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GUE Course Reports Lived through it - want to share... we'd love to hear how you got on.
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| Recreational Triox Review By Chris Boardman Imagine being told that the world is round when all along you thought it was flat. Undoubtedly your first response would be to defend your own long-held beliefs; it is highly unlikely that you would give these up without convincing evidence and even then….  Many in the diving community harbour considerable hostility towards Global Underwater Explorers, possibly because of their Doing It Right catch phrase, so a degree of open-mindedness’ is needed to even think of signing up for a course. Our voyage of enlightenment started on the edge of the Lake District at Capernwray Dive Centre. My fellow travellers on this occasion were two of Capernwray’s dive team, Adam Hanlon, the dive school manager who has been diving for 20 years and Dave Smith who, has only been in the sport for two years. At just 18, he was by far the youngest member of our little group. The Triox course that we had all signed up for follows on from GUE’s Fundamentals class and despite the inclusion of helium gas, is still classed as their only other recreational offering. It can be taken in one of two formats: With single cylinders as a stand-alone no-decompression diving course or it can be taken as part one of their first truly technical course, Tec I. All three of us had elected to do the latter, meaning many more topics would now be included in an already packed agenda. The class was again to be conducted by Andrew Georgitsis supported by Andy Kerslake, two characters that couldn’t be less alike. Andrew G, based in Seattle, is GUE’s Technical Training Director and has trained over 3000 divers in his time. His bold and confident teaching style was obviously born of many years of experience, both in education and in the field. Andy K on the other hand, GUE’s UK representative, has a much quieter manner. Less confident pupils might find him more approachable and less intimidating than the powerful figure of Andy G. Day One At 9am sharp, we assembled in Capernwray’s spacious lecture room were Andrew G ran us through the itinerary. The day’s programme would consist of four dives, interspersed by three classroom sessions, a video review and a fitness test at the local pool. Without pausing for breath, Andrew then showed us a ton of new reel techniques we were going to have to utilise on dives two and four. It was like someone spending five minutes showing a non-driver how a car works, then handing them the keys and saying “Now, I’d now like you take us through central London.” A few minutes later, we descended in the 10-degree water to find ourselves surrounded by shoals of tame, hungry trout. The 10M viz of Jackdaw quarry was a stark contrast to the 1M we had endured in Portland harbour last March. In addition, the rocky bottom composition meant touching down did not mean clouds of silt; perfect for both learning and filming. (All GUE classes are videoed for post-dive critique) Dive one was really a review of skills learned at Fundamentals level. Although many of them are well known, most now had a distinctly different slant on them. For example, shut down procedures. Unlike other courses, step one was not to close the central isolator, instantly saving half the available gas, but to shut down the most likely offending regulators instead, whilst simultaneously using the light to signal the rest of the team. Another skill practised on day one was the team ascent, again a little different. One diver is always designated captain and generally, it is they that ‘control’ the ascent (time, depth…etc.) This certainly helped unity. The team ascend in a circular formation with all divers horizontal in the water and tasks such as DSMB deployment, are split amongst the group. Although not strictly part of a Triox course, line laying does form a large part of Tec 1, so on both training days we would be using this particular tool a lot. I suspect it’s primary value on this course, was its propensity for encouraging perceptual narrowing and consequently, highlighting a team’s weaknesses… as we were finding out. A few stressful hours of entanglements, barely controlled buoyancy and regulator failures later, a sombre group headed for the classroom and our first video review. This was to prove both hugely embarrassing and incredibly educational. I have to admit I was sceptical about the value of such made-up exercises, where more things go wrong than are ever feasibly going to in the real world, however after seeing the scene on the video, I realised the point. We had been assigned a seemingly simple job; lay some line, for a given time/distance and come back. I cringed as I watched the image of Adam struggling with some slack that had developed in the line. Remembering the adage, “slack kills” I had proceeded to keep it taught whilst he reeled in. After about a minute of cheerfully winding in the limp nylon