UTD Tech 1, Victoria, British Columbia

Day 1

Glen P, Dave H, Kim B and I met Mark Gottfried, our instructor, at Beyond Deep Diving in Victoria at 8:00am sharp, Friday morning. All of us know Mark and have dove with him before... the admin and introductions went quickly and we were soon up to our eye brows in the presentation. The online classes work quite well and while we were going through the charts, the questions and discussions were focused on things that had already come up during our self study. It made it quite efficient.

Around noon we were joined by Guy S... our videographer for the in-water segments of the class! Our dive site for dives 1 and 2 was Henderson Point on the Saanich Inlet.

Dive 1 felt like a "show me" dive and went reasonably well until we started laying line on the pre-installed pegs (Guy made this step extra interesting by writing messages for us on the pegs... "Cold yet?", "Say goodbye to your mask!", "Peg will self destruct if removed!", "Richard is long for 'Dick'" and other witticisms). We quickly stopped chuckling into our regs once the "simple" failures started to happen.

Dive 2 was similar to Dive 1 except that we were subjected to team failures that required us to think about the consequences of our actions with failures present. I'd like to report that everything went smoothly and that we impressed our instructor and videographer with our sharp underwater intellect and reactions. Really... I'd like to.

We returned to Beyond Deep Diving (owned by Dave Healy, one of our class mates!) for the video debrief and discussion.

Day 2

We met at Henderson Point at 8:00am. Kim B had to deal with some personal business and did not join us for the rest of the class. In the water, we continued with the escalation of failures, adding "no mask line following", OOG, complex valve failures and gas switches. Now, these all sound daunting enough but even more so when these failures were "non-resetting" and had to be dealt with for the balance of the dive. For example, a failed light cannot be turned back on, a lost mask cannot be replaced with your backup, and a failed post cannot be "un-failed". Even though this is a basic tech class, the thought processes required clearly demonstrates the need for "thinking divers". Mistakes were made... yes, I admit it... In response to a failure, I tried to turn off Daves right post, not thinking that I was sharing air from his long hose... idiot! Thankfully, Dave pushed my hand away and I realized what I was doing. We were only 10 feet away from a gas switch and Dave had obviously thought this through.

Dives 3 and 4 were similar in complexity. It was very clearly demonstrated that only though skill development and practice can you create the bandwidth you need to effectively deal with problems while diving. We were all challenged and allowed the opportunity to problem solve. It was a great chance to see a range of problems that could potentially happen... staged in a controlled environment with coaching and review to solidify the learning experience.

A long debrief was held in the parking lot mainly to discuss Glen's underwear. A violent shiver, caught in HD for all time by Guy's camera was the source of much laughter by all except Glen!!! Very few activities allow such candor in the discussion of each others underwear!

The balance of the day was spent back at Beyond Deep Diving where the discussion was mainly about decompression theory. We reviewed our exams and planned the next days dives. We finished the day by helping Dave mix the 25/25 gas we would be using and making sure we had the 02 bottles full and properly marked. Dave had arranged a charter with Rockfish Divers out of Brendwood Bay and we would be diving the sponges at Senanus Island.

Day 3

I won't go into much detail about these dives. They were experience dives which allowed us to use everything we talked about for the previous two days. It was the first time I had breathed helium. We had great weather... it was calm... the viz at depth was spectacular... and the sponges were beautiful. It's true that we were so task focused that we didn't really spend much time enjoying the sponges (!) but I can confidently say that we all enjoyed the day immensely. Oh there were shortcomings... our run time management was off, our ascents were quite sloppy... but we were diving a plan that we put together from what we had learned and we safely implemented that plan. With practice, we will develop proficiency and we will enjoy this caliber of diving even more. These dives were followed by a one-on-one session with Mark to self evaluate and discuss our performances. We were all given "solid" passes and encouraged to continue to practice and enjoy diving. It was a great weekend.

Many thanks to:

Mark Gottfried, UTD
Guy Shockey, Videographer and Dive Mentor
Dave Healy, Beyond Deep Diving
Rockfish Divers and captain Eric
Fellow students Glen, Dave, and Kim