Technical diving refresher
Technical diving refresher
Sometimes it can be difficult to find the time to dive. Before you know it, months have gone by and you know that you’ll be rusty when you next get in the water. Most technical divers are good at recognising this and are rightly cautious to go decompression diving after a long time out of the water because the consequences can be very serious if things are missed. There is no such thing as a formal technical diving refresher course. Yet, you can usually arrange to go out with an instructor to practice your skills.
However, this is not really adequate in my opinion. Of course, it depends on how long ago it was that you last did a tech dive. Those that do a course and then never do any dives at that level are the ones that need the most assistance.
If you think back to all the things you learned during your course- theory, dive planning, equipment, skills; an afternoon is potentially not enough time to get back up to speed, but again, this depends on your certification level and how long it’s been since you last did a tech dive.
Technical diving refresher with The Technical Diver
With me, a technical diving refresher involves recapping numerous aspects from your previous course or courses. Such as summarising diving theory, equipment workshops, dive planning, and analysing and labelling. In-water time includes shallow dives to cover diving procedures and skills. It depends on the level of your training. If you are a decompression or trimix diver then we will build back up to doing those dives. But we certainly won’t jump straight back into 60 or 100m (200-330ft) dives.
Skills practice
In this clip from my Youtube channel, Oliver has just completed staging and retrieving the left cylinder in sidemount. He didn’t remove the long hose before putting the short hose around his neck. This is not normally a problem, as you wouldn’t normally stage or retrieve the left cylinder during a dive. However, it can be common to forget to attach the LPI, and then attaching it over the long hose once in the water. So, whether it’s the LPI or the short hose that’s inhibiting proper deployment of the long hose, it’s a problem if a diver needs to share your gas.
The best way to get the point across was to allow him to complete the left cylinder retrieval, and then show him how that causes problems when I am suddenly, as if by magic, out of gas.
Contact me to discuss what kind of refresher training you require.
