the current course teaches. I didn't realize this until I got to the quarry on Saturday. Regardless, I decided to take the test today so that maybe those differences would stick out in my mind more. I went through the questions twice and counted six that I was unsure of the answer. In the end, I only missed two (both from the new/changed material), so I was pleasantly surprised.

So I got my temporary "card" and it's on to the next thing. My dive shop is starting a Divemaster course in January, so I guess I'll look into that. I don't have the 60 logged dives yet, but I'll have them before the course is over. I'm shooting for 40 logged dives by the end of the year. Since I'm going to do the drysuit course in a few weeks, I might be able to dive into November, so getting up to 40 shouldn't be a problem. Maybe I should look into the PADI Ice Diver specialty...

Last night I had my dry suit class and pool session. The class stuff is all pretty straight forward, but I've been told by many people that your first time in a dry suit is like starting all over. I always figured that as an exaggeration. Was I wrong.

The class was an interesting start. There are four of us taking the class. One guy has to work, so he's going to take the classroom/pool session next week. Another guy works third shift and had a late night call that kept way past his normal shift end time, so he couldn't make it. The other guy just never showed up. There were three instructors and me. No pressure there. Fortunately, the class material is pretty simple and I was well prepared.

After class we headed to the pool. Before last night, I had only been in dry suit once and that was last week to find one that fit for the class. Last night was my first time in the water in the suit. I had read the material, watched the DVD, talked with several dry suit divers, and read a lot of information on the Internet, so I felt that I was as prepared as I could be. And I suppose I was, but that doesn't really help you when you get wet - or hopefully don't get wet - for the first time.

So the first thing we have to do is get into the thing. The suit I used was a front entry suit, meaning it has a zipper in the front going from the left shoulder to the right hip. It's easy to get your feet and one arm in. The second arm isn't too bad, but then you have to squeeze your head through an opening that has to seal water out around your neck. It's a tight fit anyway, but to make things more interesting, you don't have a lot of slack to play with because your arms are already in the arms of the suit.

Anyway, we now have the suit on and zipped up. The next step is to get the excess air (or at least as much as you can) out of the suit. You do that by pulling open the neck seal and squatting down. Then you release the neck seal and stand up. Up until now, the dry suit has been relatively comfortable. Now the dry suit is squeezing up against your body. If you are claustrophobic, this might not be for you. But it's not over yet.

Now we get into the water. Since this is a pool and the first time in a dry suit, we left the gear on the side of the pool and just got in. Someone told me that just jumping in with a dry suit on can be pain full as the suit suddenly starts squeezing you in, well, let's just say sensitive areas. So I climbed in using the pool ladder. Now I'm feeling some suit squeeze. And I'm standing in three feet of water. I'm not looking forward to what this is going to feel like at 100 feet.

It's time to put our scuba gear on and start playing with the suit. We start off in the shallow end and swim to the deep end along the bottom of the pool. I'm immediately feeling out of control. I can't keep my feet down without considerable effort, kicking is almost impossible, and buoyancy control is something that I think I heard about once, but not something I can be accused of having.

I haven't decided yet whether or not the problem I was having with my fins was from my feet flopping around in the suit or the fins flopping around on the suit. Probably the former. I've decided that when I get my own suit, I'm going to get a better fit in the foot. The flopping caused my feet to cramp up, which is not comfortable in the best of circumstances.

The related problem was all the air in the suit kept going to my feet. Even when I went from standing to horizontal, the air quickly migrated from my back to my feet. Trying to get my feet down so I could kick was impossible. I was able to do a cave diving (bent knee) kick, but the basic flutter kick wasn't happening. Picking a dry suit with soft booties and a separate boot seems to be the answer to both of my problems. I could use ankle weights to solve the kicking problem, but it seems highly inefficient. Kind of like driving with your parking brake on.

The final problem, buoyancy control, was the only one I really made any progress on. After we went through the drills, which included standing me on my head and inflating the dry suit to practice rolling right side up and dumping the air before you get to the surface, I got a chance to just swim around trying to get my buoyancy and trim under control. I almost managed to get my buoyancy to an acceptable level, but my trim isn't even close yet. I'm all over the place. So I need to work on that.

