LEARNINGCURVE
Jacob and student Aithne at NDAC
Jacob Broughton-Venner was an Instructor on the pilot workshop , run at NDAC at the time of the Go Diving Roadshow
Entire evenings and acres of forum space have been consumed by discussions on the pros and cons of primary donate ( PD ). When it comes down to it , I chose to adopt this system because I enjoy it , and it works for me . I ’ ve been diving primary donate for the past five years , having completed a course outside of BSAC , and was obviously very excited to hear rumours of a BSAC PD workshop in the making . Now it ’ s here !
The workshop is split up into five parts : a video demonstration ; a dry practical on hose routing ; dry runs on the skill of primary donating ; a sheltered water lesson , and finally a discussion on discharging a Duty of Care when diving . It should take only half a day .
We decided to run the pilot workshop at NDAC ( the National Diving and Watersports Centre , near Chepstow ), in the hope of having space to train and some decent viz for my
‘ It went a lot smoother than my own first experience of PD ’
photography . Unfortunately , an overcast day and rebreather try dives ( part of the Go Diving Roadshow ) made for slightly worse than average visibility . Of course , we persevered .
It was a relaxing start to the day , enjoying a coffee in the café while watching the video demonstrations included in the workshop . Caffeine levels optimised , we moved onto optimising hose lengths , routing and stowage . Multiple configurations can work with primary donate , but we went for the traditional hog-looped stowage , in which the long hose loops down the right-hand side , then back up the front of the body and goes around the back of the head .
We kitted-up and took the bumpy bus ride down to the water ’ s edge so we could start practising the skills on the pontoon . This went a lot smoother than my own first experience of PD , primarily due to the student ’ s familiarity with the skill . This had been instilled earlier by the video demonstrations , which cover the basics and nuances of the skills . After plenty of progressive steps and repetition on land , we sought the peace and space of an unused platform for our underwater drills .
Aithne offers her primary reg , demonstrating the skill with perfect buoyancy
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