Alastair(Offline)

I'm hovering at 32m next to a underwater cliff face. Visibility was easily 10m+ and the three HID lights our team are using cut through the gloom clearly. At that point a rush of bubbles starts from my left shoulder. I switch my light to my right hand while flashing it quickly at Clare and Fraser and reach back to shutdown my left post. Once it's off I signal to Fraser and ask him to have a look at it. He swims in and after trying it informs me it's broken. We re-order team position in the water and carry on the dive as one post failure in a team of three still leaves us with redundancy. Seconds later my right post starts bubbling. Realising I'm now in trouble I signal OOG and Clare donates the long hose. I shut the post down and Fraser then checks it and informs me it's also broken. A hand then reaches down and taps my mask. With a sigh I hand my mask off to the gloved hand above me, leaving me blind and with a dead weight on my back!

That tech-1 is hard you know! This was the first dive of our day at the NDC on friday. We'd arranged to finish our GUE Tech-1 course with Andy Kerslake last weekend and had some dramas in a quarry followed by some deep dives planned in Teignmouth.

After I'd lost both posts and my mask my team took over. One of them clipped off my light. The other took my hand and starting signalling up. We have 3 simple signals - up, down and level off. I breathe in deeply and we start to move up. With my eyes shut I'm reliant on the feedback from the person giving me hand signals. I could also get some feedback from the feel of the expanding gas in my drysuit and wing. At 21m my team deployed my stage reg, turned on the valve and handed me the reg. I switched over remembering to clip off my long hose (muscle memory letting me do it blind).

The stops are all fairly swift and we reach the surface. I flip the right post back on to inflate my wing and my first question was - so how did we do? Some slightly glum faces great me as we had a bit of bouncing on some of the stops. We run pretty much to time but were a little scrapy. We ask Andy's opinion and he gives us some advice on what we need to do.

So it's back in after a 20 minute surface interval (and yes you can do that if you know how the deco works) and were back down to 33m odd. This time round the sequence is slightly different and Fraser goes OOG. I donate the long hose and just while we are sorting that out Clare loses her mask. I grab hold of Clare and get hold of her hand so I can signal and provide feedback. I glance at Fraser and he's already indicated thumbs up. We are off at 10m/min up to the gas switch. As Frasers OOG he switches first returning my long hose. I hand Clare over to him while I switch and Fraser then hands Clare back while he preps her stage. Clare switches and we start timing deco. I alter my attention between my own buoyancy, guiding Clare and keeping an eye on Fraser. Fraser lauches the SMB and we are perfectly on schedule. We reach the last 6 metres and gradually do the final part of the ascent. At 1m we pause just checking our ascent is controlled and finally reach the surface. Fraser is grinning as we sit on the surface and reckons the ascent was spot on - controlled, smooth and organised.

We all troop out of the water and hop in the van up to the car park to de-kit. We find Mark Powell there who's stopped to say hello and it's a case of packing the cars for the next part of the trip down to Teignmouth for the 2 experience dives.

Day-6 of our course and we're up early to get to Teign Diving Centre. Due to Fraser's work commitments we ended up organising our trip at short notice and Teign Diving had come up trumps and organised a boat for us.

Once at the dive centre we parked directly opposite and kitted up. They had quite a good system where you put your gear outside the centre and they loaded it onto trolleys and took it down to the boat. All the divers then formed a chain and passed the kit onto the boat.

We left harbour to find the sea nice and flat and with a blue sky above us. The first dive was the Rota which was a wreck starting at 36m with the seabed at 45+. While kitting up on the boat I had my first equipment drama of the day as my LP hose on my argon bottle wouldn't stop hissing. Andy suggested feathering the valve so we carried on. We descended down the shot in 3m vis and had the next kit issue at about 9m. Clare's argon bottle started bubbling badly. When rolling off the harboat I looks like the first stage got dislodged and when it first got used it decided to throw a fit. Once sorted we carry on down the line and reach the wreck. Vis remains at 2-3m and isn't too bad. I have my second kit problem at this point and my goodman handle is loose and makes holding the torch difficult. We tour round the wreck, and it's covered in life as you might expect from a ship torpedo in WW1. We spot lots of monofilament on the wreck round by the bridge and have to carefully move round it. We head round the stern and find the prop missing and turn direction. At 25 minutes we thumb the dive. The ascent goes well, as usual we divide up the responsibilities, one person runs the bag, someone else times deco etc. Andy swims round us like a shark and finds some areas we need to tidy, light cords not properly tucked, long hoses not clipped off, boltsnaps hanging out of pockets and tidies us up. We reach the surface and debrief back on the boat.

Big lesson learnt was the need to be meticulous on the little details. We'd a tendency to rush which was actually counter productive. We need to be on time but we need to be tidy. At the level we are diving you might think it OTT but GUE train you in such a way that you don't have to adapt or re-learn if you go further. With more bottles, scooters etc one of the minor hazards could become a real problem. Our communication has improved but also still needs work. We are a little too reliant on knowing each other and need to work on our standard signals so they are clearer.

After we get back we head off to the pool for the swim test with 300m timed swim and 20m odd underwater required. We pass that and then spend some time backwards finning in swimming kit. Fraser's not managed this before and is well chuffed when he can do it! After the three of us have finished pratting about it's out and off for a meal.

In between the diving we chat to Andy about all sorts of topics. Saturday we spent a lot of time discussing deco. One of the bonuses about splitting up the course was we could read through the notes, run some profiles through deco planner and then come back with questions.

The last day of the course and we were off to the dive centre slightly later today. Same procedure kitting up and we were off to the wreck of the Northfield. The wreck was similar depth to the one from the day before maybe a little shallower. We were better organised today and went down the shotline, bubble checked, modfied s and then the descent in a better formation than the day before. We reached the wreck and found 1m of vis and lots of lines running out from the shot. I noted the time and worked out at what time we should be leaving the bottom We moved off and the vis was lousy. We saw very little of the wreck due to the vis and Andy had to delploy a scout so he'd have some source of light! While we made our way round someone else swam into me. Not a huge amount of fun. We ended up ending the dive earlier than planned and re-calculated deco. The ascent went fine and we surfaced to be picked up.

Numerous lessons learnt. Bubble checks must include inflator hoses, argon bottles and SPG's. We missed a small leak on Frasers drysuit inflator. We still need to improve on the the tidyness of our gear. My light cord while tucked wasn't neat enough. I also got picked up on the way I using my drysuit dump being too dramatic and needs to involve less of a roll. Our signals were better but still need to be clearer.

After the dive we de-kitted and went off for a debrief in a cafe. This took some time but it really did come down to us analysing how we'd worked as a team and individuals.

The overall verdict? We passed! The most difficult course I think I've had to do in my life let alone diving. It required more effort, practise, time, money and dedication than I care to add up. Totally worth it my diving has had to move to a different level, and when you are doing serious dives that needs to be the case.

If you're gonna do the dives it's best to do it right.