jonesor(Offline)

The course was run out of Waveaction, an operation managed by Olly Agbebi. I had done the Fundies course with him back in 2009 - an all round jolly good chap! Waveaction has good facilities for running these kinds of courses. Olly has accommodation on site, a bar, food, and a well-stocked dive shop. He also has a filling station that can handle air, nitrox and trimix. Furthermore, he a number of boats: we used a small Omani-built hard boat for our dives. This is a bit larger than a RHIB, and has loads of room for kit and divers.
The Tech 1 instructor would be Richard Lundgren.

Caveat: I’m writing this a few days after the course, so the order of some things might be a little off, and I might miss some minor things.

Fundies Re-evaluation.

Before doing the Tech 1 course both Derek (my soon-to-be Tech 1 team mate) and I had to be upgraded from a Rec pass to a Tech pass. This was done on 31st January, which is my birthday, so I was praying for a good outcome to justify my evening beer consumption. Olly was evaluating us. I’d not met Derek before so it was a nice surprise to find that he was a great guy.

The upgrade consisted of a couple of dives at a site called The Aquarium near the Damaniat Islands, about 30mins offshore from where we launched the boat at Seeb. The dives consisted of the core skills, so valve drills and S-drills conducted at 6m over a 10-12m bottom. Olly also observed our trim, buoyancy and general demeanour underwater.

This time I was diving with a v-weight instead of a weight belt, and had neoprene socks rather than welly boots on my dry suit. I think this probably made a bit of a difference but the 40-50 dives I'd done since Fundies also helped immensely I'm sure. Everything went fine and we were rewarded with Tech passes and hordes of fish! I think I probably saw more fish on that last dive than I had in all my dives over the previous year in the UK!

Back at Waveaction we were met by Jasim, the third man on our course, who’d just driven down from Abu Dhabi. He also turned out to be a great team mate.

Day 1 - theory and land-based drills

We had a relaxed 9am start today and had no diving planned: today was a theory day. Firstly, Richard Lundgren introduced himself and briefly outlined the course. Then we introduced ourselves and talked about what diving we'd done until that point, and what we wanted to get out of the course. After a short break, Richard presented a couple of lectures that covered the course background.

After a bit of lunch we did some land drills and Richard had a look at all our kit, making a couple of minor adjustments like the positioning of bolt snaps on the primary hose. We were finished by about 5pm and I headed back to my host, Dave's place for a glass of champagne (he’s a classy guy!) and a trip to a local hotel for beer and food.

Day 2 - core skills and basic failures

We had a slightly earlier start today (8am) because we wanted to get both diving and theory done. The first order of the day was to practice some land drills. These drills covered minor valve failures, of the kind that could be fixed easily by reseating the first stage before continuing the dive. After these drills, we headed back out at The Aquarium. On all our dives we’d be carrying round an Ali40 of 50%, whether we used it or not. The premise here is just to get used to carrying the thing around underwater. They are nice under the water though and rarely got in the way.

The first dive was centred on core skills covered in Fundies and included valve drills and s-drills between 6 and 10m. There was a bit of current running so the importance getting the team into appropriate formation (i.e. wing-to-wing in current, triangle with no current) was the main message I took home from this.

After a quick debrief we went back down with a reel and Jasim tied off near our shot line and we went for a little swim, tying off at points on the way. This dive focussed on failures so we each had a number of failures to contend with. All of these were simple-to-resolve failures that required reseating of the first stage. On the way back to the shot we saw a large free-swimming moray eel, and then a stingray - cool! We then did a slow ascent, de-kitted and got back on the boat.

After a debrief on the boat we headed back to Seeb marina and then home. On the short journey back to Olly's place, the trailer axle snapped! It took quite a while to get it parked out of the way by the side of the road. Olly would get this fixed the following day while we were out diving.

When we got back we did some line work, learning how to correctly tie off and so on. We tied up Olly's compound pretty comprehensively and then did some fun stuff working our way from the end of the line back to the primary tie off point as a team blindfolded. That was fun, and quite instructive in terms of how annoying badly laid line could be when you are in a hurry!

Day 3 - More failures

The fact that we lacked a boat meant that diving on today would be awkward, but Olly, resourceful as ever had a solution! Rather than going out on the boat we’d head down to the Capital Area Yacht Club (CAYC) and do some shore dives.

We grabbed brunch on the way and arrived to find fairly calm water. However, the colour of the water raised a few eyebrows! It was almost luminescent green because of the algal bloom. Thankfully though, further out to sea (~75m offshore) the algae cleared and the vis was not so bad, especially at 9-10m where we were diving.

We ended up doing 4 dives at this location. Essentially these were failure resolution drills. We each had a range of failures like broken posts, leading to OOG, mask loss, torch failure. All the while we were laying line to give us a bit of task loading. This was a bitch because anything that was a good point to tie too was covered with bloody urchins! The first dive was crap, and we knew it. We were all over the place as a team and failed to keep in proper formation and deal with failures efficiently. However, we learned a fair bit from the cock-ups on the first dive and the second one was great! I actually found myself really enjoying it – “Hooray – my turn for a failure!”.

After the first two dives we headed back to dry land for a small bite to eat and some water. We changed tanks and discussed and did drills for more complicated valve failures. These were failures where reseating the 1st stage didn’t work, and the diver is left with only one working cylinder. The main thing to do is obviously to isolate and save half your gas but the nature of the failure obviously leads to complications in any out-of-gas scenario as the diver has lost the ability to donate. So, we then went back out and did some drills that included everything we’d covered so far.
When we were done with diving we headed straight to the Muscat City Centre mall to Chilli’s for food – mmmm, buffalo wings!!

