Tech 2 Course Report (Vancouver, BC)

Pre-Class

I arrived in Vancouver three days before the course was scheduled to start. The first day I intended to get over jet lag and the second and third days to go diving with my classmates, Alan and Josey, to become familiar with each other's diving.

I was exhausted after arriving at the hotel at about noon on Thursday. They let me check in early and, after settling in to my room, I set out to walk to the dive shop in the hopes of meeting Alan and settling my account with the dive shop for tank rentals, gas tab, course fees, and picking up for modifications some of the gear Alan was nice enough to lend me (like an SS backplate) so that I could travel light.

It was about a 30 minute walk for me at a brisk pace and, though sunny, the wind was about 55F--quite cold. Nonetheless, it seemed to be beautiful weather for Vancouver with the snow-capped mountains off in the distance and the sun out in the clear blue sky. People were out and about in everything from sweaters, coats, and hats to t-shirts, shorts, and sandals. What a town!

After meeting Alan and the guys at the shop, we chatted a bit about the course. Then I grabbed Alan's backplate which I'd modify back at the hotel and made my way back. Upon arrival in my room, I promptly passed out on my bed.

The next morning, Josey picked me up at the hotel and we went to the dive shop where we met Alan, gathered gear, and then made the drive out to Whytecliff Park (about 40 minutes with some light traffic) where we did a skills dive.

The water was absolutely frigid in comparison to our "tropical" Okinawa water (7C/45F vs. 22C/71F). Luckily my new Santi BZ200 did the trick. After some ascent/descent, maskless (Alan), OOG, valve and bottle-swap drills we called it a day. Viz was only about 10~15 feet and, though I wanted to see the wall that supposedly drops to near 245m/800ft., we headed back in. The 5mm hood I'd borrowed from the shop and my military-issue moisture-wicking boot-socks I'd brought were being pushed to the limits so, back at the shop, I picked out a Bare 7mm Elastek hood and some DUI 200g Thinsulate "sockboots" for purchase the next morning.

Saturday, Alan had to work so Josey and I set off for a decompression dive using 32% on backgas and 100% oxygen for deco back at Whytecliff Park. While the currents had picked up, viz had gone down to less than 10 ft and so had the temps--42F/5.5C! We did get to the wall though and saw some massively fantastic soft coral, starfish, lots of small jellyfish and some other sea life I'm sure I'd never seen before.

At 100', the water was pitch black and above our heads in the shallows it was glowing a sort of nuclear green. While at depth at Whytecliff, I find myself likening the experience to being in space, not that I've been in space mind you, but what I might imagine it as. It was extremely cold and dark except for the small white particulate passing through the beam of our lights, we were suspended over a large chasm that dropped off into nothingness, and somewhere off in the distance was the deep grumbling of massive ship engines. A truly unique experience. It was perhaps equally strange to find myself happy to be back in 46F~50F water closer to the surface after our short deco. Did I mention that Vancouver is cold?

And then came the class.

Day 1

Sunday we assembled at the shop at 8:30 to go over introductions, assemble our gear, settle some technical issues, and listen to the introductory lecture that Dan presented. At the Tech 2 level, Dan's job is really to act as more of a facilitator to our dive plans and to make helpful comments throughout, as necessary. Decompression strategies and the like would continue where the Tech 1 course had left off, but we were expected to come to the table with a fair grasp of all that we'd learned in Tech 1.

In the afternoon, we headed out to Whytecliff Park only to find all the parking stalls full. Starting the class on a Sunday when the park is packed presented a bit of a challenge in this regard. Not wanting to circle endlessly in search of some parking spots, Dan called the dive for the day. With some despair, we made our way back in traffic to the shop where we grabbed some Quizno's for lunch and then attended the second day's lecture on some very full stomachs.

In the lecture we learned and reviewed various calculations dealing with minimum gas, MOD, SAC rates, bottle consumption/value, CNS, ox/tox and others still that tied them all together. In addition, we learned about the quasi-ratio deco that exists at the Tech 2 level and then how it really doesn't exist.

Towards the end, we reviewed the following day's dive plans, reveled in not having to clean any gear or fill any tanks, and left with five day's worth of homework assigned.

Day 2

On Monday, we met again at the shop at 8:30 to do the first day's two dives as well as the second day's two dives. While there was heavy rush hour traffic as we exited the city, the park was empty save some civil servants on lawn mowers and weekwhackers disturbing an otherwise quiet adventure at the park. Each man's gear consisted of double HP130s, 2 AL80s [a bottom stage and 50% bottle], and a single AL40 with oxygen, and we began taking our deco and stage bottles down to the beach for pickup right before we'd enter the water. Tide was low so it was more of a "drag" into the water than a "pickup". We did practice clipping off the 50% bottle while on the shore rather than face dragging three full bottles in over the rocks and sand. After staging the bottles, we walked back up the hill to the cars, did some dry-land run-throughs of bottle-swapping procedures, and finally kitted up.