Doc, my instructor, caught me off guard with and OOA signal. I was confused because I was trying to figure out whether or not this was some kind of dry suit specific signal. He gave it to me again, so I handed him my octo and he later scolded me for being so slow about it. That's what you call a learning opportunity.

In the end Doc said that he felt my acclimation was good for a first time. I sure don't, but he's the instructor. Of course, he probably says that to all but the really bad students.

A couple of final notes: in the humid pool room at the YMCA, wearing the dry suit was like wearing your own little personal oven. It was OK once I was in the water, but out of the water was brutal. I'm dreading what it would be like on a hot summer day prepping for a nice long deep dive to 35 degree water.

Second, the neoprene neck seal didn't seem to fit me too well. I was pretty wet when I got out. Craig, the shop manager, had a similar experience with the same kind of suit a few weeks ago. I'm going to go with latex seals on mine. When I got out of the suit I was soaked. Some of it was sweat, but I'm betting that most of it was pool water.

With the classroom and pool session behind me, I get to try it for real in a couple of weeks when we do the training dives. We'll be combining the dives with the Deep Diver specialty dives. Regardless of how bad I am in the dry suit, I'll be glad to have it on for the deep dives in the quarry. Brrrr...

It's hard to believe that the weather is still this warm in October, but I'm not complaining. In fact, I'm quite happy that it was so warm this weekend.

This weekend we did the certification dives for the PADI Search and Recovery specialty. As I told the instructor, with each class I take, I'm having more fun than the class before. This one was a smallish class of five. The course is basically learning techniques for finding objects lost underwater and bringing them to the surface.

The interesting thing for me was that everyone in the class other than me is on the underwater search and recovery team for the county. Of course the techniques they use are completely different, especially since most of their "dives" are in water less than 20 feet deep. For the deeper ones, they use cool toys like side scan sonar to narrow down the search area to, oh, about 10 square feet. They're all police officers with various departments in the county, so they recover things like stolen cars and murder weapons. A lot more meaningful than a lost fin or mask that the PADI Search and Recovery is geared towards. And certainly more interesting than the bottles of sand we used for our training dives.

The weekend started off with a descent to a training platform to be tested on tying knots. Specifically the bowline, sheetbend, and two half-hitches. I had spent about 45 minutes before the dive practicing the knots, so I didn't have any trouble (just don't ask me to tie them today!). Then we broke into teams and practiced the circular search and U-pattern search. Since there were five people, I was team number three with one of the members of the first team to return from each skill test. So I ended up diving with several different people throughout the weekend. For the U-pattern we had a larger object that we used a lift bag to raise. Unfortunately, the object wasn't big enough for the bag we used, so the dump valve didn't work right, but it was just practice anyway.

The second dive of the day was the semi-circular search pattern. We had a lot of trouble on this one. We never found our bottle. It turned out that it had rolled under some tall grass that was growing around a dentist chair. Even the instructor had trouble finding it and he's the one who put it there, so I don't feel too bad about missing it.

The last dive of the day was the jack stay pattern. For this you position a rope across the search area at one end. The two divers swim along the rope, one on each side until they reach the other side. Then they move the rope toward the unsearched area, and do it again. Eventually you cover the entire area. For this search there was only one object that each team had to find (instead of one object for each team). No one found it. We were all two for four, with each team missing an object from one of the previous searches. Maybe we would have better luck tomorrow.

Sunday started off with an expanding square search pattern and a snorkeler led search. By this point we had searched for the little bottles filled with sand three different times. I think we were all sick of them. At least with the snorkeler led search was to a larger object that we used the lift bag to raise. This time the object was big enough that we got to actually use the bag properly.

Our final task for the day was to find an object the instructor had planted the day before in a large area of the quarry. We performed the interview questions to locate the general location of the object (a flat plastic weight about 12" x 24" with about 20 pounds of scuba weights attached with a weight belt. Since the plate is black and the weights are grey, it should blend in quite nicely with the quarry rocks.

We decided that since it was such a large area that maybe a snorkeler led search would work. Except no one wanted to be the snorkeler. We came up with the idea to do the snorkeler led search with the "snorkeler" swimming under water and being one of the searchers. This proved to be a huge mess. On the second pass we got off in the wrong direction and ended up where we started from. One of the guys was low on air, so we went to the surface to regroup.

