At the end of my first set of classes in diving school, I was exhausted. The transition from dedicated military member to full time bike shop (not another bike shop!!) employee to full time student while planning for and getting married made for a hugely positive though taxing six month period. My passion drove me to diving and dive school but I was perhaps a little bit unprepared for the actual work load associated with the program. Although weary, at the end of the first eight week set of classes I finally felt like I understood the expectations, teaching/learning style, and climate of the program. I'd also overcome a number of challenges and massively increased my confidence and comfort in the water.
The program was largely classroom centered in the beginning. It's clear the instructors want to remove by attrition as many students as possible who aren't taking the subject matter, homework, and studying seriously. The first set of finals saw many of my classmates fail and the average class sizes shrink. Those left were excited because we knew we'd passed a critical juncture and made it far enough to start doing what we joined the program to do, hard hat diving.
Scuba diving is great. I personally enjoy it immensely. It offers many advantages over the surface-fed diver such as total autonomy, less restricted movement, and a lighter gear load. However, for commercial work the scuba diver is almost never used. This is because a diver on scuba has a very limited air supply, limited communication with topside, and few options in an emergency situation. The hard hat diver, in contrast, has an 'unlimited' air supply, safe and easy communications with their tender, and can always be hauled up by their umbilical in the event of a shit to fan event.
A a student I was very ready to begin hat diving. I feel like it separates and distinguishes one as a type of "real" diver and my interest has always been to go down to do work and solve problems and less so to see fish and take pictures. To each his or her own.
Our first hat was the classic, trustworthy KM37. Gearing up took some time. The diver goes down with a pretty serious harness, a lot of weight (to counteract the air filled hat), and the very important water tight seal creating neck dam. After jumping into what I can only describe as ill-fitting gear I put on the hat. I am learning that considering my smaller stature I may need to customize/purchase some better fitting stuff. The KM37 felt immediately heavy on my shoulders and I was anxious to relieve some of the weight by hitting the water in the scenic 10ft cylindrical tank which would act as my training ground.
Descending the ladder slowly, the water level rose over the regulator and face-port and a stream of bubbles reassured me of the reg's function. I informed topside "diver leaving surface" as I'd been instructed and allowed myself to drift backwards off the ladder swallowing a few times to equalize. This was a completely new diving experience. I stood on the bottom, my weight belt keeping me just positively buoyant enough to walk on the bottom as one would on the surface. After a few near effortless breaths the sensation of totally dry head started to set in. This was the way to dive. The diver, without concern for breathing gas supply or bottom time, is able to concentrate on his work and not the actual act of diving. Around ten minutes later, my tender informed me over the comms my dive was over and to move the ladder. After a slow climb up the ladder (at the Navy's recommended 30ft/min) I surfaced and once again felt the weight of the world on my shoulders. I was excited to get back in.
The next dive was once again for the purpose of familiarization. This time I was to dive the KM27 which is the smaller of the Kirby Morgan hats and I suspected would fit me a bit better and look less ridiculous. With that in mind, I asked my classmates to abstain from taking pictures till this dive. The hat felt better on, seemed to seal better, and made the experience even more enjoyable. On this dive we even had the opportunity to start messing around with the "pipe puzzle" which although sounding like a late night HBO special is actually just a bunch of joints of pipe for us to wrench on. And finally, for the first time in BottomTimer.com history, there are pictures of my actual experiences to follow. No more lousy google-stolen photos! At least not until the next post!
The last few weeks have been more and more orientation dives on different demand style hats, all from Kirby Morgan. We've also been doing a bunch of emergency drills which I will detail in a following post. Finally, I feel like I'm doing what I came here to do and getting ever closer to becoming a commercial diver. Here's some pictures of me in the KM27 as well as the KM18B, known as the band-mask. It's basically just the front of the full diving helmet with a neoprene hood and rubber straps to seal it to the diver's face. It makes for a less high maintenance, lower cost diving alternative. Anyway, enjoy the cell phone shots... I'm wearing the blue hat in the first bunch.
No comments:
Post a Comment