scububa
April 12th, 2010, 12:57 PM
Trimix classes at Table Rock
I went down with Phil on Friday to Table Rock for Trimix training. I am pursuing my Normoxic Trimix certification. Much of the detail will be in Phil's report, so I'll focus on the basics and my particular's.
We drove down on Friday to get in a dive to insure Phil's ears were up to the class diving. We did a nice little dive off of his property and Phil towed a flag. We dove a single configuration since all the doubles had Trimix in them. The weather was gorgeous! (I'll say this a few more times.) The dive went well and we proceded to grill up some dinner and get ready to head over to SLIM's for paperwork, tanks and initial briefings. After we departed SLIM's we headed back to Phil's to square away gear and get ready for the next day.
For me, this was the first time to dive a separate dry suit inflation bottle. So, we had to hook that up. Somehow in the process of getting it rigged up, Phil heard a hiss from the doubles I picked up from SLIM. We soap isolated it to the manifold and could not find a point where it did not leak. Shut the isolator and called SLIM. He said instead of us running it back to his place, he'd bring another set. (Later he 'boosted' the remaining gas out to another set.)
The plan for me was to carry two deco gasses (plus the argon bottle). I was looking forward to looking like a sideways turtle the whole dive. The good news was that Phil would be task with shooting the bag. As I hooked up for the first dive, all the reconfiguring with tanks, etc., I found the argon bottle had too short a hose. I had purposely left my left post inflator on as a back up. Since the run time was relatively short, I elected to inflate with my 20/30. In some ways I am glad I did this. I was very cold by the end of the dive, but I don't think I would have believed and appreciated the reality of how cold the helium lets things get. As for my dive performance, I was surprised that the extra left side load was not as difficult to compensate for as I feared. (It has been a while since I swam two bottles for any distance. I have gotten use to staging at 20 and 70 feet in the caves.) All and all, my dive went pretty well. Gas switches, team work and deco was done with relative smoothness. I did get some cramps in my calves at depth as we turned the dive. I was hoping that they were partly due to the extra cold I experienced with the He in the inflation.
The dive ended with a standard SLIM debrief and while somethings weren't as good as other things, it seemed to be passable. At that point, SLIM experienced some significant blood residue in sinsus discharge. Given my leg cramps, we started thinking another dive might not be a good idea. So, we headed back to SLIM's to move a lot of gas around to be ready for tomorrow. We had more classroom and debrief as gas migrated from various cylinders into the dive set for day 2. We went back to Phil's to shower and we met Bill and Peg at Shorty Small's for dinner and then we went over to the Chateau for an ice cream and the timing was perfect to watch the sunset. While we were picking out our flavors, I heard Mitch from the marina say, "What are you doing here?" He was all dressed up to chaperone a Prom there. After I introduced him to the group, we commented that we were surprised that we recognized each other with our 'clothes' on. Then we realized just how wrong that sounded to everyone within ear shot :-) And, it was a absolutely perfect day!
The second day, with a rerigged inflator hose, I mounted up that system, but was not very confident that the argon bottle was attached securely. It was a larger 13 cuft bottle. Phil had a second 6 cuft unit, so I tried it in the starp system and it was secure. At this point I couldn't get the regulator to attach with out a leak. After a couple orings and swap-tronics, we pulled out another 1st stage and successfully rigged my gear. I was pretty motivated this time to not use He in my suit! I was beginning to think I was nver going to get a 5th regulator into the equation.
Finally, dive planning brief and off into the next dive. This dive went well for me. Again, Phil had most of the task loading. Bags, dive lead, deco coordination, OOA drills, etc. I felt a bit bad, but I have been in the same predicament and realize the pay off. And, I know the next session, much of it will shift to me. I was glad to have a chance to get use to the added configuration without the rest and I did help to manage some of the dive parameters and navigation. On this dive, with all of the argon bottle back and forth, I hooked up and did a little 'pssss' test into the dry suit. In the water we went over lights, s-drill, bubble check, final plan run thru and we headed intot the dive. I hit my dry suit button and NOTHING. Dang. I reach down and see that I have the correct fitting in place and wiggle it, NOTHING. I disconnect and reconnect, NOTHING. Hmmmm, reach back and grab the valve and turn. It was off. All systems go. I was able to do this with out much slowing down, loss of bouancy or flipping on my side with the stages. It wasn't a planned drill, but even being a new configuration, I went thru it fairly efficiently and corrected it. Oh, and once again, it was a perfect day!