After a tank change, we split into two teams to do U-pattern searches from opposite sides of the search area working towards each other. My team was three people and I played navigator while the other two swam on either side of me. We had just started our third leg when we found it shoved down between some rocks. We tied it on to the lift bag and took it to the surface to end the dive. Our instructor, who had been monitoring on the surface, came down when we stopped to make sure we had found it (since he had forgotten exactly where he had put it) and then went to gather the other team.

Afterwards we sat and joked about our mistakes and how clumsy the guy with the plastic bottles full of sand was. My wife and her cousin had come up to dive on Saturday and had found the bottle that none of us could find, so our instructor gave us a hard time about how two newbie divers found it just swimming along and we couldn't (he and I actually recovered later that day on a for-fun dive). Some of the other guys are going to be doing the deep and dry suit specialties with me next weekend, so we planned out the food for that trip. Basically, this was probably the most fun I've had on any dive weekend this year. If the trend continues, next week will be a blast.

So that's three specialties. Two more and 15 more logged dives and I can go for Master Scuba Diver. I'll get the two specialties and half of the dives next weekend. So I need to find a couple more Saturdays to get the rest before it gets too cold.

This was an intense weekend of diving: nine dives in two days...

The purpose of the weekend was to the certification dives for the dry suit and deep specialties. We did the dry suit dives first to make the deep dives easier. Being that it was the last certification weekend for the shop, there were a lot of different classes going on. There were five or six Open Water students, six or so Advanced Open Water students, three or four Rescue Diver students, and then us. There were four of us doing the dry suit specialty and three of the four, plus one other, doing the deep specialty.

Unfortnately, I ordered a dry suit a couple of weeks ago, but it wasn't in yet, so I was using a rental. Fortunately it was a trilaminate with latex seals and separate boots just like the one I ordered, so the practice will directly translate to mine. I'm getting a Bare and the rental was a DUI, but they aren't that different. One thing I noticed was that the exhaust valve leaked when I didn't have enough air in the suit, and the wrist seals leaked a little bit. Hopefully mine will be a little better.

Doc (our instructor) was teaching us and the Rescue students. He started with our dry suit dives which allowed us to do some more practice dives while he worked with his Rescue class. The first dive was just a skills dive. We practiced buoyancy using both the dry suit and the BCD and recover from a runaway ascent. The runaway ascent drill was fun: the instructor put us on our heads, filled up our dry suits with air and let us go. We had to turn ourselves right side up and dump the air from the suit to arrest the ascent. If you get yourself right side up quick enough, it's pretty easy, but if you don't, I would expect that it's a little more difficult. The second dive was just a tour of the quarry, or at least one corner of it. It was my first trip to Gilboa in four years, so it was a little more interesting than Blue Springs where I've done most of my diving this year.

After our two dives, we went to help the rescue class. For one dive I played the lost diver. For another, I was the diver who lost my buddy. I played it up pretty big: signs of panic, not inflating my BCD when I got to the surface, throwing off my mask and regulator, wildly looking for my "lost" buddy. It was fun. Not as fun was when they found me in the previous dive. The rescue students managed to dunk my head under water multiple times while simulating rescue breathing and removing my equipment. I suppose it's payback since I'm sure I did the same to the "victims" when I did the rescue class last month.

We took a lunch break and then headed to the deep side of the quarry for the first of our deep dives. I decided that this would be a good opportunity to do my first Nitrox dive. The plan was to go to the deep platform at 70 feet and do some skills. Instead of the usual timed puzzle drills, Doc had us record our depth and tank pressure on our slates every five minutes in preparing for the transition to tech course that some of us are going to get into.

This was my first trip to the deep end of the Gilboa quarry. The visibility on that side of the quarry is a lot better than the rest of the quarry. The wall on the deep side goes straight from the surface to the bottom at 120 feet. We descended next to one of the descent line to the platform and I was immediately amazed by the view. I had never been deep in a quarry before where you could see more than 20 feet. The whole thing was very eerie. It hardly seemed real. I took my camera with me for the trip, but I didn't take it on that dive because I figured we would be working. As it turns out, the first deep dive was the only one that I would have had time to take pictures, so I'll have to catch the view on a different trip.