With a load of fresh plankton in the water, the visibility was practically zero until we dropped down past 30 ft, but we were happy to simply be diving.
The first dive was to consist of dropping down to a depth with appropriate visibility, doing valve drills and S-drills, then dropping down another 15 feet to do bottle swaps (stage and O2), twice each (transfer then reset) for each person in the group, and to do this 5 times, ascending 3 feet between each reiteration while trying not to vary our depth more than a foot or so.

Though the entire dive was to take only 40 minutes or so, it took our group nearly 80 minutes in large part to yours truly. Dan joked on the surface afterwards that it was the first time he'd nearly hit the NDL on the first dive of the class! It was of course abysmal on my part, taking eons of time to find the D-ring and sort out all the boltsnaps with my DryGloved hands. Each successive attempt got better, but by the 4th interation, I was already down to 700 psi and getting very frustrated, not to mention fatigued. No doubt my patient classmates felt the same, but for different reasons...

Somewhere in all the hubbub, I'd managed to drop my leash and the bottle attached to it. Thankfully the ocean floor was not far below us! (Josey later reminded me of Georgitsis' iconic words in the DIRX videos..."And whatever you do...DON'T drop the bottle!"). This first dive and the requisite skills were so taxing, that I remember being surprised at NOT having been surprised at seeing my bottle on the ocean floor! The bottles on the leash, filled with 32% where slightly negatively buoyant and, when brought forward, caused our center of gravity to go off-kilter. They were also clunky and hard to swing into place whilst trying to back kick so as not to bump heads with those in front of us. Buoyancy was bad, and I was surprised to learn that my trim was wildly off. With no viz and depth reference and a worry about not getting too "feet up" lest gas enter the drysuit feet, I'd left horizontal trim with surprising frequency. This was not good. Not good at all.

We headed in for lunch where we were greeted by our just-arrived videographer, Guy Shockey (the famous Guy Shockey from Quest!) who graciously helped us into shore with our stages. Kim Shockey was also kind to go and buy sandwiches for us since our planned shop at the park was closed. We left our kit on the beach near the logs and headed up for a surprisingly gentle debrief by Dan.

Diving all of this gear got the best of me and I found myself asking for help at nearly every turn to do various things like don fins without getting knocked over, hold bottles in the water, attach this or that hose, check a light, adjust a leaking something or other, etc. This was truly a humbling experience for me and I am really grateful to my classmates for helping me through it without too much aggravation!

Anyway, after a bit of sunning, adjustment of gear (broken zip-tie, two primary lights that had been left on during the surface interval, etc.) and another kit-up we began our second dive of the day.

The dive consisted of dropping again to a depth with adequate visibility, doing valve drills, then S-drills, then dropping another 15 feet to begin a compressed version of the full-fledged ascent drill with stage switches, reg deploys, and swaps up to our visibility limit, after which we'd end the dive.
While the valve drills and S-drills were much improved without effort (save a slightly hurried S-drill that Dan commented on), things quickly fell apart after that.

By the time we were done with the S-drill I was already down to 400 psi, and since that was already 100 psi into our determined min gas, were supposed to ascend. Knowing, however, that the dive consisted of breathing off our carried bottles, we pushed on keeping the backgas for the backgas switches (since they were supposed to be few and far between).

We descended and since I was the captain's #2 (and low on gas), I got to switch to my bottom stage first. Once on, as is my habit, I took reference to my backgas SPG to know ahead of time what I had left. This turned sour however, as it took nearly two stops for me to clip it off which made me late to the stowing of the stage and going to backgas. Up another stop, by the time we were on our 50% bottles and swapping bottles, I was already down to 200 psi and the needle was starting to dance uncertainly. During the bottle swap my back kick instantly became my enemy and seemed to only push me forward into everyone. I had to break trim in order to prevent us from having a literal "meeting of the minds"!

Eventually, in trying to clip off the leash again and then the tail bolt snap of the oxygen bottle to the left-hip D-ring, I ended up ascending excessively. Josey managed to keep up with me and bring me down again, at which point Dan asked us to turn around since we were going in the wrong direction. After settling down with a very bewildered Alan who waited patiently below us, I once again attempted to get all of my clips in order as we were making our way up and back knowing that we were to go to backgas again before going to the final oxygen bottle. But with essentially no gas on my back I began running through all the various possibilities for getting hurt (or, worse, my buddies getting hurt if a real emergency arose and they needed my air). There was just something unsettling about not having that backgas.

