PADi Enriched Air Speciality Instructor Course

Well completed another PADi Speciality Instructor course last night.

After spending a couple of hours in a classs they are now letting me loose with students who want to complete there Nitrox course.

As for teaching the course it's a matter of letting the system do the work.

There is some nice formula's to remember how to do the maths because you're allowed a copy of them for the exam.

Right need some students to practice on who's brave enough then.

Holborough Lake 24th October 2010

Went down to Holborough Lake, Snodland in Kent for a dive today. When I got up the weather was brilliant sunshine which is always a good start to the day. Along with sarah we were meeting Helen and Jon and a few others from DiveBuddy UK.

We got there a little late due to an accident on the A21. Anyway when we got there we was told that the visability was 10+ meteres, we walked on the jetty and we could see clearly down to the botton of the lake at around 8 meteres.

We all started kitting up I was using a twinset with a 140bar of 28% nitrox left over from a recent wreck dive, everyone else was using single 12liter cyclinders. On entering the water it was a nice 15 degree's C. We swam out to the plaform and used the descent line using it as a reference line, Jon and myself went down first followed by Helen and Sarah with the aim of completing Sarah's navigation part of her PADi Advanced Open Water Course.

Sarah managed to complete the resipicle part before she had some problem with the cold and her throat so it was out the water for her.

That left the rest of us, Helen, Jon and myself time for a nice swim around the lake. We descended and followed the ropes from one object to another the visability was still in the 10+ meters which made an ideal photo oppertunitity. From the platform were we did the navigation from we headed over to the "Sweet Mystery" a large boat wreck, then onto the speed boat where Helen and Jon decided to get into it and try and drive it.

Then onto the large tracker tyres were we was greeted by six really large perch which seemed happy to have there photo's taken.

We carried on following the rope when the we started to ascend upto around 6 meters where on top of the mound was alot ot objects from a cannon, anchor and a ships compass, however the strangest object was a statue of a gargoil, Helen decided that it needed a kiss only to get a nice slimmy return kiss from it, good job she never used tongues. Over the mound still following the ropes we came to yet another platform then onto half a car burried in the side of the lake. You have to keep your eye's open as there is some unmarked objects, these include cannons, compasses, statues and old motorbikes.

The good news is that were going to return next sunday and have yet another look around the lake.

One thing to be aware of with Holborough Lake is there isn't any maps of what objects they have placed in the lake which makes every dive an adventure.

PADi Night Diver Speciality Instructor Course

Last night completed the PADi Night Diver Speciality Instructur course at Holborough Lake, near Snodland Kent. The tempature was dropping rether quickly with the clear sky's I'd say it was down to 5-6 degrees by 7.00pm.

Ryby(http://www.blueoceandiving.co.uk/) our course director went through all the explaination of what needs to be achived by the students over the 3 dives. This included signals, talking about torches and also how to prepare for the night dive. e all kitted up and headed into the water, it was warmer in the water than out.

It had been aggreed that we would do 2 dives tonight with a short surface interval then onto dive 2. We all descended down to an 8m platform.



Dive 1: This dive was more of a navigation dive around the objects in the lake this was with the torches on the visability was upto 10m and the perch and the small pike were out looking for food

Dive2: We descended back to the platform then one by one we switched our torches out waited around 30-40 seconds for our eyes to adjust to the light, then Ryby led the way as we all went off for a swim with the torches off. even though we had no lights it was amazing how much you can see with very little light, we all managed to get back to the platform.

Well that was another PADi speciality Instructor course completed so onto Enriched Air next.

PADi Instructor Exam

The Instructor Exams are being held in Bristol and at Vobster on the 2nd and 3rd of October 2010. The group from Blue Ocean will be travelling down on the friday and staying over night ready for the start at 7.30am.




Day 1

Meet up and get a breifing from PADi staff regarding the flow of the weekend

Standards Exam50 questions from the PADi standards this is an open book exam lasting 1.5 hours

5 Core Exams

12 questions on each topic closed book

Physics

Physiology
Equipment
Recreatational Dive Planning
Enviorment

Knowledge Development Presentation:
OWD Manual, Knowledge Review Chapter 5 question 6 eRDP ML

Q. What is the minimum surface interval required between a dive to 18 meters for 40 minutes followed by a dive to 14meters for 60 minutes.

