Diary of a Commercial Diver in Training
Finding our Way The ones who haven’t had a chance to try the mask yesterday are giving it a go today and have all brought their regulators in for Tato to change them over. [metaslider id=”888″] All of us will be busy trying to find our way in zero visibility water, to increasingly difficult targets….Continue Reading “Day 13 – Orientation & Full-Face Masks”
Starting to Look the Part When we arrive in the classroom this morning we each get handed a compass. Today we’re going to practise underwater orientation. The dock is great place for that, considering you can barely see the hand in front of your eyes, which makes it hard to use underwater landmarks to “cheat”….Continue Reading “Day 12 – First Time Full Face”
Practise Makes Perfect The weekend has passed and it’s time to review everything we’ve learned and trained last week. There’s wood cutting, lift-bag floating, mooring-inspections and flanges all over the place. After the flange, we get to do the lift-bag again and I open the release valve too far. Damn! The weight pulls the bag…Continue Reading “Day 11 – Rinse and Repeat”
Lift Bags and Heavy weights We’re back in the dock today and it’s time to learn how to use the lift-bags. Before we head out, Cesar and Tato go over the procedures again and we’re off to squeeze ourselves into our wet, cold suits again, luckily it’s sunny and warm out today. Ronan, Nestor and…Continue Reading “Day 10 – Floating Weights”
Rescue Exercises on the Beach Today we’ll be training for worst case scenarios and learn various rescue techniques as well as refresh our emergency first response training. We’ve all gotten ready and lined up in our suits and BCDs, we’re on our way to the beach. It starts out with three different rescue techniques in…Continue Reading “Day 9 – Rescue and First Aid”
Back in the Dock It’s cold today, really cold. The thermometer in my car showed 7°C when I got here this morning and it’s raining. I am not looking forward to getting into my wet, cold suit and jump into the 16°C, mirky port water. But at least we’ll get to do the “Brida”-thing today….Continue Reading “Day 8 – Nuts and Bolts”
Working in Zero-Visibility We’re back in the dock today and after repeating yesterday’s exercise there’s a new challenge for us: sawing a chunk off 2-by-4in piece of lumber. Sawing wood isn’t really my forte on the surface… this should be fun under water. I’m paired with Ronan and Toni today and Alvaro going to dive…Continue Reading “Day 7 – A First Look at the “Cool Toys””
First Day in the Harbour Today we’re finally going to start diving in the harbour. The water is cold, really cold. And the instructors have already prepared us for the fact that there will be next to no visibility. I’m really excited, this should be fun. Our job today is to check the mooring system…Continue Reading “Day 6 – Mirky Waters…”
Now or Never Today is the last day of pool exercizes, tomorrow we are done learning how to dive and will begin learning how to work under water. It’s been quite an intense week for most of the guys, having to learn what most Divemaster trainees learn in a month or more. … and the…Continue Reading “Day 5 – Got it?”
Another Try Right after we arrive in the morning we get quite the talking to by Cesar. “Yesterday was quite the disaster! I get it, first day. Let’s not let that happen again!” We’re all a little quiet. After Cesar explains the pool exercises for today we start packing up our kit. Everybody wants to…Continue Reading “Day 4 – Let’s get it right this time”