In an ideal world, (and if I'd been thinking clearly) I would have called the dive or just told them "no" at the next stop and proceeded to do an OOG share while stowing the 50% and deploying the 100% bottle. Somewhere and on some level, I felt that this wouldn't be a good option for us, and yet the urge to stay here and finish this set of drills (for which we were already two dives behind) was overwhelming.

In the end, the stops, ascents, and switches, came at me too fast and one problem compounded on top of another just like in The Incident Pit. Buoyancy and trim went out the window as the stress had reached the tipping point. Soon after, we got the hand of Dan telling us to make our way to the surface. The dive was over.

The chop had picked up, viz was zero and I with my new 7mm hood, I couldn't hear any of Dan's remarks on the surface so we slowly kicked in, the awful silence broken only by the splash of plankton-filled water breaking across my body like cold waves of shame.

It was an unusually quiet car ride home. Back at the shop, we cleaned gear, debriefed, filled tanks, ordered Pizza (since the fills were taking longer than planned), and did our homework.

In the earlier debrief, Dan talked about team problem-solving and gave us some ideas for things and how they could have been handled differently. Each diver played a part in the errors that resulted, some from not acting offensively to solve a confusing situation in a unique way, and others (like myself) who made categorical mistakes that were a testament to how, like a switch being turned on, a seemingly simple series of mistakes put together could have potentially serious consequences.

We were progressing, but progressing slowly since the team could only move as fast as its slowest member (*ahem*).

Day 3

Tuesday morning we met a bit earlier--at 7:45--so we could go over the previous day's 15 minutes of video. After that, we went downstairs to analyze our gas, then loaded our gear and headed out.

Getting to the site, we placed our deco bottles and stage down on the beach again followed by a rather lengthy assembly process of our gear since we had some gear in need of modification.

I was the designated captain on the first dive and it was going to be a dive to test our valve drill procedures when errors cropped up. Once in the water we dropped to 40' where visibility was sufficient and proceeded to make our way SE and NW, carried back and forth by the swirling current in the small bay, while handling different failure scenarios and maintaining depth.

After about 40 minutes of this the dive was called, but rather than surface, we went straight into the next dive as I handed off leadership to Alan with a salute.

Before moving, we switched to our bottom stages and then dropped to 80 ft. Once at depth, we went back to backgas, then up to 70’ switching to the 50% bottle. We did 3 minutes there meanwhile swapping out the stage for the oxygen bottle, then one minute ascents to 30’. At 30’ we went back to backgas, stowed the 50% reg, and moved up to 20’. At 20’, we went onto the oxygen bottle and did one minute there followed by an ascent to 10’ and then spent the last 3 minutes going to the surface.

While at the 20-foot stop, Dan and Guy Shockey (our cameraman) spun me around to get something on my right side on video. As I would later find out, I had my light cord pretty tightly wrapped around my primary hose. By keeping it clipped off during the ascent and not checking it each time we did a bottle swap, I'd ended up clipping the primary reg off over the light hose multiple times!

Later, back at the shop, we video debriefed. Things were better than before, but trim was still an issue as well as some timidity with recognizing and handling valve failures and in doing the swaps. Dan wanted us to be resolute and "mean it" whenever we did something.

Things were finally looking up though there was a lot of room for improvement. We were just happy to be continuing on. Wednesday would be "show-me" day.

Back at the classroom after lunch, we did a lecture until evening discussing the science behind deco theory, bubble models, tissue on/off-gassing, and tying it all together to form a better picture as to why decompression is not an exact science where individual physiologies are concerned.

Day 4

The group decided to arrive at the shop at 7 am to get an even earlier start than before, only to discover that the fills we'd been given in our backgas tanks was 15/55 rather than the 18/45 trimix we'd requested! Having no one around to complain to, we simply drained off around 600 psi, and then topped them off with some O2 and air to get us to our desired voodoo gas.

We eventually made our way to the site, set up, staged tanks, and then ran through our plan. It was just the single experience dive to 150 ft. for 20 minutes, but with a stage bottle to breathe down first, followed by an ascent utilizing our two deco gasses.

We entered the water, did our pre-dive checks then kicked out around the point before we dropped down together. The descent took us about 5 minutes at which point we leveled off. The water was 46 degrees on the surface but dropped to 42 degrees at depth and there was ever so slight a current, but the conditions were as good as they were going to be. Since it was a wall, we went single file, communicating with each other in turn. Alan led, followed by Josey, then myself in the rear with Dan behind me. I hadn't thought to ask him if he was going to be a part of our team or separate and there were a few times I turned to check on him. He later told me he was supposed to be separate but not too much time was lost including him anyway.