A. 28 minutes


Skills Circuit: Jon was the lucky man to pick the skills circuit that we had to do, we later found that it didn't matter which one he picked they was all the same.

1. Weight Belt removal at the surface
2. Alternative Air Source Use
3. Hoover
4. Mask removal and Replace

5. Controlled Emergency Swimming Ascent (CESA)

Teaching in confined water:

Skill: Neutral Buoyancy Underwater (Power Inflation) OWD Course Dive 2

Day2

Teching in Open Water

Skill 1: Alternate Air Source Stationary OWD Course Dive 2

Skill 2: Controlled Emergency Swimming Ascent (CESA) OWD Course Dive Flexible Skill


Rescue Assesment
These are two very long days and you feel drained after you have completed after the exams you get some time to prepare the classroom presentation, then a short break and into the pool for the skills circuit followed by your confined water presentation. Is required the following:

BREIFING
DEMOSTRATION
STUDENTS DEMO
DE-BREIFING


You are then free to leave and relax that evening ready for day two. If you have failed any exams from the Core Exams then you can resit them in the morning, I'm glad to say that I didn't need to resit any part of the IE.

Finally I was given this

EFR Instructor Course

Well the time is fast approaching for the start of my EFR Instructor course, currently I don't know if I'm going to enjoy it or it'll be a total ball ache.

Anyway by the end of the week I should be an EFR Instructor.

PADi Oxygen Provider Certification

I recently spent a enjoyable sunday morning down at Blue Ocean Diving in Maidstone and completed my PADi Oxygen Provider Certification.

This is the perfect addition to the EFR and the PADi Rescue diver courses.

Alunia out of Eastbourne

On sunday the 15th August George arranged for some of the members of UK DiveBuddy to dive the wreck of the Alunia about 10 miles out from Eastbourne.

We all met up at Eastbourne Marina at 8.00am ready to board our boat for the day "SUSSEX". George and myself was joined by Tony, Mark, Cel and Dieago.

Wind could have been better however we gave it a go and headed to the lock, and then the 10 mile trip out to the Alunia.

The Alunia is one of the largest ship wrecks on the Sussex coast approximately 532 feet and standing about 6-8m up from the sea bed and lying in 30m of water. As we all kitted up and checked our gear the usual banter started .

This was Cel and Dieago's first real UK wreck dive, so we buddied up George and Dieago with Cel and myself this left Tony and Mark to do there own thing. The skipper lined up and the first 2 divers went in and down the shot line, the 4 of us had aggreed to go last in giving everyone else a chance to get clear as we knew there could be possible problems with Cel never being deeper than 18m's. It was our time to get into the water as we stepped off the lift one by one into the water. We gathered at the top of the bouy and prepared to desend down the shot line, Dieago and George went first then Cel and myself followed slowly, we got to about 12m and Cel just needed a few seconds to settle himself then down the shot line again we went. we had soon reached 20m so I stopped and shock Cel's hand he'd already been deeper than ever before, this also had the effect of taking his mind of how deep we was, we looked down and could see the dark mass of the wreck below. We reached the wreck the visibility was around 5-8m's the torches was switched on as we started to peer through the hull, George managed to spot a huge conger in one of the holes, the hull had hundreds of small pouting and the occasional pollock swimming by.

Cel followed me to the seabed where eh managed just under 27m of depth again this was another personal best for him. We continued to explore the hull however all to soon our time was up and we had to start back to the surface. I signalled George to send up his SMB passing me the reel he inflated the SMB and off it rocketed to the surface. I then inflated mine and another SMB missled to the surface we split into our buddy pairs andslowly ascended to the surface.

The boat came round and Cel got on the lift first, then follwoed by myself Dieago and George had already been picked up, as we dekitted the boat manouvored around to pick up Mark and Tony. Soon we was all safe on the boat , with Cel having completed his first wreck dive and achieved 27m also.