The surface temperature wasn't too bad, maybe 68 degrees, but by the time we got to 70 feet, it was a little chilly. Even in a dry suit, it was cool. The second thermocline was very definite and you felt it immediately. This being my first day in a dry suit (other than the pool session we had earlier in the month) didn't help matters. It took me until our third deep dive before I realized that the majority of my suit squeeze was being caused because I wasn't closing my exhaust valve until I got to the bottom. So, as I was descending, I would add air to my dry suit and it would just start bubbling out. I didn't realize this immediately since the exhaust valve is pretty slow, so I just assumed that as I was descending I needed to add more air because of pressure. Oops.

We got to the platform and Doc did a quick check of everyone just to make sure there were no problems. The plan was to sit on the 70 foot platform for a few minutes and then swim along the wall at 70 feet, but Doc changed his mind after he checked with everyone. He decided we were all too calm, I guess, so he started off, with the group in trail, and descended to the top of the trailer sitting at bottom next to the wall. The top of the trailer is at 110 feet or so. Now the water was really cold.

We didn't stick around too long. Since we had all been diving all day, we all had pretty good nitrogen levels, even with using EAN-32 for this dive. And even though we were well within the no-deco limits, a "safety stop" was not just a good idea, it was virtually mandatory. Still, it was an easy dive and probably the most interesting dive I've had in a quarry.

That night the Advanced Open Water class was doing a night dive, so we tagged along. There were a bunch of divers, so we split up into three groups. The group I went with planned to make it a deep dive too. We went to the tubes at 65 feet or so. It was a nice long dive and we covered most of the shallow end of the quarry. Before the dive, I was talking with Tom, one of the divemasters, and he mentioned that I should try turning out my light and swim along by the light of the other 20 divers. So after we started up from the deepest part of the dive, I fell to the back of the pack and turned out my light. I should have been paying attention because there were divers everywhere. I didn't know which group was mine, at first. I got situated and settled in. It really was pretty cool, but you have to be careful. There's a lot of stuff to bang your head on. I was close enough to the group that their flashlights allowed me to see the obstacles. Actually, without my light on, I could see more, although nothing as clearly as with my own light. It was an interesting experience.

The next day was all about deep diving. Our first two dives were to the bottom at 120 feet. Again, Doc had us record our depth and tank pressure every five minutes. For, the second dive of the day, we were to go to the bottom, and then swim on a 270 degree bearing until we reached a limit, either a third of our gas or our no-deco time. This, again, was an excercise to move toward tech training.

In traditional recreational diving, you would plan your dive to stay within your no-deco limits and end the dive when you reach that limit (or when you are down to 500 PSI). In technical diving, or more correctly any dive where you can't ascend directly to the surface due to an overhead environment or a decompression obligation, you do things a little differently. One difference is that you look at the dive in halves and you gas in thirds. You use no more than one third of your gas for the first half of the dive, one third for the second half, and are left with one third to share with your dive buddy should he have a problem. The first half of your dive is your descent and trip away from the descent point. When you reach your turn point (either by location, gas limit, or time limit) you turn back to your exit point. The trip back is the second half of the dive. Presumably you will use another third of your gas in the second half. In a worst case scenario, your dive buddy has an OOA situation at the turn point, so you have your last third of gas to donate to your buddy.

So for our second dive of the day, we focused on the rule of thirds. My buddy was Bob, one of the shop divemasters. He was working on his deep certification too, but he is more experienced than I am and has a little bit better air consumption rate than I do. We were both diving with LP95s, so I reached the turn limit first. It was at a checkpoint as well, so we recorded our depth and pressures, then signaled "up". In this scenario, "up" didn't mean "ascend", but rather turn back, simulating an overhead environment. By the time we reached our ascent point, I was within one minute of the NDL, so it worked out perfect.