cord… we pulled the severed end of our guideline into view…. our route out. We had just reeled in our only means of getting home and in doing so, killed ourselves for the third time in less than two hours. Knowing that we were task loaded and our team’s situational awareness was poor, Andrew had cut the line to illustrate the point. . The video revealed something else that we hadn’t seen in the water. On one occasion where we experienced simultaneous failures, we had forgotten to check that Adam’s ‘frozen’ regulator had been turned back on, so when he was then forced to share air with another diver and switched to his back-up reg…it didn’t work. Andrew G had seen this (which is why he gave us the second failure!) and had a regulator six inches above Adam’s head just in case. Another revelation from these first dives was how useful a dive light is for communication, even in daylight. By parking their torch beams in front of the lead diver, the position and status of the two trailing team members was always clear. A circled OK signal or a rapidly moving light that indicates a problem, was instantaneously conveyed to the rest of the team even when in single file or some distance apart. As we continued our role coaster ride through the masses of theory, a theme began to immerge in Andy G’s teaching method. He would often present a common scenario and ask questions until we discovered answers for ourselves. “Hey” Dave exclaimed as he looked up from his note pad “A single twelve isn’t really enough for a descent dive at 30m” Andrew just smiled. In this fashion, we learned an awful lot: Why there is a stronger rational for doing the deepest dive of the day last (contradicting a sacred cow of the dive industry), why the use of helium does not in fact lengthen decompression at all and why the rule of thirds (so often referred to as super conservative) is often insufficient even in open water diving! I was beginning to find this class very frustrating. We were covering so much ground it was impossible to commit it all to memory, which would not have been a problem, but for the lack of support material. At 4:30 pm, we trailed brain dead from the classroom and headed for the local pool for our swim tests. Every level of GUE course has a modest fitness requirement; a 275m swim in less than 14 minutes and at least 15m on a breath hold, if a student cannot do this, they fail the course. This bar is set progressively higher as the training becomes more advanced; even GUE’s instructors have a mandatory fitness test every two years. After another 2 hours in the classroom, the day eventually ended at 7:30. Day two The day started bright and early on the balcony overlooking the site. Andrew had already laid 40m of criss-crossing guide line when we got there. As soon as we had assembled, he dove straight into no-visibility protocols: how we should position ourselves in relation to the line and each other, how to communicate by touch, where we should place divers with problems and methods for negotiating tie off points. Blindfolded, we then navigated our way back around the course (that had taken about 3 minutes to lay) whilst Andrew timed us. It took 13 minutes! “If you had been using the rule of thirds on that dive, even with no failures, I don’t think you’d have got out alive boys” Said Andrew. It was a very powerful lesson. Back in the water I had a pretty good idea that our simulated dive was going to be based around having no visibility, so when I ‘lost’ my mask whilst reeling out, I was not entirely surprised. The fiasco that followed however was not as I would have predicted. Like a good team player, I locked off the reel and floated patiently for one of my teammates to sort me out… It simply hadn’t occurred to me that the others might be in the same position as I was! After a very cold four minutes, were we must have looked ridiculous just floating there, I clicked. We started to sort ourselves out and head back out…. which is when the slack in the line came back to haunt us; although we could feel the line…it was not giving us any directional information. We went on in this fashion for another 15 minutes before we eventually relocated the up line and surfaced. Later, the video review would highlight just how unprepared we were for communication in zero visibility and how a small detail become literally catastrophic when the situation changed. Last dive of a very long day was the ‘toxing’ diver drill. One of the hazards of enriched air diving is the possibility of Central Nervous System Toxicity (CNS). A diver who succumbs to one of these ‘hits’ is really in trouble as the accompanying convulsions almost always result in the casualty spitting out the regulator and drowning. GUE’s rescue technique was really quite different. First, the regulator in the divers mouth is removed, as it is the likely cause of the problem and replaced with a known, breathable gas. The rescuing diver then dumps his/her own buoyancy and lies on top of the casualty, using their wing to control the buoyancy of both divers. In this