UW Explorers Dot Net

After 2 days off, and another day as charter operator, I just had to get into the water. Sure enough, the shop had not even been closed for 20 minutes, and I was already in the water enjoying a fun dive down in Tuwanek.

I quickly descended down to 60 - 70 feet, following the wall on the left island around until I spotted the descent line on the mooring buoy. Right in that general area, there is a large slab of rock and there he was, a Giant Pacific Octopus.

Great dive…even if it was a quicky!!

There is a big congratulations to passed along to Peter and Jeremy as they sucessfully completed the PADI Wreck course that was held on the weekend, thanks to Suncoast Diving.

Friday was the first day of the Wreck course. The two students conducted a complete survey and image re creation of the sail boat which is resting in 30 feet of water at Tuwanek Point. Everything went well, both students demonstrated excellent buoyancy and diving skills.

On with Day Two, the HMCS CHAUDIERE, where the first dive on Saturday had us navigating and mapping the wreck in order to find a good penetration point for the last dive of the specialty. Both students were up for a couple easy swim throughs on the wreck. The next dive had both students working on running the penetrations reels on the out side of the wreck which can be tricky…though both students did an excellent job!

Sunday was the big day for the penetration, Jeremy and Peter decided to penetrate on the forward gun bay door, through the bride, and down the Ops Room ladder, and through the Operations Room and exiting through the cut out on the Starboard side. Both did an excellent job!

Well done to all!!

Another busy week has passed with many different course going on. Jeremy and Bruno were completing Dive 3 + 4 of the Advanced Nitrox and Decompression Procedures course. Congratulations to Jeremy for completing his Advanced Nitrox!!! The training dives were conducted out at Tuwanek Point and then Tuwanek Island Left.

The first dive was all skills, though challenging both students did a fantastic job. The skills completed were V drills, S Drills (No mask), Donning and Doffing of cylinders with and without mask. Lift bag deployment, and then actual decompression stops…and NOTOX switches.

The next training dive was more of an exploration, with another S drill and full v drills. Knowing how dry skills can be…it is so important to ensure that the drills become second nature in the event there is an equipment failure.

Jeremy’s next dive is going to be a decompression dive on the HMCS CHAUDIERE. I am so looking forward to the one.

Interested in doing some training….there is a Wreck Course starting on Friday, the 8th of Aug…with one more seat available…or you interested in doing some Technical Dive Training….be sure to visit Suncoast Diving for more information.

UWE, has added the latest Mac Dive Program for the Suunto Dive computers. Be sure to stop by the Downloads section and up date your file!

Today was the first day for the Advanced Nitrox/Decoprocedures course, after a morning full of academics and gear set up, it was off to Tuwanek for a skills dive!

Dive One of this course has a pretty steep learning curve, not only does the student have to get use to the idea of diving on the doubles, but then introduce the stage bottle, V drills, S drills, donning and doffing of bottles, and the SAC swim. Bruno did an excellent job!!

Jeremy completed dive two of is his Advanced Nitrox and Decompressions Procedures course. We made our way to the sail boat at Tuwanek point as the start point for the dive.

The dive plan was to use 34% Nitrox in the doubles as our back gas, and then do a NOTOX gas switch to the second gas we hand in our stage bottles. That mix as 50% Nitrox, so our planned change at 50fsw, would allow us to stay there as long as the gas lasted, without any concerns for the no decompression limit.

The first level of our dive as around 97 fsw for 30 minutes…then a slow ascent to the 50 fsw level in order to make our gas switch. Once at the level we continued with our swim, and at approximately the 50 minute point in the dive Jeremy popped a lift bag for our ascent to the surface. At this point we did some share air drills, and gas shut down drills for practice. Overall Jeremy did an amazing job!!

Stay tuned for the story on dive 3…and if you are interested in Technical Training, be sure to contact Suncoast Diving and hurry and get signed up for our next course!