I went down with Phil on Friday to Table Rock for Trimix training. I am pursuing my Normoxic Trimix certification. Much of the detail will be in Phil's report, so I'll focus on the basics and my particular's.
We drove down on Friday to get in a dive to insure Phil's ears were up to the class diving. We did a nice little dive off of his property and Phil towed a flag. We dove a single configuration since all the doubles had Trimix in them. The weather was gorgeous! (I'll say this a few more times.) The dive went well and we proceded to grill up some dinner and get ready to head over to SLIM's for paperwork, tanks and initial briefings. After we departed SLIM's we headed back to Phil's to square away gear and get ready for the next day.
For me, this was the first time to dive a separate dry suit inflation bottle. So, we had to hook that up. Somehow in the process of getting it rigged up, Phil heard a hiss from the doubles I picked up from SLIM. We soap isolated it to the manifold and could not find a point where it did not leak. Shut the isolator and called SLIM. He said instead of us running it back to his place, he'd bring another set. (Later he 'boosted' the remaining gas out to another set.)
The plan for me was to carry two deco gasses (plus the argon bottle). I was looking forward to looking like a sideways turtle the whole dive. The good news was that Phil would be task with shooting the bag. As I hooked up for the first dive, all the reconfiguring with tanks, etc., I found the argon bottle had too short a hose. I had purposely left my left post inflator on as a back up. Since the run time was relatively short, I elected to inflate with my 20/30. In some ways I am glad I did this. I was very cold by the end of the dive, but I don't think I would have believed and appreciated the reality of how cold the helium lets things get. As for my dive performance, I was surprised that the extra left side load was not as difficult to compensate for as I feared. (It has been a while since I swam two bottles for any distance. I have gotten use to staging at 20 and 70 feet in the caves.) All and all, my dive went pretty well. Gas switches, team work and deco was done with relative smoothness. I did get some cramps in my calves at depth as we turned the dive. I was hoping that they were partly due to the extra cold I experienced with the He in the inflation.
The dive ended with a standard SLIM debrief and while somethings weren't as good as other things, it seemed to be passable. At that point, SLIM experienced some significant blood residue in sinsus discharge. Given my leg cramps, we started thinking another dive might not be a good idea. So, we headed back to SLIM's to move a lot of gas around to be ready for tomorrow. We had more classroom and debrief as gas migrated from various cylinders into the dive set for day 2. We went back to Phil's to shower and we met Bill and Peg at Shorty Small's for dinner and then we went over to the Chateau for an ice cream and the timing was perfect to watch the sunset. While we were picking out our flavors, I heard Mitch from the marina say, "What are you doing here?" He was all dressed up to chaperone a Prom there. After I introduced him to the group, we commented that we were surprised that we recognized each other with our 'clothes' on. Then we realized just how wrong that sounded to everyone within ear shot :-) And, it was a absolutely perfect day!
The second day, with a rerigged inflator hose, I mounted up that system, but was not very confident that the argon bottle was attached securely. It was a larger 13 cuft bottle. Phil had a second 6 cuft unit, so I tried it in the starp system and it was secure. At this point I couldn't get the regulator to attach with out a leak. After a couple orings and swap-tronics, we pulled out another 1st stage and successfully rigged my gear. I was pretty motivated this time to not use He in my suit! I was beginning to think I was nver going to get a 5th regulator into the equation.
Finally, dive planning brief and off into the next dive. This dive went well for me. Again, Phil had most of the task loading. Bags, dive lead, deco coordination, OOA drills, etc. I felt a bit bad, but I have been in the same predicament and realize the pay off. And, I know the next session, much of it will shift to me. I was glad to have a chance to get use to the added configuration without the rest and I did help to manage some of the dive parameters and navigation. On this dive, with all of the argon bottle back and forth, I hooked up and did a little 'pssss' test into the dry suit. In the water we went over lights, s-drill, bubble check, final plan run thru and we headed intot the dive. I hit my dry suit button and NOTHING. Dang. I reach down and see that I have the correct fitting in place and wiggle it, NOTHING. I disconnect and reconnect, NOTHING. Hmmmm, reach back and grab the valve and turn. It was off. All systems go. I was able to do this with out much slowing down, loss of bouancy or flipping on my side with the stages. It wasn't a planned drill, but even being a new configuration, I went thru it fairly efficiently and corrected it. Oh, and once again, it was a perfect day!