way, it is possible to hold in their regulator and leave the left hand free to manipulate both wing inflators. It was like riding a scooter. When time to ascend, the rescuing diver flips the casualty into a horizontal position, whilst remaining slightly above and behind, so both wings and suits can still be dumped using the left hand. Back in the classroom, the information overload continued. This time the focus was on decompression strategies, ascent profiles and how to work out no decompression limits…. in our heads! Now this was truly new material. To ensure we understood the principals behind these methods, Andrew spent 1-½ hours showing us how they had arrived at these conclusions, consequently we learned how important the ‘shape’ of the ascent was and that pauses must be introduced in the right places, so I would strongly recommend against trying this without having seen the whole picture. It boiled down to my having to remember just three things:
Like day one, work didn’t finish until after seven and we still had the 50-question exam to contend with, fortunately, Adam was putting us up, so we took the paper home and got stuck in after dinner. It was nearly midnight before we were finished. Day Three This was our Triox day. To get the extra depth needed, (36M) we were forced to head over to Wastwater in the west of the Lake District, an extremely arduous 1:30H drive from Capernwray. We had been blessed with clear, blue skis and although the roads looked like those used by Postman Pat, the scenery was spectacular… it was only a shame we didn’t have time to enjoy it. Today was about us putting all of our experiences in to practise. We had to plan and run two dives as a team, whist both Andy’s watched, videoed…and introduced problems. On both dives, we would head down a slope, following a permanent line, for 10minutes before dropping over a cliff to our maximum depth of 30M. We would turn the dive at 15minutes or when the first diver hit 150bar remaining. Sounded easy enough… Unfortunately, the theme of the last two days continued and we looked anything but slick. At one point as we made our way towards the cliff, Andy G spotted some lose line on a spool attached to my rear D-ring, no one else in the team saw it… so he promptly attached it to an object and watched as I continued to swim on… until I couldn’t. After wasting five precious minutes back-tracking and reeling, I stowed the offending spool in my pocket where it should have been all along. On the bottom, we encountered numerous failures, such as out of gas divers and free-flowing regulators. We handled these problems… just, but it wasn’t pretty and as in the quarry, we prioritised tasks poorly. I didn’t want to get back in the water for the last dive, as by now I was convinced I should be taking up another sport… like chess, but as it turned out, I’m glad I did. We experienced the same kind of problems on this dive but at last, some of the experiences were sinking in, we handled them better, not great, but a definite improvement. At last, a positive note and a good way to finish the diving. De-brief over, it was back to the ranch for a review of the exam, a video critique and finish. Amazingly, we had passed the Triox course although I suspect only just. Conclusions Did I enjoy the course? No, feeling incompetent is not fun, but then I never used to relish training in the rain for up to eight hours either, I did however enjoy the results that the exercise brought. The fact that I have only been able to describe less than five percent of the topics we covered forms the basis of my biggest and most ironic criticism; with no support materials, there was just too much information for a three-day course. It was like being taken on a whistle-stop tour, never quite getting to see the whole picture before being whisked off to the next destination. The whole experience left me feeling both enlightened but also frustrated. I contacted GUE about this and to their credit, they held up their hands and said “Guilty” however they were pretty hazy as to when this problem would be addressed. I would not recommend signing up for any GUE course unless you are truly prepared to consider that there might be better ways than those you currently practise. This is not say that GUE = better, but they did produce by far the most convincing rationales I have heard. Open mindedness is an easy philosophy to preach but a hard one to practise. Many will continue to dismiss GUE as a one-rule organisation who won’t tolerate any freethinking. Yet to date, I haven’t come across a critique who has actually gone to the trouble of attending a course…. I have. Despite the lack of student support material, it still ranked as one of the very best courses I have reviewed so far. Details
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| Divingniknaks
on
April 19th, 2006, 11:36 PM
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| Chris, Thank you for that. Just put me off the whole idea  Great write up though. |
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