Instructor Foundation Course

For all those divers who are thinking about instructing, and even non divers who may possibly consider diving in the future I present to you an entry from another blog I had back in 2007, after I took the plunge and took the IFC, the first step towards becoming a scuba diving instructor. I fully recommend it!

April 1st 2007

Moving Up by Going Down

I have passed my IFC instructor course with BSAC scuba diving and am now an instructor!
Matt and I drove to a grotty public school in Pimlico in the middle of London at 7am Saturday (it had stalactites  and sat through a series of lectures before throwing ourselves in the drink and being taught to teach by national instructors.

In my group were Steve, Dan and Simon; or as I thought, Future John Gane, Eric Clapton and Victor Meldrew. We had a few laughs, planned a load of lessons and then were each assigned a topic to complete for the next day. I was to give a theory lesson on BCD's and a practical session on mask clearing.

Got home at about 9pm and spent an hour making a powerpoint presentation and 10 lesson plan for a 10 minute theory lesson, and wrote up a dive slate for the practical.

On the second day we all did our theory lessons. I got the group involved in trying on the BC, cylinder and regs along with demonstrating how it was used, which Pete (our instructor) was impressed by. My mask clear demo was good as well, along with teaching novices to kits up, enter and exit the pool safely. Eric Clapton had to teach buoyancy control, but overnight his cylinder emptied to 90bar, and he wore a wet suit without a weightbelt. So it was ironic that he was floating like a cork and unable to teach!

I'm now a qualified A.D.I. instructor!

And now I'm so tired!

We're Going To Need A Bigger Boat...

Date: Sunday 21st July 2013          Dive Number: 170
Place: Mewstone, Plymouth           Buddy: Steve G 
Time Down: 1130                           Dive Time: 01:03
Time Up: 1235                               Max Depth: 13.4m
Visibility: 4-5m                             Water Speed: 0kn
Weather: F5-F6. Water 19C.       Entry: Boat (Tivvy Rebel)

I learnt something this weekend. Our boat is not called 'Humber' - that is the naem of the model which is glued to the bow The club name for the boat is Tivvy Rebel. We quickly sorted loaded the boat with twelve cylinders, six sets of kit and six divers... and despite the title of this post (a favourite quote of mine from Jaws, so it's staying) there was plenty of manoeuvrability on the boat. Steve

L to R, Steve, Andy and Dave. Photo by D.Dooley.

 took the helm and aimed towards the Persia. As soon as we got past the Breakwater it started to get rather choppy, with salty spray whipping our faces and making my contact lenses feel slightly crispy in my eyes. It started to become rather rough past Mewstone, so we made an about turn and powered back to the lee of the Mewstone where conditions were a little more settled. A handful of other dive boats had exactly the same idea. 

Andy and Dave; David and Elizabeth went on the first wave while Steve gave me control of the boat. After a few figures of eight in the slacker water I decided to try and save some petrol and cut the power for a little while, without consulting Steve. The moment I turned the key I regretted my decision, as we always have to start the engine with a spare battery. Steve looked rather concerned as we repeatedly tried the ignition, followed by a deafening lack of sound coming from the engine. We left it for a minute or so and tried again, and she just spluttered into life. That was a close one! Needless to say I left her ticking over when I decided to drift upstream of the divers. 

Mewstone (bbc.co.uk)

Both pairs ascended almost simultaneously, so we swiftly retrieved David and Elizabeth before catching up with Andy and Dave. David had took some clear pictures of sea fan, leopard spot fish and Mixycola. Andy was triumphantly clutching a speargun which he found on his dive, he plans to clean it up and get it working (hopefully not planning to aggravate George the Plymouth dolphin or any seals with it). Our turn came, we kitted up and spent over an hour navigating our way towards Mewstone. To be honest there was very little to see except for kelp and a couple of fish. I wanted to find some decent kit, or interesting bit of wreckage from something, but nothing turned up. The most interesting thing in my opinion was Mewstone, which we  reached at a depth of 1.3m. We had to turn around and swim back into deeper water so we could deploy my Delayed Surface Marker Buoy so the boat could find us and pick us up. At least we got wet.

Sea Fan. Photo by D. Dooley. 

Date: Sunday 21st July 2013            Dive Number: 171
Place: Plymouth Breakwater Fort Buddy: Steve G 
Time Down: 1600                           Dive Time: 00:23
Time Up: 1630                               Max Depth: 13.4m
Visibility: 1-2m                             Water Speed: 1kn
Weather: F3-F4. Water 18C.       Entry: Boat (Tivvy Rebel)

After a two hour surface interval at Fort Bovisand involving a toilet break, a bottle of water, a packet of ready salted crisps and a Snickers bar, we suddenly realised that it was half three in the afternoon. Each of us called our respective wives to warn them that we would be much later getting back than previously anticipated. Some of us got more stick than others, but thankfully I consider myself to have gotten off lightly! 

