LEARNINGCURVE
The T34 Tank survey project
PHOTO: JOHN RAINE
PHOTO: PETE TURNER
Candidate’ s story
By Alex‘ Woz’ Warzynski- BSAC Technical Chief Examiner and Technical Instructor
I’ ve been putting off the First Class Diver exam for about 15 years, so when a friend of mine said that he was planning to do an event in marginally warmer, but mainly clear waters, I thought that maybe it sounded fun.
Dive planning
However, instead of turning up to the exam with absolutely every bit of kit that I own, a mile of rope and more buoys than a fishing boat, we had to work out how to get everything we needed out to Egypt in a couple of 23kg hold bags.
As reflected in the recent press, the standard of boats out in the Red Sea is a bit different to the UK. So, cue browsing AliExpress for some VHF radios, and eBay for a handheld GPS. One enterprising candidate mackled up an echo sounder using some Tupperware as a battery box and a GoPro stick to dangle the transponder over the side. Very cool! We even took out first aid kits, but had to draw the line at flares, as getting them through the airport might have been a challenge.
The planning started well in advance, with the candidates using shared online resources to organise equipment so we didn’ t duplicate too much. Trying to source GPS marks was tricky as the dive guides tend to use transits, but with a bit of persuading and harvesting from divers who were travelling out there, we managed to produce quite a large database of potential sites and safe mooring locations. A few were even located by spending a bit of time browsing Google Earth and spotting where the boats were moored up!
The event itself was four days of prep and a two-day exam. With 10 candidates, it was a large group to organise and at times it became somewhat heated, but once we had sorted out our strengths and weaknesses, we gelled into a pretty effective team. The exam was busy, as the examiners wanted to see everyone do a bit of everything, so on reflection, splitting the group down into two fives would probably have been easier.
We were tasked with an‘ adventurous’ dive, which was challenging as we weren’ t familiar with the location and had to shift from the wreck we thought we were diving, to a different one. The next day, we had a project dive, which involved lots of measuring and sketching of a T34 tank. This was right up my alley, as it’ s part of my day job taking accurate measurements and making things to fit. We backed this up with some photogrammetry, which worked out tremendously well. We wondered if we’ d have been better just plopping in with 10 GoPros and modelling the thing instead of messing with string and tapes.
Sophie Rennie, the National Diving Officer, would regularly test us by falling off the boat, or tripping over, or getting DCI. It was tempting to lock her in her cabin with a packet of crisps and some Egyptian Stella, but we all mucked in to manage the staged incidents using the resources we had on board.
Examiners would probe our knowledge covering medical, seamanship, dive management, tying a knot or two and really testing the extent of our knowledge. If you’ re well-dived up and well-read, it’ s well within an experienced diver’ s capability. I did offer to give one examiner an hour’ s lesson on bubble mechanics, but was politely declined.
Would I recommend doing First Class this way? Unlike Leon – probably not. The challenges of running the event remotely led to a layer of stress that could have been avoided by doing it locally, although the warm, clear waters made the actual diving part nice. �
Footnote from NDO Sophie Rennie We are always looking to test out new ways of running courses and exams. Well done to all the candidates who took part and made this event happen. I’ d call it plantastic – but that word probably doesn’ t exist!
38 Rescue management