I can’t believe that I talked Dive Mom into letting me go to the Red Sea for training, Lebanon for a diving expedition and take an Expedition Trimix Instructor Course in Grand Cayman, all but the Lebanon trip within 3 months. But here I am in sunny Grand Cayman at my home away from home, Cobalt Coast diving with Nancy and the fine folks at DiveTech.
In order to participate in the September Expedition, Tom wanted us to complete an Expedition Trimix course. In talking with Tom, I was able to combine it with an instructor Evaluation clinic so I would be in a position to teach it in the future. There were a number of us in this course – Peri Blum, Georges Galowski, Jeff Jones, Nat Rob, Randy Terrill, and Dave Snyder.
Our plate during this course was full and Nancy constantly wondered when we were planning on getting in the water. We had lectures, presentations and discussions until midnight each evening, discussions continuing at breakfast at 9:00 am and equipment preparation during the day. We eventually got some water time each afternoon, swimming out to the mini wall along a line we had to lay for some drills and eventually out to the main wall for some more drills – we had to run the line all the way out to the wall and down to 200’
The last dive of the course was a 400’ dive using paired safety divers at various depths. Like one of our previous dives, this one turned into more of a learning experience than we planned for with Tom having a rebreather issue and one of the other divers having another issue. The problems fell within things a diver at this level is trained to handle but it did show that things can and do go wrong even on carefully planned dives. Nat and I had a very long deco on this dive so it was a good thing the snack king had in fact brought along some mini snickers bars and a few juice packs.
This was an excellent course and one that I learned a lot from that I can take into my other, shallower dives. I think we all gained a new respect for the sea and what a difference the extra 70 feet can make. 400 feet is a long way down!
