Adding A Splash Of Helium: IANTD Advanced Recreational Trimix Course Report

Instructors: Howard Payne and Clare Pooley
Location: Vobster & NDAC
Date: 19/5/2011 - 22/5/2011

D-Day Minus 1

For the day before the course I had intended to get one last dive in at Wraysbury, however, typical London quality driving meant that my buddy's friend had been run over and I was left with no way of getting any more bubble time in. I'd managed to get in about half a dozen dives in the few weeks running up to this so I felt OK. Arriving at the B&B in Somerset and you have to take a step back to realise just how amazing it is. We were to spend the Somerset portion of the course at Lower Road Farm House before decamping at some ungodly hour on the Sunday to make it for the qualifying dive.

The local pub, The Horse and the Groom (clearly the inbreeding of the West Country has become dull, therefore they are expanding their circles to include the animal kingdom!), is fantastic and serves amazing food and was surprisingly busy considering the fact that we are based in the middle of no-where. An early night was due as I'd struggled to get any decent sleeps this week and for the pounding that Howard would inflict upon us, I thought it would be a great idea.

D-Day

Any day of diving calls for an excellent breakfast, and I had a breakfast of champions - a full fry up! I also met the first course victim Glyn.

Arriving at Vobster for 830 only to get a phone call from Howard informing us that he will be late.... so slowly setting up the kit wasted a bit of time. During that time Glyn and I met the other two victims ... Geoff and John. We camped under the tent and milled about chatting and getting to know each other. Eventually the hippopotamus arrived at nearly 11am, we moved up to the class room to start introductions and fill in paperwork. We started off the theory by discussing gases and calculating gas mixes. Very simple and easy maths. Glyn and I had changed into our under suits and by this point we were sweating like paratroopers in a maths test. So a quick change out into normal clothes. Or so I thought.... I changed into my normal board shorts and carried on walking around in my shoes as I had forgotten trainers. Glyn's situational awareness was clearly switched on as he spots this and described my shoes as "paedo" shoes....

Anyway, after discussing the theory of gases, it was onto talking about the rig and why the gear is configured the way it is. Finally we talked about all the different options when it comes to stage bottles and the merits of each.

The plan for the first dive was to simply bimble about and get used to carrying a stage. This was made significantly more difficult as the Royal Engineers had decided to stop by and drop the best part of 40 tonnes of rock in Vobster! This didn't ruin the visibility at all! It absolutely destroyed it!

Dive #1

Dive time - 43 minutes
Max depth – 13m

Jumping in at the far end of the lake to try to avoid as much of the sediment as possible. We conducted bubble checks on each other on the surface before finally dropping down. After getting settled we swam through a small tunnel, it was at this point two members of the team got lost (but didn't know that!). We swam around until we found a platform. Only two of the students had made it! So Howard told me to wait and he would see if he could find the other students, about 10 minutes later they arrived and we practised dropping and picking up the stage, amazing how much of a buoyancy change it caused!

After that we carried on swimming around the crushing works and then back to the entry slipway. During all of this though the viz was no more than 2m. So it was very slow moving and difficult work, at the very end John and I lost the rest of the group even though they were only a few meters away. We surfaced and haggled the soldiers for destroying the viz.

It was a case of rapid de-kits and departure back to the B&B as we had massively over-stayed our welcome due to the late arrival of Mr Payne, but Vobster are great like this and didn’t kick up a fuss. Back at the B&B we discussed about decompression which ended on a demonstration of using deco planner. We departed for the Horse and Groom again which rounded of a great day - the 16oz steak did help as well!

Day 2

I woke up this morning and first feeling I had was that of being bloated.... I was still digesting that half a cow from the previous night. And although I was still full, I made myself have the full cooked breakfast - always a good start to the day! Today Mrs Darkness was joining us.

The first dive of the day was to learn about the various drills. So we jumped into pea soup and bimbled around to the 6m platform where we got around 5m viz - wow! John and I buddied up; we were both GUE Fundamentals students so we made a good pair. We took it in turns to do the valve drills. We managed this fairly well. The previous day John had said he was struggling with his twinset as the valves were quite stiff, I let him borrow my 12's and he managed to do OK today. I also did fairly well.

