Derek’s Dive Domain

Last weekend saw the long awaited Peak Performance Bouyancy course at Stoney Cove. Myself and Gareth (Spacehopper) arrived at Stoney Cove just before 7.30 in the morning, and dumped the cars on the top car park and wandered down to the bottom car park to meet up with our instructor for the day. We were doing the course with Just Diving Ltd, a Leicester based company, and our instructor was introduced to us as Richard. I have wanted to do this course for a while since it became clear to me that I had a bit of a self taught style for bouyancy as I had sort of redeveloped my skills without tuition since restarting diving. Gareth also had some problems with his bouyancy that he hoped to sort out, in that he has had a problem with staying down on ascents once we get to about 10 metres.

So we met up with the team from Just Diving, consisting of Andrea and Brian, the couple who own the business, and Richard the instructor. We had the team all to ourselves, so this was to lead to a very productive course. First things first, and a briefing of what the day was going to entail, and to go through the knowledge reviews which we had both completed prior to the day. This out of the way, it was time to kit up and get into the Cove for the first of the two training dives. We were planning to stay on the ledge, with a maximum depth of 8-10 metres, to give us plenty of chances to change bouyancy depths etc, as we all know it is hardest to do bouyancy in shallower depths.

Before descending, we carried out a weight check. It appears that I am very slightly overweighted, but nothing to worry about, I am as near as dammit. However the buddy check revealed something very interesting. I have been using this BCD and hose connector for a few months now, and have always thought it very slow to inflate, but just assumed that it was the way that the Mares BCD’s work, as I have had no experience before this than a Buddy BCD. As soon as the instructor saw how long it took to inflate during the buddy check, he immediately knew what was wrong. It turns out that there are different types of hose, albeit with the same Apeks style fitting, and I had the wrong hose with my BCD. This was changed, and the difference was blindingly obvious, the BCD now inflates almost instantly, rather than taking ages.

This problem duly solved, and the buddy check completed, we dropped in, and surface swam over to the shallow and deserted area by the pub, where we did some inversion tests. This is something that for some reason I never completed on my drysuit course, and the guys had promised to add this into the course as an extra. I didn’t have any problems with this drill, so once we had both sorted ourselves out, we descended down to the 2-3 metres rocks, and proceeded to establish neutral bouyancy. Then it was time to do fin pivots and begin the dive proper. The instructor led us on a course around the 6 metre ledge, involving several sharp changes in depth and angle of swimming etc, and also a bit of an obstacle course around the bus stop platform and scaffold area, and swimming around and over the nautilus and APC etc. It was quite hard work, as I had to get used to using solely the drysuit for bouyancy, which I haven’t really done for a while, but wanted to get back into, and also I was finding it tough to get the point of bouyancy where you can change your position by breathing in and out. By the end of the first dive though, it was beginning to come together for me, and although I struggled on my one minute hover drill, I managed to get through it, and then whilst Gareth was performing his, I spent the time practising mine and coming to terms with it.

Back on shore between the dives, and we had the normal debrief about the dive, and discussed the issues that we had been having. I was quite happy with the way I was progressing, and the instructor was also quite happy with me. Gareth was still having some problems with his suit not venting very well, and as a result kept heading upwards, whilst he regained control. After some investigation and discussion about the problem, it seemed that his 200 gram undersuit might be causing air retention, and not allowing it to vent very well, so he changed his suit for one of the schools 100 gram undersuits that they had in the van for the second dive.

The second dive started the same as the first with weight checks etc, and then we followed the same course again around the ledge, but with what seemed like slightly sharper bouyancy changes being required, and also doing some finning forward, stopping and sculling backwards drills up against the blockhouse wall and also at the back of the nautilus. This was quite an interesting drill, as it shows where you are with your bouyancy as it is easy to sink down whilst trying to get yourself to go backwards etc. I was able to practice quite a few elements of the skills on this dive again, and Gareth had no problems with his undersuit on this dive, and made great strides with his drills as a result.

Back on land and a final debrief, before filling in the PIC cards etc, and retiring to the bar for a pint.

Although many people have said that this is a pretty pointless course, I found it very useful, as I was able to do some dives and concentrate purely on bouyancy, which is quite hard to do in a normal dive, as your buddy isn’t always interested in putting time in in this way, and I learnt a lot about myself as a diver. I know now which aspects of my bouyancy to work on in my next dives, and that can only be a good thing.

10/10 to Just Diving for the time and effort that they put into the day. They were able to dedicate time and effort into solving some of the smaller problems and thoughts that we both had about our diving, and contributed a lot to our development as divers.

A good days diving, with a definite end result.

Dive data:

Dive 1 (92) Max Depth 8.9 metres, total dive time 42 minutes

Dive 2 (93) Max Depth 9.8 metres, total dive time 38 minutes