Rick(Offline)

Andy Kerslake/Rich Walker, Capernwray UK Oct 04

Friday night was a laugh; after a brief intro from each student and a general intro into GUE & DIR we hit the tables, practicing frog kicks, modified frog kicks, flutter, modified flutter, helicopter right/left and backwards frog kick.. How funny was that!

So things looking good, we finished off about 2300hrs and headed back to our abodes. Me and Will stopped at the Kings Arms in Burton, reasonable accomodation and good food!

With a 0900 start on Saturday we continued with a slide presentation on the fundamentals, skills required. Backplates/Harnesses were set up (Correctly) etc then headed off to practice what we had learned.

The skills/experience of the students ranged from 20 dive novices to dive leaders and instructors with 300+ dives.

Once in the water (6m) all hell broke loose. The guys had layed two triangle lines for each of the groups. Single tanks/Double tanks. There were folk on the suface, folk at the bottom, some stuck in the silt, some upside down, some landing on top of others etc...total pandemonium.

We all got the thumbs and headed to the surface for a little chat with Mr Kerslake and Mr Walker.

Once clear what was meant to happen we descended in our groups and started practicing S-Drills, Finning techniques, valve drills etc. It was still chaos down there with plenty of buddy seperations, ascents, descents and line loosing. What a bag of sh*t I thought!

After a brief SI for the singles to get a fill, we were back in on dive 2. This was better, we had started to move in distinct teams within the teams, trim was better and bouyancy was getting there.

At this point, I must stress that I and others thought that there bouyancy/trim was pretty good prior to starting the course. At 6M one small breath whilst removing a mast will send you northwards, all under the watchfull eye of the video guys Andy & John. They always seemed to be there when you least wanted them to be, frustratingly!!

Anyway it all started to come together; well, better than the previous dive.

Back to the class and continued the slide discussions. At the end of the day, I must say I felt a little disapointed by the lack of footage of myself and Will. Not being vein of course, but to criticise and analyse our position/trim and dangly bits etc. (That was soon taken care of the next day by Andy and John and TBH I wished I had shut my big trap. Having read the fundamentals book and workbook, I truely didn't think I had learned a lot more from attending the course that I already had whilst reading researching DIR.

Oh well day 2 down, what will tomorrow bring?

Back in the class for a brief spell then back into the water to practice all the skills we learned the previous day plus more.

This was really beginning to come together. Basic 5, Reg out, exchange, mask clear, mask removal, modified S-Drill. Then onto Full S-Drills, valve drills and bag deployment.

Sound easy?

Try all this totally horizontaly, facing your buddy/team, manouvering without hands (fin kicks only) without ascending because of a mis-placed breath..But we were slowly getting there!

On the way to the SI we finned past a group of trainee's by one of the large trailers at the cape. God knows what they must have thought as we went past with HID's ablaze in V formation. I thought they were gonna spit their regs

Anyway, Dive 4 was upon us and we went through the whole caboodle again, but this time it was really geared towards the team and it felt great. Everyone knew where everyone was this time around, drills were getting slicker, trim and bouyancy was becoming second nature. Still a few flaws but all in all...it was good.

Down to the pool for a quick swim and a breath hold (I should have stopped smoking long before the night before the course), then it was back to the class. Finished off the slides, watched the videos then we had our idividual debriefs.

To conclude.

A great course, well worth doing even if you have the slightest interest in bettering your skills.
Now you might be thinking "my bouyancy is fine"; well everyone on the course "thought" that!

Just seeing the likes of Andy and Rich in the water makes you realise that youve been or are doing something wrong which you can right with the correct instruction.

I think I speak for all the guys when I say that we all took something very important from this course, something you need to see to believe.

I personally got a provisional pass, which means I need to go away and polish the skills that I learned, come back and prove that I own the skills to be an efficient member of a DIR team.

However, supposing I decide not to further my training with GUE, these skills are the simple building blocks of diving and I would urge anyone to go give it a try.

P.S I will continue with GUE and hope to do Cave 1 in Florida sometime next year.

A big thanks to Andy Kerslake and Rich Walker for the course, all the guys on the course, the video men (stealthy back finners) Andy Carrol & John Kendal, Dave Willo and others who popped in to wish us luck and Adam Hanlon for the coffee and scran.

Beth(Offline)

Rick - thanks for a really good report of your course.

I don't know whether to be daunted or motivated.

Just a couple of questions...

Is it normal to have two instructors on these courses, and what is an "S" drill?

__________________
Beth

Rich Walker(Offline)

Hi Beth,

An S-drill = Safety drill. It's basically a drill to practice air sharing. Each diver in the team donates and recieves once. It ensures that all valves are turned on, and that the long hose can deploy freely i.e. you haven't trapped it under your harness, which can easily be done.

GUE standards currently limit our student:instructor ratio to 6:1, so if Andy or I get a lot of interest in a particular course, we sometimes co-teach it. We've done 2-3 in the last year like this, I think.

As an aside, the new GUE standards will reduce the student:instructor ratio to 4:1.

Rich

wilbo(Offline)

Rich,

seems like a strange decision.. 6 is a nice number - two 'teams' of 3 students. So will you run is now as one team of 4?

__________________
Cheers!
Wilbo

DIR explorers: DIR
Yorkshire Divers: YorkshireDivers
One of the Foxturd chimps

Rich Walker(Offline)

My preference will be for one team of two or three divers. Running two teams is difficult, and we've historically used a "videographer" to assist with the other team (not teach, just run the tape, and shepherd).

I will now run 3 person courses, and only go to 4 (2x2) if I have a GUE instructor candidate in the water.

Rich