Next skill was the gas sharing, or S-Drill. Again we both managed to do OK with this.
Now there was one more skill, the one I had been dreading more than anything.... the no mask swim.... It was me first ... actually glad it was that way because it meant I got it done with..... Anyways ... a bit of apprehension (!!!!)... I got John to grab my arm and then slowly peeled the mask off.... Bend Me over Backwards and Screw Me Sideways with a Banana ... it was cold!! My in water comfort as a diver has come on miles since Fundies as there was none of the panic I had during Fundies. During fundies I had been like a lead-cork floating and sinking massively and hugely stressed throughout it. Through touch contact John was telling me what to do, with him guiding me I felt quite comfortable (as you can). I was trying to keep my eyes open so I could see what was coming and after what felt like a life time my mask was pressed into my hands. On it went, got settled and passed that test. It was John's turn now and he did well, again I guided him through touch contact and we made it well.

Finally it was time to pop the bag, again a fairly simple procedure. Bags launched but we did have the issue of lines getting tangled on the ascent but we managed. Looking over to Glyn and Jeff though they seemed to be having trouble with the drills - primarily because they were new to them, and Glyn was new to the skills in a twinset.

A nicely controlled ascent and we surfaced, a bit of banter started about how Howards team (John and I) were doing well and we had to wait for Jeff and Glyn, at this point I started saying something on the lines of how amazing we were as a lads only team ... this obviously incurred the wrath of the Dark Lord and I would receive suitable punishment, 50% of it was psychological and the other 50% was physical!

Dive 2 was actually two dives. The first dive basically failed straight away as we lost half the team within about 5 mins ... it’s at this point high power primary lights (HID and LED - The EOS was pretty damn good!) are a godsend. Jeff and I managed to stay with Howard, yet John and Glyn were lost, 15 minutes of waiting on a platform while Howard went hunting and we called it quits.
Thus we managed to find Clare's team and we jumped in with them further around the quarry. It was more V and S drills, as well as practicing using the pull and glide technique - Howard, the hippo he is sure can shift when he does that!! We all had a go and managed it to some degree or another.
Also the 15m OOA swim… OK, I was poised at one end of the platform with Glyn and Howard, Clare was at the other end with Jeff and John. Howard gave me a reminder to get some deep lungful’s of air and then go for the 15m OOA swim. I was supposed to leave my reg in my mouth but I forgot and spat it out - which helped for the realism a bit both for my donor and me.
It was at this point 15m is a damn long way when pushing through the water with twins and a stage. Lungs were certainly crying but kept going as I knew air was somewhere ahead.... keep going, keep pulling, keep finning ... a-ha! Someone appears in the distance! Waving my light furiously as I swim forward towards John...

He's just staring at me - maybe he's a bit shocked seeing someone appearing with no gas ... OK he'll react eventually .... I arrived a foot or two from John, he still hasn't reacted or started donating his reg ... bear with it a second.... which felt like a life time.... nope he's still not reacting, sod it I'm breaking the rules and taking a breath on my back up as I physically couldn't wait any longer .... AH FRESH AIR! God you taste good!

At this point, Jeff, for I found out it was him later, donated a reg and we got sorted. Funnily enough when I came out from the silt cloud OOA and no reg I heard Clare literally yell through her reg WTF and it was quite funny afterwards ... Poor ol' Jeff though, Clare was in the middle of going through a valve drill with him 1-on-1 (ish) nice and slowly, thankfully he had just re-opened his right post when I arrived! John was still waiting to donate to me a little further along the platform.... Anyway an underwater debate and the dive was called to which the surface chat was very amusing - probably the one and only time you'll find Clare startled!

And then came the really exciting bit - climbing the ladder in twin-18's ... yup it was difficult work but I am a man so I got up! Post dive de-brief was useful, but then the post-debrief debrief was a bit harder to swallow... Clare and Howard are convinced that although I feel better in the water in my 18's - I'm actually not ... hmm I spent the rest of the day mulling it over.... By the end of Day 2 I had mixed feelings, in some senses I felt good, in others I felt nervous. Oh well, bring it on was all I could think of ... And the next day... And oh did they!

Day 3 - Hump Day

It was hump day - it was the day in which we had to impress Howard and Clare to let us do the mix dive tomorrow. It was planned for the Salsette. However weather isn't looking particularly good, Howard is saying doing a mix dive in the sea with weather like it is could be "interesting" - Glyn say's it’s like a Weymouth Girl.... Eh? Puzzled looks all around - Rough But Do-Able....