At 500 psi we were to signal that we were going off our stage bottles. I gave the signal at 600 psi not knowing if I would need that little extra to get stabilized and get my light cord clipped off. In general, everyone tidied up fairly quickly and neatly.

The deep ascents were fine, followed by the clean-up at 80' to prepare for going on the 50% bottle. I still had problems clipping off my light in a timely fashion though, and by the time I did, we were already at 70', and Josey and Alan were going to their deco gases.

The deco stops went relatively smoothly though I distinctly remember not being able to keep up. When task saturated it was hard enough keeping control of myself which meant that I wasn't in a position to really help anyone in any meaningful way should the chance have arisen. It was apparent and bothered me to no end.

At 70' Josey fouled his SMB while trying to dislodge it from his pocket so Alan took his own out and deployed it. Once up and Josey's was stuffed back in his pocket, we continued our ascent. Up at 30' we stowed our 50% bottles, went to backgas, and then moved to 20' when the time was right. At 20' we deployed the oxygen reg and slowly made our way towards the beach whilst towing the uncooperative SMB overhead. The stage bottles were extremely positive and floated straight up in the air causing us trim issues as they were constantly trying to upend us.

After the long stop at 20', we did a 3-minute ascent to 10' and then another 3-minute ascent to the surface right near the beach. It was nice to be out just an hour or two after high tide. At last, no tank monkeys were necessary to drag our gear over the rocks!

We debriefed afterwards, tore down the gear, then went for lunch at Noodle Box (spicy lamb anyone?), followed by gear offloading at the shop and gas fills. Towards 2 pm we began the final lecture on Decompression Strategies and Contingency Management.

Afterwards, we spent time analyzing gas and preparing gear for the following day's experience dive and in going over our dive profile for it as well.

Day 5

On Thursday, we met again at 7 am, loaded up the gear and met at the site. High tide would arrive at 9 and we were happy to be able to walk straight into the water with our nearly 300 lbs. of gear each.

I had been promoted to Captain and delegated the navigation to Josey since the contour changed a bit at the site between 150' and 180' and I was unfamiliar with the site. We were all a bit more relaxed and, I think, my being asked to plan the dive as Captain forced me to become intimate with the details in a way that might otherwise be easy to ignore if, instead, I had been put in the "rocking chair position" (i.e., delegated as the third diver who is easily tempted to sit idly by). While every diver needs to be able to take over any other responsibility at a moment's notice, this is often a lot easier said than done. I think it was a good idea on Dan's part since it gave me a bit more confidence in approaching the dive and I had a lot less stress this day having visualized the dive beforehand.

The entry was the same, with all of us going on our stages from the surface and starting the bottom time counter once we descended past 70'. At 180' we leveled off then proceeded to fin around the U-shaped wall that extends below the green shallow-water buoy on the surface. We came off our stages at around 14 minutes into the dive (a tad bit better than expected), then continued on for another 6 minutes before beginning our ascent to the first deep stop. Running deco was fun and all the stops seemed effortless. My trim was rather out the window though, partly through more concentration on my part on the stops and gear (the latter of which I managed fairly quickly), and partly because I was a foot or so lower than the others and constantly looking up to see them.

The deep stops went swimmingly, as did the deco gas bottle switches and stows. I was grinning from ear to ear! (I'm a firm believer in basking in the glory of incremental improvements!)

Finally, up at 20' we faced our 13-minute deco on O2 while I noticed that I was really being upended this time due to the very positive stage bottle floating up on the leash. Contrary to Josey's wishes, I signaled him to throw the bag and, once it was up, we made our way towards the beach exit. It was pretty cold and we were all ready for the dive to be over. Visibility was extremely poor and, like an elephant in a closet, Dan stayed close at hand.

On the surface Dan gave us a brief rundown, noted the smooth dive but then said that he preferred we not do the final dive since the conditions were too poor for us to do the much longer 30-minute deco at 20'. While we each could use some work in refining some skills in different areas, the dive was called due to visibility.

We took apart our gear, loaded it up, and then went to lunch followed by our last gear offloading at the shop.

Around 2 pm we met upstairs at IDC and went over our final exams as a class before handing them in. We also discussed schedules and possibilities for completing the final dive in the coming months.

Lastly, we made our way to the local pool for our swim test. Despite being extremely anxious about the swim, we each swam the 450 meters in 10 to 11 minutes besting our practices times by 2 or more minutes! The breath hold swim was also great, each of us seemingly able to go 65-75 feet without effort. Doing the test in a 50m pool as opposed to a 25m pool proved to be a bit of a time-saver despite our intuitions to the contrary.

And with that, Dan congratulated us some more on our efforts, persistence, and noticeable improvements, and bid us farewell before he made his way back to Alberta.