For our "safety stops" on the deep dives we practiced breathing from a stage bottle hung at 15 feet. Our "safety stops" were "simulating" a 5 minute, 15 foot decompression stop. (That's recreational phraseology. Technically a "safety stop" is a decompression stop. Most certification agencies use the term "safety stop" because recreational divers aren't supposed to be doing decompression diving. Even though a three minute "safety stop" at 15 feet is a decompression stop, they just don't call it that. Since these dives were for a recreational deep dive specialty, I'll call them "safety stops".) Basically, these dives were the first dives in the transition to tech course, so we did everything from a technical diving view while staying within the recreational limits.

The last dive of the day was to practice following a decompression runtime schedule. We started at the 70 foot platform for five minutes. Then we ascended to 40 feet at a slow 15 ft/min rate (noting the 55 foot mark at one minute into the ascent). We then stayed at 40 feet for four minutes. We had additional four minute stops at 30 feet and 20 feet and a five minute stop at 15 feet. We did these stops without an ascent line to practice midwater buoyancy. I did OK until the 15 foot stop. At one point I floated up a little too far and I couldn't dump my dry suit fast enough, so I ended up at 6 feet before I got control, but other than that, it wasn't too bad. I stayed within +5/-3 feet of the assigned depth. Given that I'm still new at the dry suit and I can't control the buoyancy as naturally as I can with just my BCD.

Throughout the weekend Doc would randomly signal "out of air" to someone to see how fast they got their backup regulator to him. I was the last one, so by the time he got to me, I was ready for it. He got me on the last dive at the 15 foot stop. I had just finished my gas switch demonstration and was watching Bob do his demo when Doc came up from behind me and signaled "out of air". Without looking, I was able to pull my octo from its clip and get it to him in less than two seconds from his signal. A lot better than in the pool when he gave me the out of air signal and I was trying to figure what he was asking me to demonstrate: "Does he want me to demonstrate an out of air situation? Does that signal have some special meaning for the dry suit?" After he pulled his regulator out of his mouth and gave the signal again, I figured out what he was doing, but I was still confused: "why would we be practicing that?" It turns out that Doc likes you to practice out of air drills frequently. Which make sense. Without air, your options are pretty limited. If you have air, you can work out most other problems. So you need to be prepared to donate air to your buddy at the drop of a hat without even thinking about it. I wonder what would happen if I turned the tables on him and signaled to him that I was out of air? Would he be as quick to donate? (-:

All in all this was a great weekend. I learned a lot and feel relatively comfortable in the dry suit. The short intro to technical diving was interesting. I'm looking forward to starting the transition course. I enjoyed diving with Doc. He's easy to get along with, but he's right on top of you if you screw up. I think he's going to be a good instructor.

Oh, and I'm never going to dive in a full wet suit again. If it's too cold for a shorty, I'm diving dry. Actually, I won't get that luxury. I'm going to start the Divemaster course next February and you can't teach Open Water students in a dry suit. Well, you could, but it's better if you are using the same equipment as your students. So I guess I can't throw away my wet suit just yet.

I told someone a couple of weeks ago that I have more fun at each certification dive weekend than I did the weekend before, and this weekend was no exception. My only disappointment is that this may be the last dive of the year. Maybe when my dry suit comes in, I'll see if I can get out one more time...

Most scuba certification agencies have a Master Scuba Diver certification. For most, the requirements are 50 logged dives and some number of specialties. Most require either Advanced Open Water or Rescue Diver certification. NAUI doesn't require any specialties, but requires eight training dives as part of the course. For most others, there is no course, it's simply an application after you have reached all the prerequisites.

So some would say that the NAUI Master Scuba Diver is better trained than the others since it's actually a training course. However, it only requires Advanced Open Water and no specialties. PADI Master Scuba Diver isn't a course, just an application, but you need to be a Rescue Diver and have five specialties.

So I suppose it's a wash. If you are a NAUI Master or a PADI Master, or an SSI Master, it's all about the same.

Regardless of what it is, I don't feel like a particularly experienced diver; in fact, I feel like a student. Sure, I have a lot more knowledge and skill than the average Open Water student, but I still feel like a student. I suppose if you put it in the context of school, Open Water is your Freshman year, Advanced Open Water is your Sophomore year, Rescue Diver is your Junior year, and Master is your Senior year. I think that about fits.