First dive of the day was to do a dive down to 22m ish and then do an ascent with a switch at 6m. And stops at 12m and 9m. On the first dive I was popping the bag and John running the ascent. My first "issue" was that I didn't get the bag out of my pocket on the way up.... Second "issue" was I didn't have the bag pre-built on the spool - no real problems as such but just delayed the ascent. Bag popped using the dry suit inflator - running it off my argon bottle its a few inches shorter than is nice so when I'd finished launching the bag I couldn't find it ... oh well; don't need the suit for the ascent any way ... Ascent went OK we survived.

A surface debrief and John and I swapped roles, I ran the ascent and he popped the bag ... so we dropped down ... this time we tried to hit a descent rate of 20m/min ... and at about 10m I go to start inflating my suit .... Well that was the plan... I press the inflator and squat happens.... I pound it ... still nothing happens! By this time we are at 15m and the suit is tight and starting to hurt ... time to call the team in Clare being the rock she is was below me so all I could do is prod her head while I attracted John's attention - stabilised at around 17m and he attached my inflator. Ooft much better now! I truly was shrink wrapped! We carried on the descent and got comfy again at depth.
And then thumbed it, during the ascent John had the bag out and ready for launching at 12m, we did our 9m stop and then switched at 6m to our deco bottles. Then a nice ascent. Went well. Another quick surface debriefs and then we swam over to Howard. Clare said she was impressed and surprised at how good we were. Bugger me! I take compliments well, but getting a compliment from a diver of such high standards is something that meant a lot to me!

A surface interval for lunch and talking about the kind of failures that "may" happen to us on the next dive. It was the dive where it all goes wrong! You know the kind where you swim two feet and then you have a failure, then you swim 6 inches and you have another failure? That one. It was an “all hell breaks loose type dive” is what I was thinking.

We gathered at the crushing works. All the students waited with Clare for around 20 mins with nothing to do.... just sat there, chewing gas ... I was quite unsettled as I knew hell was awaiting, trim was out, breathing was high, in general a complete loss of fabulousness! At some point Howard came back, then something happened with Glyn and Jeff, we started ascending and then dropped down again ... OK I still don't know what happened. Then it came time for John and I to do the course Howard laid and take the failures....

It was Cave 1-esque ... the swim out to the end of the line was fine.... but the return journey was where the fun happened. I had a meagre 70bar left at the EOL. I can't remember exactly what order things happened in but …. there was a reg failure that was fixable ... then a primary light failure, then my stage reg got caught on some wreckage (that was partly genuine and partly assisted ..), I then went out of air .... When we came back to the pit of the crushing works I was relieved ... ascent time.... I remember once we started our deep stops, Howard looked over and asked me if I was ok, I just shook my head!

Up we went.... at 12m I switched onto my deco bottle, then John did.... at 9m we had a brain fart.... I forgot who was running deco so we spent about 5 mins at 9m until I remembered it was me ... bloody stress! 6m for a few mins and then the surface.... Surface swim back to the Quay and out on to the benches ... at this point a delayed dose of hysteria kicked in I think. I sat on the bench still in full gear just giggling away. Probably for a good 15 minutes. Once I calmed down a bit we dekitted. I still couldn't believe we survived that lot. That dive was one of those dives where you wish you were sat on the surface, wishing you could be diving, rather than diving wishing you were on the surface! So I was glad to survive it!

We got the news that we were blown out of the Salsette and so we were off to NDAC the next day - I must admit I was very relieved.

Day 4 - Qualification Day

We convoyed the drive up to NDAC and we lost John just outside of Frooom (Frome). Oh well ... we met him again at NDAC. NDAC is actually a fantastic dive site; its one issue is that you have to minibus it down to bottom of the quarry.

Dive #1

John and I had Clare to ourselves for this dive. We started by descending down onto a cargo container. Here we did some valve drills to each other and we did quite well - trim was good and so was buoyancy. Clare led us off to where Howard had laid a nice long course with my Pathfinder 350 :-)

We had agreed that I would go #2 and John would go #1. We regularly swapped roles through the course so no one person had it more difficult than the other. Clare had asked us to note our time and pressure. So we wrote it in the wet notes.

