VTC has a dive club. Part of the club appears to be getting new members certified to dive. Today, I was lucky enough to help in the final check out dives of the new students.
We met at the dive shop, did the briefing, then went to the wastewater treatment plant. From there, we entered the water, and did the last skill of checkouts that the students needed to demonstrate, the alternate air breathing. This is what happens when one person in a dive team runs out of air, or has an air emergency underwater.
The skill is simple. One person using hand signals shows that they are out of air, their buddy grabs their octopus, and offers it to the other diver forcefully, while each are holding onto each other. Then the divers make sure they are holding onto each other with their right hands on the other’s right shoulder strap, and a controlled accent is made.
Watching this crop of students, they showed this skill very well.
After doing that skill, I took 5 students, and we went diving under the pier, in search of the elusive fish. After diving around for awhile, we came into the shore.
From there, Joe was going to go back out to place some signs in the water, so I followed. While diving with Joe, I found another cell phone. Why can’t it be diamond rings or sacks of cash?
For the record, I started this dive with 2800PSI in an aluminium 80CC tank and ended the dive with 1900PSI with a total dive time of 48 minutes. The max depth for this dive was around 17 feet and I used around 15 pounds of lead for this dive.
From there, we went back to the shop, filled our tanks, then went out to lunch. I went to Handy’s Lunch with Gordon. I had never been there, the food was alright.
After lunch we regrouped, and went to Oakledge Park, where we entered where we usually do. The students were divided into 2 teams of 2 and 1 team of 3, and each were paired up with a diver. I had Will and Nate? They went with me, we went out to the square dolphin, around that, then over to the round dolphin, then back to the square one, and back in. Our total dive time was around 27 minutes.
For the record, I started this dive with 3100PSI in an aluminium 80cc tank, and ended the dive with 1800PSI. The dive lasted 27 minutes with a max depth of 17 feet. The water temperature for both dives was 48 degrees.
