Sunday, April 29, 2012

2 Good Dives On A Sunday Morning

So this morning I met up with Jeff, Dave, and Jeremy at Union Lake to get some practice dives in. Dave had a nasty cold so no dives for him.

Jeremy was having buoyancy and trim issues so he decided to put on 1 5mil wetsuit and his single tank rig and get in that way. In 50 degree water he wasn't going to be comfortable for long.

So we took the flag out and headed for a sunken boat to do some practicing. There was an open water diver class going on at the pontoon boat platform so we left them alone and worked at one of the speedboats.

Jeff and I tried the James challenge - to try to maintain your exact position relative to a set object for 20 minutes without moving, all the while staying where you are but being aware of your team members. It helps train excellent buoyancy and trim control. While not moving gets a touch cold under there it is a good exercise. Meanwhile Jeremy was swimming around working on his buoyancy but was having quite a bit of trouble. It seems he had stored his wing with the dump valve cover off, so unless he stayed perfectly level, the air would escape the wing and he had little to no buoyancy control. We then did an ascent upon finding out this problem and got him back to the dock. He got out, installed the cover and then we went on to dive two.

For dive 2, we headed back out to the same boat, worked on out positioning and each did the basic 6, one at a time. Then we did an ascent drill which was pretty decent, then Jeff and I descended to get the flag as Jeremy was getting cold in his wetsuit so he swam back on the surface alongside the flag as we brought it in while underwater.

2 Good Dives, certainly much better than Wednesday night's fiasco. Practice will hopefully start paying off.

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