Fort Bovisand (panoramio.com)

We decided to stick to the lee of the breakwater where things were calmer and dive a single circuit around Plymouth Breakwater Fort to keep the dive nice and short. To shorten the length of time on the water further Andy and Dave volunteered to crew the boat and miss out on the second dive. Myself and Steve descended on an unassuming area of silt, I propped up a piece of scrap metal against the fort base to mark our arrival. We made our way anticlockwise around the fort, visibility was rather poor due to the silt. It was more interesting to explore though, looking at all the mangled iron and steel which had dropped off the old fort over time. We swam against a slight current on the first half of the circuit, and were rewarded for our efforts with a pleasant drift around the other side. I spied my piece of metal and a rusty ladder which was lying close by, and I signalled to Steve to ascend. We clambered aboard once more and a further 15 minutes went by before David and Elizabeth popped up and we motored back to port. 

Plymouth Breakwater Fort (worldseafishing.com)

Ansteys Cove, Torquay

Date: Sunday 7th July 2013            Dive Number: 169
Place: Ansteys Cove, Torquay       Buddy: Keith S 
Time Down: 0930                           Dive Time: 00:57
Time Up: 1030                               Max Depth: 5.3m
Visibility: 6-8m                             Water Speed: 0kn
Weather: Warm and sunny           Entry: Shore

The weather is stunning. The jet stream has gone for a holiday over Iceland and has left us with hot sunny weather for the beginning of July at least. What better way to enjoy this warm sunshine than from under the water! Today my wife and sons also decided to come along to watch us, and take photos of us all through the morning.

The plan was for a shore dive from Ansteys Cove in Torquay, a mere hop along from Babbacombe Bay on the other side of the cliffs. It's quite a steep drive from the top gate and after dropping diving equipment off at the quayside we returned our vehicles to the car park at the top. At least parking was free which was a welcome bonus and made the trek seem worth it!

I paired with Keith who was doing his first dive of the season. It was such a hot morning especially under all our layers that all we wanted to do was get into the cold water! I decided to take my surface marker buoy in on this dive. Although it was six years old I had never used it until today, I had always used delayed SMBs, the variety you inflate deploy from depth. We descended down to the shore and waded in, the cool water providing a blissful relief as we donned our fins and masks. We decided to swim out to the right of the bay, along the cliffs for one third of our air supply (assuming no currents) and then turn around. It was an exploratory dive as neither of us had shore dived from Anstey before.

We surface swam from the shore out to a reasonable sinking depth, whereupon we descended to three meters. We skimmed across the seaweed and kept our eyes open for life, which had reportedly been scarce on the last dive. The plankton bloom had since moved on and visibility was fair to good, I estimated around 6-8m, possibly up to 10m in places when looking towards the cliff. The first lifeform I spotted was a dazzling bioluminescent comb jellyfish, which was zapping all sorts of colourful lights down itself. I pointed it out to Keith, but he didn't seem too impressed. Judging by the fact we saw dozens more of them on the dive, I guess he'd seen plenty before!

There were plenty of wrasse, including one very big pregnant one which was lazing amongst the seaweed. There were also some other jellyfish, and fish identification being a weakness of mine I will resign myself to refer to them as 'classic' jellyfish. The ones with a hollow dome shaped body and tentacles coming down out from the middle. It was difficult to get any depth below three meters, so I directed us slightly away from the cliff wall, hoping to find a drop-off which would give the dive a bit of variety. It did eventually drop off to about five meters, but the visibility was very poor, reminiscent of the last dive we did in Babbacombe where visibility was only 1-2m. We retreated back to the clear waters of the shelf and continued to weave our way between the outcrops of rock and seaweed.

Nursehound. Photo by David Dooley.

After half an hour we turned back, I also had to briefly ascend (stand up) to get my bearings just in case we had drifted further than anticipated and thankfully we had gone where I though we had gone, which is a moderate achievement without a compass as it can be very disorientating underwater. We didn't see much else in the way of flora and fauna, but Keith did spot a sizeable dogfish or nursehound which swam towards us to investigate before turning tail and scarpering! I was able to identify points that we had passed on the way, a rock outcrop which had a trianglur peak sticking out of the water, three clear patches in a line and a long transverse ridge of seaweed which required circumnavigation. We hit the bay dead on return, with a dive time of 57 minutes and a maximum depth of 5.3m.

After debriefing, dekitting and rehydrating I gathered the family up and went for a slap up meal in a restaurant in Newton Abbott, then returned home to wash off the kit, which I delegated to someone else...

Accumulated time underwater: 3 days, 11 hours and 5 minutes.