Official Trip report about the Stoney gig (by Big Pete)
Hello everyone,



Me


I do apologise for the delay in getting this one up as Clare asked me a couple of days ago to do it but I was recovering from the early Stoney starts and finishing off a rather dry and scientific essay at university.

These are my thoughts and reflections on the weekend and I'll keep Clare's message up so I don't disappear off topic as I am wont to do at times.

Quote:

Pete - as you did lots of dives and workshops I'd be grateful if you would do a post setting out your thoughts about the gig this weekend - and the dinner - for those who weren't there. Would you?

So, the Stoney gig. 60 odd DIR types getting together at our favourite Cove for a weekend of workshops, diving, socialising and fun. I managed seven dives over the weekend (of which 4 were on scooters ) and took part in two and a half workshops.



In case the Halcyon kit was not clue enough....


First things first, it was great to see the fun and friendliness (read piss taking) of all the folks was as good as last year. I know there were a few interested-in-DIR folks around and I hope we put on a good front and didn't scare you away. People present included all the GUE UK instructors (Andy Kerslake, Rich Walker and John Kendall), a number of tech 1&2 types (Clare, Al, Fraser, Dave Martin, Jen Cowling, Andy Bryson and more) and cave divers Bob Cooper and John Grogan. Add to this a veritable horde of Fundies divers and the stage was set for a lot of fun.



Di makes me look big


The workshop list was (excuse plundering from another thread):

-What is DIR?
-Intro to Fundamentals
-Underwater Photography
-Intro to Tech 1
-Rescue Skills
-Line Laying
-DSMB Deployment
-Scooters
-Fundies Re- Evaluations
-Stage Rigging

I took part in the rescue skills, line laying and scooters and helped Dave Dowson on his Tech 1 practise. I'll split the thoughts below and then add bits about the meal and such.


This was Rachael Macdonald and me with Rich Walker and was focused on the GUE method of a controlled buoyant lift. Rich described to us the method of finding an unconscious diver, dumping your gas and lying on them, right hand under their chin to keep the airway open and reg in position, left hand comes under their arm to get their inflator hose. The intention of the method is to use their wing to lift you both and by keeping you both flat in the water you can use the rear dump to control your ascent. We also found that it's possible to swim the unconscious diver around underwater which might be key in exiting a wreck/cave or returning to the shot area. The final stage of the skill is to ascend with the diver controlling the wing and both suits then just before surfacing, inflate their wing a lot and tip them upright so that they end up on the surface with their head in the air and your hand under their neck ready for rescue breaths if needed.

Rich demoed on both of us and made it look easy (once he'd managed to find the wing dump on Rachael's pioneer. We had a go and found that (like many instructor demoed skills)......it ain't easy. We both had a few goes with the lifts and swimming the person around underwater and it was a good experience. It's highlighted to me again exaclty why skillls in general but particularly rescue skills need frequent practise and gives me something to work on. Thanks to Rich and Rachael




Al


This workshop was by Al and covered the basics of line use including team ordering and roles. I'd not really done any line work before and running a few practise lines in the car park highlighted that it was a real challenge. Underwater was even worse for me. Al did a great demo then we took it in turns to act as 1,2 and 3 in the team.Assuming a line astern formation, 1 lays line on entry and retrieves on exit. 2 lights up tie-offs on entry and often removes tie-offs on exit to aid 1. 3 provides further illumination and navigation on both directions.

I found Al hovering like Mr Kerslake a touch intimidating but even without him doing anything we managed to make a long winded job of most of it. I was playing about with bad light signals, having the line too loose, struggling to find a good way to hold it and completely losing the team as I focused on the line. The biggest lesson was not the line laying itself but the way that introducing a focus (line in this case) can really play havoc with your perception of the team and things outside the focus. I can imagine exactly why things get so difficult on Tech1 when scenarios would develop while trying to lay line. Thanks Al.












Over the weekend I got to have a play on 4 scooters:

All of them are a lot of fun but quite something to handle at first. By the end of the weekend I was comfy having a good mess around with them. I think Joe Hesketh and I may have the claim for most fun safety stop with all the crazy shennanigans we got up to while zipping about at 6m before getting out.

4 dives for me:


Overall the scooters are very similar though my preference was towards the X scooter. The maneuverability and comfort of riding this scooter was the best for me. Both the Gavin and the SS are very similar in design and I've been told that the tow cord length needs to be well understood or they can be a strain to drive. I certainly found them more work than the X though I got better at with each dive so it looks to be a case of getting used to the scooter.

One thing that I did note was that your light comms become much more important on scooters. A good example was when I stopped to help Dom with something and Rob was already several metres ahead by the time he turned. I was pleased with the latter two dives when I went deeper with the teams that we locked our light beams into position on the floor near to one another and it became very easy to communicate without stopping. The final dive had the fun bit that my primary cut out and I had no backups (long story) so I borrowed Howard's Heser and we went through the Stanegarth. I was impressed with him and Joe following little me with a little X when they had the bigger Gavins






First up was a message recorded for us (and Andy Kerslake) by JJ which was very very cool. Always nice to have a personal touch from the higher ups for these events.





After dinner came talks on a variety of subjects. Rich W summarised the GUE conference and covered a huge numebr of varied topics which were fascinating. The best one was his attempt to make a presentation of CLM and Danny Riordan's recent Mexico cave exploration when his notes from the conference consisted of "Bloody Amazing" and he was so wrapped up he didn't write anything more :D:

We had a talk on Tech 2 from Al which I think scared everyone away from wanting to take the course as it seemed......challenging to say the least. Well it was either that or Al putting the costs up for everyone to see (in a colour coded pie chart no less).

Bob Cooper came in with his talk on French cave diving and I think by the end even the most non cavers among us were looking at Cave 1 in a different light (me definitely included). Fantastic talk and really interesting to hear someone so passionate about that sort of diving talk about it.

Finally was Andy Kerslake with the talk of the unknown sailing ship exploration that will be run next year. We also managed a nice presentation of some very fine drinky drinky as well as an immortalised blue glove from all those who've 'enjoyed' Tech 1 with him. It's no understatement to say we're all very sad that Andy will no longer be teaching for GUE after this year though I suspect he may retain a malicious pleasure in waving a blue glove over the odd person's shoulder when diving It will be just one of those things he can't leave alone.





For me it would be an embodiment of everything that DIR and GUE stand for. A group of divers trying to improve themselves in what they do and having a lot of fun doing it. I loved the way that I dived with at least 5 people I've never dived with and we just clicked and had very comfy dives. I loved hearing about all sorts of diving that others around me are doing and it's given me all sorts of ideas of where I want to go and which route I want to go there by. Most of all it was just a lot good people having a lot of fun safely, which is what it should be about.

Thanks for reading everyone and hope more people make it next year.

Nice report Pete,

Feels like I should have been there!

Roel

You definitely should have been