UTD Ratio Deco with AG in Vancouver, BC Canada

Hey everyone!

I wanted to tell you about my recent experience attending the Ratio Deco class held here in Vancouver, BC just last weekend. It was an amazing class and I learned TONS!

I have been diving for the last five years mostly in the recreational level and have just in the past year become involved in the technical and DIR community. I have been exposed to the UTD philosophy through Todd Powell, the local UTD instructor who was responsible for setting up this Ratio Deco class with Andrew.
It was quite a last minute thing as Andrew was originally coming to BC to dive a project in Victoria, BC with a group of local UTD diver and Instructors. We were all very grateful to Todd for putting this all together in such short notice and not only finding people to take the course on such short notice but handling all the logistics. So with only a few days to prepare ourselves we eagerly anticipated the upcoming Ratio Deco course.

The day started off with most of the group meeting at the local ABC Restaurant for breakfast. Everyone needed to power up for a marathon brain work day ahead. Andrew was driving up from Seattle and when he arrived we headed up to SFU where we met the rest of the class.

There were 9 people attending the Ratio Deco and we had a huge range of experience within the group. We had everything from students at the UTD Rec 2 level, students in the middle of their UTD Tech 1, several recently certified tech divers and even a couple of the UTD instructors who came along for fun. With such a wide range of experience we were set for a great day of learning ... And some definite head scratching!

After all the introductions were out of the way we jumped straight into some decompression theory. Andrew started off with a topic that is usually on the minds of new divers or especially divers new to tech: what are you afraid of in diving? ... And he didn't mean shark attacks! After squashing a few common misconceptions everyone seemed to be following along, though I have to admit we were a fairly quiet bunch to start!

From there we moved on to bubble mechanics and actually understanding what is happening to our bodies during decompression. One of the things that has most attracted me to UTD is the desire to increase my understanding and I found Andrew's teaching very refreshing. It is enlightening to have a WHY behind the theory and practice we do instead of just because the book says so!

I think somewhere around this point things started becoming “clear as mud”, to borrow Andrew's words!! Depending on your previous experience with this information it is a whole lot of information to take in! Even with experience it is still a LOT of info! Although there was one non-diver in the room who seemed to be grasping it all and putting a few of us tech divers to shame ...

As we started in on the application of Ratio Deco our collective level of understanding was definitely challenged!
Starting with Min Deco or NDL dives we worked through practical examples of how to plan our dives all the way up to the 2:1 decompression range. For some reason the thing that seemed to trip us all up the most was the deep stops ... Not sure if we were all just sleepy after lunch or what!

We covered so much information it would take me days to just summarize it all! I have to say that what I learned in this class was so valuable to my knowledge as a diver, not just on a tech level but in all my diving. I believe that all divers should understand at least somewhat what is actually happening to them on a dive. I very much respect and enjoy Andrew's teaching and I am so glad I was able to be a part of this course. It was a huge amount of information to absorb in a single day but all of the repeat students say that their second time was even better and this is definitely a course I would sit in on again and again.

Thank you Andrew for an enlightening day.

Kathryn