First Class Diver Part 2

The First Class Diver award from the British Sub Aqua Club is the highest amateur diving level awarded anywhere in the world. You need the highest level of theoretical knowledge and practical ability you can get. You have to push the envelope and be able to achieve something worthwhile in your diving. I am proud to be one of the examiners for this.

I spent this weekend on the Clyde on a FCD Prep weekend. It is interesting to work with people who are emerging FCDs as well as the other instructors, all experienced FCDs and National Instructors. This is the second prep weekend I've been on this year. An earlier one was held at Lochaline on the Sound of Mull using a hard boat. This weekend we used RHIB's.

On both weekends I was struck by the range of skills presented by the divers. They can all clearly dive well and have extended knowledge in gases and gas supply systems. Rebreathers and large twinsets abounded with various valve setups from separate twins to hog rigs. Well personally I still normally use a single 10 or 12 on air with a 3 litre pony so I feel outgunned.  But at least I can lift it.

The knowledge that seems to be in shorter supply is how to find things and how to get on them when you do. In past years divers were all brought up looking for the marks and honing their navigation skills in small inflatables. Nowadays there seems to be more use of skippers in hard boats doing the work with the divers having more theory than practice. But you can see the trainees coming on in leaps and bounds as you get them actually using this theory in a practical way.  From finding wrecks to putting a shot in improvements are noticeable over the two weekends. And I had some really good dives on both weekends.




bagging the shot

There is always much discussion about what makes a good First Class diver. It is not only the skills as these are just the tools a FCD employs. These are the parts that are tested in the exam. All of this is transparent and can be found on the BSAC website under First Class Diver. There are 12 criteria the practical examination concentrates on:

• Personal diving skills
• Dive Leading Underwater on both assessment days
• Attitude of the candidate
• Safe, effective dive management
• Contribution to leadership
• Contribution to teamwork
• Practical position fixing
• Response to emergency
• Achievement of dive operation objectives
• Seamanship skills
• Practical diving knowledge

But in my opinion there is one major element that needs more than the skills you can learn on a course. The attitude of the candidate. Why are they doing it and what are they getting out of it?  The very best FCDs I've seen are hungry. Hungry for new sites. Hungry for new wrecks. Hungry for new cliffs. Hungry for new dives and new experiences. And when they get them...... they want another. And another. They are always hungry. It is not the getting it that matters to them, it is the finding it, the proving they can do it to themselves, the achieving something someone else hasn't, couldn't or wouldn't. And the skills they acquire along the way are the tools they use to satisfy that hunger.

This does not just apply to divers though. In all areas of life I meet hungry people who are satisfying that craving in different ways. Climbers, sailors, skydivers and entrepreneurs to mention a few. You notice when they switch to a new area or sport they take that hunger with them and it drives them on to achieve. They are the people on the bleeding edge. Long may it continue as we need them to keep moving forward and avoid species stagnation. Get hungry and go feed.

Practice or Dangerous Practice

I've recently had a great long weekend at Oban. I was with a University Club, helping them take their new trainees in. It was hectic. We had 13 new trainees, some lingering trainees from past years and some qualified divers as well. We averaged 30 divers per day. We only had a few instructors there ranging from 3 to 7 so we were heavily loaded for training dives. I did 3 on the first day, four on the second, only surface work on the third and 2 on the last as we wanted to get home. All trainees got in the water more than once and we got lots of skills signed off. Altogether a really successful weekend and a lot of fun. Feeding everyone and keeping bottles filled were both big challenges. Puffin have a useful air system but they really need to do something about their A clamp bottle fittings. We blew quite a few O rings and talking to other divers there we were not the only ones. Each time cost us a fill at £4 plus an O ring. We don't get this problem using our own compressor.

Loch Creran where we spent one day training

 

But it was good fun except we had two bends. Now I've been diving for 32 years and have seen more bends this year than I've ever seen in the rest of my diving career. Is the air changing? In this case both bends involved ascent problems. One was a trainee lifting a victim for a rescue test at Loch Creran. The victim was indeed as he got the bend when the ascent was too fast and then repeated again, too fast. We put them all on the naughty step and monitored them and after 15 minutes the victim started to get hand problems. We put him straight on oxygen and contacted Aberdeen:

 

Diving emergencies and medical advice in Scotland: call 0845 408 6008 and ask for the on-call hyperbaric consultant.

After extensive consultation they instructed us to take him to Oban A&E where they called in a diving doctor. 5 hours on oxygen and the problem resolved and he was discharged. At midnight we took him back as the symptoms came back and he spent the night in the pot at Dunstaffnage. He is still waiting to start diving again. The doctor looked at his computer and said immediately the problem was the ascents.

The next day at The Slates three qualified divers were diving together when one ascended too fast. The most experienced grabbed her to slow her down and was pulled to the surface. He has had a bend before caused by a shunt (like a PFO) and therefore went through his own checks to see if he was ok. I never knew about this till later otherwise I would have put them all on the naughty step for monitoring. He thought he was ok but the next morning woke feeling poorly and reported into A&E in Edinburgh. They sent him to Aberdeen who treated him in the pot too. He now needs to consider his long term diving future.

Diving The Slates last year. One person on this trip ended up with a bend for a fast ascent. that was the first I saw from this cluster. It didn't emerge until the next day.

 

Within the club we have been discussing the problems that have occurred and trying to work out the causes and how to avoid them in the future. In the past year there have been three bends in the club all involving ascents. Partly this is caused by the trainees in the university swopping kit and changing weightbelts by guesswork. Different suits, underclothes, stabs, weightbelts every dive, not always fitting correctly is bound to cause buoyancy problems. But one of these was the exercise to lift someone for a rescue exercise involving people all diving with their own kit. No excuses here. Do we now consider this too risky? During treatment of both of the bends discussed the doctors were appalled to hear we still practice lifts. They consider it too high a risk for possible future gain. Is it?

As both BSAC and SSAC require lifts for qualifications this is a political argument that needs to be fought. However within the club we can reduce the risk a bit more by using a dummy instead of a real person as the victim. We do not have one but will rig it from a stab jacket, bottle, DV and weight belt. If they can lift that ok as though it was a person then we will switch on the surface to a real person. I'll let you know how we get on with this method.

Research on the subject of bends has led me into the area of non-symptomatic DCS. Dr Richard Pyle's work on this has been very illuminating. But that takes us further into deep diving and decompression and is for another time.