From here on out, it's graduate level courses. Divemaster is like becoming a college T.A. From there, Assistant Instructor, Open Water Instructor, Master Scuba Diver Instructor, etc are all various levels of graduate school/professorship. Sure you can learn with straight dive experience, but teaching can give you a whole new perspective on a subject.

I had never intended to become a scuba instructor. Not even Divemaster appealed to me six months ago. A lot has changed since then. A couple of months ago I said that I could see myself ending up as an instructor. Now it's starting to become a goal. Unless the Divemaster course changes my mind.

So now I'm a Master Scuba Diver, but I don't feel like a master. More like a master in training. Maybe all the tech stuff I've been doing lately has shown me a little bit of how much I don't know yet. Maybe the stupid mistakes I made last weekend humbled me. Regardless of why, I think accepting that there's a lot I don't know will help me in my training over the next year...

This time a year ago I was busy chewing through the PADI Tec Deep Diver course work and thinking about how much information we were expected to know. We learned fun acronyms like "Being Wary Reduces All Failures", "a Good Diver's Main Objective Is To Live", and NOTOX. We learned how to plan gas consumption for divers with different breathing rates and tank sizes. We learned how to calculate decompression stops using gasses with different oxygen content. Most importantly, we learned how dangerous tech diving can be and how to minimize the risks, i.e. how to be safe.

One thing I quickly realized was that regardless of how much more depth or bottom time we would get by learning how to do decompression diving, my primary reason for getting into tech diving was still not being met. I got into tech diving to be able to dive wrecks in the Great Lakes.

The Great Lakes have some of the most well preserved shipwrecks in the world. The combination of fresh water, depth, and temperature allow wooden shipwrecks to remain intact long after they would have deteriorated or been destroyed in other environments. While studying for the class, I quickly realized that the 165' mark that the DSAT Tec Deep certification trains you for was insufficient to reach some of the best wrecks including the Daniel J. Morrell (a 587' freighter that sank in two halves five miles apart, the bow at 213' and the stern at 225') and the Roy A. Jodrey (a bulk freighter similar to the more famous Edmund Fitzgerald that sank a year later).

So that meant that I was destined to do the second half of the DSAT curriculum: Tec Trimix. The DSAT Trimix course teaches you how to plan and execute dives to 240' and beyond using gas blends of Oxygen, Nitrogen, and Helium.

If you're like me, the first time you heard of diving with helium, you thought someone was pulling your leg. As it turns out, helium has been in use in diving since the 1960s. Initially helium was used to replace the nitrogen in air (a mixture known as heliox) to eliminate nitrogen narcosis. Unfortunately, that introduced a new problem: HPNS (High Pressure Nervous Syndrome) when diving at depths around 400 feet. To counteract this, divers began to add nitrogen back into the mix to act as a mild depressant. Thus trimix was born.

So, the use of helium as a dive gas has been around for a while, and it allows you to dive deeper than an oxygen equivalent nitrox (nitrogen and oxygen) blend, but it comes at a price. Actually, it comes with several prices, including the cost. More important than that is the extra decompression time. Then the cost of a drysuit inflation system since you can't use trimix in your drysuit (helium doesn't provide enough thermal protection). Oh yeah, your deco stops have to be even more precise than with nitrox tech diving. And did I mention the cost of the gas? Oh, and sometimes you may be diving with a mix that doesn't have enough oxygen to support life at the surface. And you may be diving with three, four, or more decompression/stage/travel bottles. Using the wrong one at the wrong time could result in death. Not to mention just lugging all of that bulk through the water.

So why do it?

To get to the bottom. Honestly, the risks are manageable (even if they aren't eliminated) and replacing some of the nitrogen with helium makes you safer at depth because you aren't as narced as you would be with nitrox or air. And diving with hypoxic mixes (gas blends with less than 21% oxygen) reduces your oxygen exposure for even more safety. So you trade one set of risks for another. But you'll get to dive places that most people can't even dream about.

As for the inherent relative risk of diving to 245 feet versus 165 feet? Does it really matter? You can't go straight to the surface from either depth, so screwed is screwed. If you have an emergency that you can't handle the result will be the same whether you are 245 feet or "only" 165.

And to think that 130 feet used to be scary.