Advanced BSAC Nitrox Course

My buddy and I had been diving for a number of years and the chat to the various scuba diving sites had always been how we were going to take our diving forwards. We  had both completed the basic nitrox course on a live-aboard in the Red Sea earlier in the year and now the next step was to see what technical training was available. From reading the BSAC blurb it seemed that we needed to do the Advanced Nitrox course next.

The Yorkshire Regional Coaching scheme was putting on a Combined Nitrox event so we both booked ourselves onto it. The combined event would not only run over the basics of nitrox diving again and extend our knowledge up to using 50% nitrox for decompression, but also provide some teaching of the skills and discipline needed for more adventurous diving. As the scheduled weekend approached we realized that we would need a tank of nitrox for at least one of the practical sessions.  As we both normally dived on air this meant that we needed to get our tanks cleaned in order that they could be filled with an appropriate gas mix.  Now with only a week to go before the course our only option was to drop the tanks off at Capernwray for service the Sunday before and collect them a week later on the morning they would be needed.  Good excuse to sneak in an extra couple of dives the weekend before the course!

Finally we found ourselves on our way to Doncaster, where the Regional Coach Nick Kay lived.  He was giving the first theory part of the course to five students at his home.  So it was back to school again as we reviewed Dalton’s law of partial pressures and the affects of gases on the human body.  Two of the students were already diving with twinsets and naturally the talk at break times was all about what make of wing to buy and whether or not to go the minimalist DIR route!  The first day ended with a test that involved calculator and tables but everybody passed with flying colours.
The next day found us traveling over to Capernwray for the practical part of the course.  We set off from York in the dark with rain pouring down.  By the time we had got half way it had turned to snow and we were not looking forward to the day.  The previous Sunday my good dry suit had been at Divers Warehouse having a cuff dump fitted and I had used my old suit which had flooded.  My good suit was back from Otter now but I still had lingering memories of a cold wet day!  However, when we arrived at the quarry it was quite dry and things began to look up.  After a cup of coffee and a briefing we were split into groups.  I was buddied with another Nick from a Leeds club under instructor Nick Kay’s watchful eye (there were a lot of Nicks on the course). We kitted up and walked down to the training slipway where we did our buddy checks. Nick Kay was using a rebreather because he apparently needed to get some hours in underwater for his next teaching qualification.  Not only did we have to check our buddy’s kit but we also had a whistle stop tour of rebreathers so we could assist him if there was a problem.  Then we swam into the training area and headed for an unoccupied six metre spot to start our drills.
We practiced regulator swapping and DSMB launching while hovering in mid water until it appeared that we were ready. Then it was off to fifteen metres for more of the same.  It seems that this “hovering” is serious business and it can’t be translated as meaning “stay roughly at the same depth”.  After we were shown a fixed deployment of DSMB from the roof of the old transit van at fifteen metres it was up to ten metres where the students were given the chance to deploy theirs.

We had been told to make sure we stayed at ten metres and didn’t sink or float away from this depth by more than half a metre.  It is not as easy as it sounds as our practice session the week before showed. Glance down while you are deploying and you suddenly find yourself back at fifteen metres.  The trick is to look straight ahead, using your buddy as a reference point if possible, so that you can stay nice and level while deploying your blob. The scary thing is that by the time you get to trimix training you really do have to remain static, and will fail the course if you move up or down by even ten centimetres!
With DSMBs up it was time to move to nine metres to practice regulator swapping again. This was simulating a gas switch at a decompression stop at nine metres.  After this it was up to six metres for more of the same, then three metres and finally at one metre just below the surface.
All this filled up a (happily for me bone dry) forty five minute dive and then it was surface swim back to the slipway where we did a weight check with empty cylinders.  I was using a light ten litre tank that I had breathed down to 50 bar and yet I was able to shed two kilos of weight and still sink!
We dekitted and shot back to the café for our debrief and to discuss the second assessment dive coming up. This is the time when a hot cup of coffee never tastes so good.  The next dive was to be on nitrox and now was the time to pick up our tanks from Capernwray’s service department “Breathe Easy”.  After recovering from the shock of the service bill which included oxygen clean, visual inspection and 36% nitrox fill (£55) we were back in the quarry for a repeat of this mornings exercise but now under “exam” conditions.  Everything went as well as could be expected and forty minutes later we were clambering out for the second time that day, again dreaming about the hot cup of coffee to come.
I think the course has assisted with my buoyancy and underwater orientation skills tremendously.  It has made me think about my configuration and weighting and I have picked up loads of great tips from others on the course.  It has also made me think about what I want out of my diving.  I don’t necessarily want to dive to 100 metres in the dark in the UK, but I do want to do the sort of dives I am already qualified as a dive leader to do (up to 50 metres), but for longer, safer and much more comfortably than I could at the moment.

The next step?  Definitely the Extended Range Diving course already penciled in for next year.  In the mean time I really will have to hit Ebay hard, to sell as much stuff as I can to be able to afford the twin set and wings in the New Year.