GUE Tech 1, Plymouth (not a quarry 
), May 2008 with Rich Walker
I’m not going to go into a blow-by-blow account of who did what on each dive, partly because I really can’t remember it all and partly because I’m not sure it would be that useful! I haven’t done the “old” tech1 so can’t really comment on exactly how the new course differs, but it’s still 5 long and intensive days of academics and diving. We were typically in the water for 2-3 hours consisting of a dive, debrief on the surface, drop down for another dive and repeat. In the classroom we went through the video debrief of the dives and the academics.
Rich ran the course out of Aquanauts in Plymouth and I have to say it was a cracking place to do it. There’s a kit room to chuck everything in that also has the O2 and He banks for fills, a tumble drier for soggy undersuits (various reasons!) and space to hang up drysuits. The shop has a good sized classroom, TV and drink facilities. The staff are extremely helpful and accommodating and a good laugh to boot. Aquanauts is on the Marina where they have their hardboat with lift (the fastest I’ve ever experienced
) – so hardly any distance to move the kit about either. Oh, and we hit lucky with a week of sunshine and little wind too
The only downsides I can think of is that the boat could be a bit crowded at times (it was cozy with 6 of us on for the experience dive) and parking nearby is pretty limited.
Day 1 – Skills and Failures
The first day consisted of course background and introductions. Moz and I have dived together a fair bit, but we didn’t really know James – and he definitely brought a bucket load of humour to the course with him
After some dry land drills of line laying/following (and avoiding falling in the marina while doing it) and valve failures we headed over to Fort Bovisand for the first in-water sessions.
Fort Bovisand is a small harbour that I understand used to be used a lot for commercial diver training. Being sheltered and pretty shallow it seemed ideal for what we needed to do. The dives for this session were pretty shallow ~6M) and centered around the core fundamentals skills (valve drills, s-drills) and then heading off laying line with basic valve failures, OOGs and masks falling off along the way.
Our team positioning wasn’t great at first and finding something solid enough to tie-off to was proving pretty tricky – but we didn’t do too badly to say we’d never dived as a team before so we were pretty pleased with how the first day had gone.
Day 2 – Failures and Stage Work
The second day we headed over to Bovisand first thing and ran through stage drills in the sunshine
We headed a little deeper (~10M) and again the dive routine was drop down, lay line, deal with the failures. This time however the failures were slightly more complex than day 1 and we also had to stop at 6M on the ascent and perform the gas switch.
Dropping down for one of the dives James demonstrated one of his cave skills – and presented us with a beautifully knotted mass of line on a reel which was duly christened “the Badger’s Nest”
Day 3 – Ascent Training
For the ascent training we needed a bit more depth than we could get at Bovisand, so we headed out with some of the Aquanauts folk on the boat to the Scylla and James Egan Layne. This was the first time Moz and I had dived the South Coast, so our first time on these two wrecks. I’d like to say we enjoyed them but I’m not sure we can count dropping down, handling failures and ascending several times as “diving” them! We’ll have to come back and have a proper, relaxed look around some other time.
The aim of this day’s diving was controlled descents, handling failures on the bottom and managing a controlled ascent on time whilst carrying any unfixable failures. This was a pretty tricky day with quite a lot to take in and get on top of and whilst we’d managed to do what we needed to and Rich was happy for us to go on to an experience dive we decided that a second day of ascent training would be far more beneficial.
Day 4 – Ascent Training
For our second day of ascent training we headed out on the boat again to the Persia (I think). Once again we dropped down, things broke and we came back up again! Ironically some of the failures we had been experiencing up to now had (allegedly
) nothing to do with Rich. We’d had primary regs off, backup lights coming on, primary lights failing and deco bottle regs being unseated and blowing gas out during the switch and leading to actually being out of deco gas on an ascent. Rich had his work cut out trying to keep track of the scenarios he was trying to get us to handle and the failures we were throwing in ourselves
At the end of the day I felt much more comfortable with the ascents even if I had struggled to get my backup mask out at one stage with James convinced I was about to try to wear my wetnotes instead
For me it was definitely worth sacrificing one of the experience dives for more ascent training. What little we saw of the wreck looked interesting, perhaps another one to visit again one day!
Day 5 – Experience Dive
Finally, this was why I was on this course. Diving a wreck outside my recreational qualifications that would involve trimix and deco. I was probably more apprehensive about this dive than the rest of the course. This would be my deepest dive to date, my first trimix dive and my first decompression dive. I felt that as a team we were prepared and ready for the dive, but this was still a serious dive for me.
The plan was to dive the Totnes Castle which sits in around 45M. We’d run through some planning the night before and had decided based on gas estimates and comfort that we wanted to keep the deco to around 20 minutes. Brian and Paul would be joining us on the boat for a pleasure dive of their own so there would be 6 of us on the boat.
The dive was, for a change, pretty uneventful
Once we arrived on the wreck and started to relax we could really enjoy it. At the bottom of the shot Brian was helpfully pointing out the large paddle wheel – just in case we didn’t spot it
After a really nice 20 minute explore we got together and with a variety of hand and torch signals agreed that as we weren’t as deep as we had expected we’d stick explore for another 5 minutes. I guess as we get more comfortable this is the kind of unnecessary explicit communications that can become passive. We’d all realised we were shallower than the plan and all knew what that meant in terms of deco, so we could have just carried on until one of us thumbed the dive based on adjusted bottom time or minimum gas. Still, one step at a time
Back on the boat and there were the grins all round that you get from a cracking dive with a great group of people, flat seas and sunshine
Overall it was a tiring but enjoyable course and we all came away as new tech 1 divers
The dives are challenging but do build up gradually and while you’re aware of being constantly pushed I don’t think any of us felt we were pushed to breaking point or beyond at any time. The facilities and great company meant that the only stresses were during the training dives from Rich’s neatly boltsnapped bubble gun or blue gloves asking for your mask or telling you you’re out of gas.
Thanks to Rich for a great course, Brian and the team at Aquanauts for excellent support and to Moz and James for being great team mates and having a real laugh along the way!