At some point, we did a land drill of the gas switching protocol, both to switch to deco gas, and to switch back to back-gas. However, I can’t remember if it was day 3 or day 4. We also covered sharing deco gas, but again, memory fails.

Day 4 - Ascents

We scheduled an early (6am) start today because we had a lot of material to get through. The morning though saw rough weather and the water looked distinctly uninviting! Nevertheless, we still went out in the boat: it was a wet journey out to the site. Nasser, our boat handler and kit lugger, got soaked and seasick, while we endured a choppy dive.

The primary aim of the dive was to practice ascents from 25m. When we got to the seabed, we found that the anchor was dragging so we couldn’t get as much done as we’d hoped to. Despite this, we managed to do two dives just practicing ascents and gas switching. We couldn't really get much done but it was good experience I think.

Day 5 - Swim test and theory

We met up at Olly’s place at 6am and went down to Seeb to have a look at the sea and grab some food. Despite the water looking benign, the forecast was for high winds and choppy seas later in the day. Since we were aiming to go to Fahal Island, about an hour off shore, and because discretion is the better part of valour we decided to abandon diving for the day. Instead, we opted to get the swim test out of the way. I’d been dreading this as I’m a crap swimmer, only managing to scrape through the Fundies course doing a fine impression of a drowning monkey. The 25m pool was at the Intercontinental hotel in Muscat itself. Richard tried to negotiate a deal for us to get in cheap, based on the fact that we were only going to be there for 20mins, but he failed so it ended up costing us each 10 rials (16 GBP) to get in.

I did my test backstroke because its the only swimming str*ke I can do that doesn't lead to drowning (hehe). I was quite a bit slower than the other two, who finished their 350m in about 8mins - I think I was probably about 12mins. Then we had to do a breath hold swim for 15m. After a hot shower and a bit of a rest, we decided to have an expensive, but delicious, breakfast while we were there.

After that, we went back to Olly’s place and did some more theory. This time we covered ratio deco, and after another break, DCI, including some discussion of in-water recompression.

Day 6 - Experience dives (with some failures and drills).

Another early start (6am): the weather today was much better in the morning and we were eager to go and get in the water. We called in to the Omart for coffee and sandwiches on the way and, because all the kit was already set up and in the cars, it was possible to get the boat in the water by about 7am. We headed out to the Damaniat Islands but stopped over the seabed with a 34m depth.

We did two dives, breathing 21/35. The first was down the anchor line to 32-33m where Jasim tied off and we headed off on a swim for 10mins. We returned to the shot, dealt with a post failure then ascended to 21m. We did a gas switch, and then did our timed ascent. It wasn't flawless but wasn't too bad either. We quickly realised the value of correct team (platform) placement. In this case, the best thing was to face into the current wing-to-wing. At 6m we had 10 minutes deco (I think) and we did a deco gas share drill.

We arrived on the surface a bit behind schedule. This was due to inefficient gas switching at 21m and to a slow initial ascent. After a quick debrief we were passed new deco bottles by Ollie and did a repeat of the same dive. This time I was leading. At the bottom we did another post failure (my right post, with Derek fixing it). Then we ascended again. This time we managed to get to 21 in good time and the gas switch was more efficient as we knew what the best position would be. We continued with the ascent to 6m, stopping 1m every 3m, then at 6m we did another deco gas share (I was receiving, Derek was donating). After a few minutes we ascended to the surface nice and slow.

Back on the boat, Rich told us we had passed! Woohoo! We then just had to go through the theory exam, and have our individual evaluations and we were done!

Overall

Throughout the course Richard was an excellent instructor. Any shortcomings and problems we had during the dives were treated as learning experiences rather than big negatives and after each de-brief he left us feeling confident that we were on the right track. The dives were challenging, but the skills necessary to do them are built up slowly, so none of us was pushed close to “breaking point”. Again and again he emphasised that the absolute priority in all the skills was the platform (i.e. correct team formation relative to the line), not the drill itself. Once we started to “get it” everything seemed much easier.

Richard is also very sociable and keen to share anecdotes over a meal or beer. I would thoroughly recommend Waveaction as a base to dive from Oman, or to do training courses. And of course Richard's teaching was awesome!

Starting a team-based diving course without knowing any of the team mates was a bit daunting at first, but Jasim and Derek were great. We got on pretty well and there’s already talk of organising expeditions up to Abu Dhabi. In fact Derek and I will be doing some Tech 1 from Oman (with Waveaction) in a couple of weeks. We’re also talking about running some trips in the Baltic (from Rostock, my new home). So what could have been a problem turned out to be a great benefit – I’ve now got two new excellent and enthusiastic buddies!

So what next? Well eventually I will do Tech 2, but I want to get plenty of Tech 1-level dives in before that. These will be in the Baltic mainly with a few in the Channel. The next training for me will probably be Cave 1 in Mexico, this September.

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Owen

Paul Burgess (Online)

Well done Owen (and team). Great result.

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Committed to Excellence

jimbob(Offline)

Congratulations.

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Fried my little brains

OkiMike(Offline)

Good job! Nice write-up.

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"Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana."

Diving Dave(Offline)

That's the first time anyone's ever said that to me!

Good work mate - sounds like a well earned result!

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Dave

myk (Online)

Nice report and Congratulations.

-myk

Ali Fikree(Offline)

Last time you were here everyone thought you were a gentleman as well!

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The important thing is not to stop questioning.—Albert Einstein

Tilesey(Offline)

Cheers for the report and congrats!

neilh (Online)

Good stuff, congratulations

Kev (Online)

Well done mate.

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Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.