So off we toddled down the course and would you believe John had a right post failure. He switched to his back up and I came into look. I gingerly re-opened the valve and it turned out to be fixable. I got kudos for that. It took a bit of persuasion to get John to switch back to his long hose, but after a while he did! He didn’t believe me that I had re-opened the valve. It was a case of monkey-see ….

I then though, Because we had "dodgy" kit - we made the call to end the dive ... off we toddled - Clare gave us the kudos but then told us to carry on with the dive - damn and I was hoping to get out the water!

So we carried on. Then I had the same failure.... same procedure and we called the dive again started heading out but then Clare told us to resume the dive - we really didn't want to carry on! Ha!
So we plodded on, I was number 1 at this point, on we went and then John had a light failure. Quick communication so we both knew what was going on and he was on his back up, now he was #1. We called the dive, started the exit, got the kudos but then were told to carry on (see a pattern?).
So we carried on ... the line went through a container, it was an overhead environment and had a potential tangle hazard on the bottom, so John (as #1) did the obvious thing of going to cuddle his bottle in close to him ..... He then did a helicopter turn.... he gave me the "You" ... "look" ... and then pointed to under his left arm ....I'm sure there was an ally-80 there last time I checked!

Yep the Mistress of Darkness had somehow managed to steal a bottle. So a bit of cursing and a quick look around and we couldn't see it ... so guess what we did? Yup we called it and made our exit.... guess what? Ally-80's form rain now because one came raining down on us.... So we donned it and continued the dive....

We went through the container and got to a plane, as #2 at this point my mask was taken. Thankfully NDAC water was significantly warmer than Vobster so I could keep my eyes open, I was swimming after John frantically waving my light - I swear I wasn't getting closer to him! Eventually I caught up and he noticed - I poked myself in the eye signalling I had no mask. He pushed me down to the plane so I had a solid object to hang on to.

So I tried to deploy my back up mask.... to make it easier I decided to just pull out my entire right pocket and then grab the right thing. Got the mask on and settled and then got on with the dive. A minute later Clare told us to note time and pressure again.... so I reached into my right pocket to grab my wet notes.... I patted around the entire pocket.... I then pulled out the bungee.... nothing in the pocket ... Bugger.

After a bit of cursing, a set of DIRZone wet notes fell from the sky - lesson learned - pack away pockets.
So we plodded on with the dive.... we came across the APC - the line went through the roof hatch and through the interior - Clare went through it, but John and I thought better of it and went over it, at this point we reached the end of the line yay! I stowed my primary light and picked up the reel. And we made our exit.

John went through the APC first.... I followed, keeping the line as taught as possible (cavern training kicking in here). John went out through the hatch and turned around to wait for me to come through. I'd stuck my head through the hatch and guess what? John goes OOA - great timing John!! I donate a reg with my right hand, reel in left, once he had the reg I then use my right hand to lock the real down ... at this point I realise it would be a good decision to throw my back up in my mouth as I am starting to feel oxygen-starved!

Clare took pity on me multi-tasking and took the reel off me. I went in to try to fix his right post, but it was an unfixable failure. So we got the long hose deployed and did a gas sharing exit. I went into touch contact and secured the hose.

The exit went well, because Clare was busy reeling in! John had a serious loss of fabulousness when he banged his head on some kind of buoy near the container. At this point we went single file and I had hold of his thigh. Clare had gone over the container and was upside down looking in at us ... I gave her a considerate wave. Finally back at the exit and did a shared air ascent and surface! Alive!
The debrief was pleasant, although we were credited for being good thinking divers, we missed the obvious thing of examining our deco bottles MOD and our actual depth - the perfect team would have switched the OOA diver onto the deco bottle as we were shallow enough to be safe. Oh well.... we are alive.

A long surface swim and we dropped down to 24m. I was hit as OOA. We started the ascent - it was a bit slow to start with but we got going. The switch was good but a bit shaky at one stop. I think at 9m, John lost his mask. While getting his mask out he dropped his wet notes which went plummeting down into the depths - Clare went after it while we did our ascent and we met her on the surface. She was doing a bit of o2 deco too!

OK those dives done with it was time to head up to the top get debriefed and get trimix!!! Twin-12's with 25/25 was £35. Didn't hurt too much - I was expecting closer to £50. A long debrief over lunch. John's luck was certainly running low as he managed to rip his wrist seal. Clare managed to repair it and it held for the mix dive.

Trimix Dive

The plan was to do 10 mins at 45m and then do the deco schedule as if we had done 20 mins.
So off the far end of the jetty and dropped straight down! Pulling ourselves down the line.... bugger me 45m is a long way down! At about 35m I started to look up and not concentrating on the line and wow! The viz was 30m easily! There was a large boat sunk at around 48m, but my MOD was 48m and John's was 46m so we had to be careful. We bimbled around a bit and before you knew it time was up. Thumbs all around and we started the ascent. I was actually using the inflator to get some ascent speed. It certainly did help - god if PADI instructors knew that they would have a coronary!

The ascent seemed to take forever to hit 21m - I was running the deco, John was bagging up. I wanted the practice of running the times etc.

21m for 1 minute. OK, up to 18m ... launch the bag, I took the bag off John and told John and Howard to get ready to switch. John was ready first.... did the checks, ok had him switch, checked out Howard.... OK there’s the reg.... follow the hose to the cylinder.... look down the cylinder.... OXYGEN 6 - what depth we at? 18m. I told him no and had him restow. Bag back to John and I switched. Turned on the valve and got a shower of bubble pissing out from the valve. My first thought was "bugger - we are going to have to do the No-Deco gas deco profile - all 45 mins of deco! I thought about it rationally, let’s try this again and see where the bubbles come from.

Bubbles piss out from the thread - thank god that means it’s not a 1st stage failure - I was preparing for a feathering of the valve through deco, but it wasn't needed. So purged the valve and retightened the 1st stage a touch and then reopened the valve and it held. Thank god, I did the switch.
Start the clock 3 mins at 18m.
And up to 15m - hold for 1 minute....
And up to 12m - hold for 1 minute.... I checked my deco pressure - 110bar - plenty (I went in with 140bar - Clare told me it was plenty so don't bother getting it refilled)
And up to 9m - hold for 1 minute....
And up to 6m - hold for 10 minutes... I got Howard to switch now it was his time.
About 5 or 6 mins in I check the pressure of the stage again - 50bar ... EEK that went fast ... I signalled this to the team ... carried on with deco. At this point I realised just how much in water comfort I had - I was off the line and just floating mid-water - no effort at all to maintain stops - I just sat there - maybe dropped down 6.5m at the most but I was so comfy it was amazing.
Howard wrote a note to us - "You both did very good! :-)" - I thought that’s it - I've done it I've passed.

2 mins of deco left - 30bar left in the stage... bugger me
1 minute of deco left - 20bar ... hurry up clock!!!
I saw 40 on the D-Timer and I indicated to Howard and John that I was switching off the stage and onto back gas. I did so and did a nice restow to by swinging the bottle out in front of me. All while looking fabulous!

We then did the 1m/min ascent to the surface. I broke the surface and I was laughing - wow that was an incredible dive - Clare said I'm easily pleased but that really was the best dive I've done - OK apart from diving Manatee cave system.

We got dekitted and packed up the cars. I met Imogen who apparently liked my look of board shorts and tan shoes ... Glyn still insist on his comment though.....

We rendezvous at the toll bridge services for the debrief went well-ish. The other three were told to go and were wished congratulations - I was told to stay. I haven't passed have I?

Well I did pass. That’s about as much as I am willing to disclose about the conversation - that conversation stays strictly between Clare, Howard and I. In a nutshell I got some excellent advice and even better compliments which again stay between us but were certainly well received and cherished - I can still hear it now.

So after finishing the debrief we part ways. I just have to do the exam and then I'll be officially an IANTD Advanced Rec Trimix diver!

Summary

The course was incredible, I strongly recommend it. Clare and Howard are excellent instructors with a phenomenal amount of experience to back up what they have to say.

I do strongly advise divers to have done Fundies prior to this; it builds on those skills and being solid in the water makes everything so much easier. I won't admit to being rock solid - I'm still hunting for those hooks that Clare suspends herself from in the water.... But I was certainly a million times better diver than I was coming out of Fundies, which made me a billion times better than when I went into it.

The course teaches you all about failures and equipment management, it allows you to dive deco gases up to 100% oxygen and dive a trimix with at least 25% o2 and as much helium as required to give an END of 24m.

It was an incredible experience made very enjoyable by Glyn and his stories, combined with Howard's crude humour and me generally egging it all on.