IANTD KISS Mod 3 Course - Sharm el Sheikh

IANTD KISS Mod 3 Course - Sharm el Sheikh
By Robert


Last year three of us (me, Natasha and Andy Corkill) travelled out to Lanzarote with Dave Thompson to do our IANTD Mod 1 course on the KISS. This time we were off to Sharm el Sheikh with Dave again to do our KISS Trimix Mod 3, and joined by Phi Le (of Decoweenie fame) who was doing his Normoxic Instructor’s course at the same time. We were to have been joined by another guy Ahmed, but who unfortunately couldn’t make it – perhaps, as it was his Inspiration that recently had an oxygen fire and burnt a boat to the waterline, this was a good thing!

We stayed at the Helnan Marina in Na’ama Bay, which is one of the older and perhaps not the most luxurious hotel in Sharm, but is only 5 mins walk from the jetty and does have a good view from the balcony.


Day 1

Nothing much of note – Gatwick South Terminal is being rebuilt so traffic is a shambles, and putting your KISS together for the next day at ten to midnight in 29’C is quite hard work. Natasha and I shared a room next to Dave and Andy, which did lead to the first entertaining quote of the week from me:

"I hope I didn’t keep you awake banging away at the scrubber"!

Day 2 – Skills and Drills Day

• Fiddle Garden - 12m for 61 mins
• Middle Garden - 17.5m for 35 mins.

We did all of the diving with Tekstreme (Emperor Divers) and what we had on the boat on the first day showed what to expect for the week: 3 x Classic KISSes, 2 x Sport KISSes (one with the ‘Phi Le’ Box), 1 Evolution, 1 Inspiration with a DT box, 1 normal Inspiration and a Dräger.


It’s a bit of a pain to fiddle the hoses on the KISS around to get them to work with Inspiration cylinders, but it’s possible and with the rubber hoses in place of the stainless steel ones it becomes a lot easier, and then for all of the week we had to contend with an aluminium 63 cu ft cylinder (about 8 litre) under each arm. At the start of the week I carried 2kg of weight with a 3mm wetsuit and Fourth Element shorts and t-shirt (after a couple of days I didn’t bother with any weight), Natasha needed no weight at all from the start.

First day included: taking off stages, bailing out to one stage cylinder, bailing out to one and then the other, using the rebreather in semi-closed mode (bit of a desperate measure I think), using the gas connector system, shut-downs, diluent flushes, using the unit as an O2 rebreather, and deploying dSMBs. With just Dave this would be straightforward enough, but now we have two instructors floating about the three of us and pointing things out!


Points we need to think about for the next day – tighten the rebreathers onto our backs to keep the work of breathing low, and make the shut-downs quicker.

Day 3 – Time to go Diving

• White Knights – 48.5m for 68 mins
• Ras Bob – 41.8m for 50 mins.

From today we used a standard set of gases for all dives – 16/50 for the diluent and deep stage cylinder and 70% for the deco cylinder. Today is all about simulating deco (50m dive for 20 mins), holding the stops accurately and maintaining a setpoint of 1.2m on the stops. During the dive I don’t find this too hard until I get to the 9m stop and my buoyancy gets a bit wild as I try to get the setpoint to a reasonable level – takes me a bit of time, gas and annoyance to sort it out. There is a certain trade-off between learning in the cool murky waters of the Channel, and the warm pleasant waters of the Red Sea – running a full deco ascent with no shotline or SMB and line might just even out the differences! The second dive is more of the same, but with more bailout to OC drills and gas shutdowns.

Points for tomorrow – be more aggressive in both the descent and ascent. Less faffing at the surface and descend quicker, and when it’s time to leave the bottom – leave!

Day 4 – Getting Deeper!

• Jackson Reef - 61.3m for 66 mins
• Woodhouse Reef – 39.3m for 56 mins.

After Phi’s comments from the day before we all dropped rapidly to 47m in 2 mins – sucking hard on the ADVs all the way down, only to find that he was having problems with his ears and so we had to wait impatiently at the bottom. Once he’d arrived we followed the sandy bottom to 60m (finding lots of exciting things like lead weights, snorkels and coke bottles) to carry out more shutdowns and diluent flushes. All this was no different at 60m to anywhere else, but it was certainly pleasant that the diluent gave us a PPO2 of c.1 on the bottom with minimal tweaking of the KISS valve to bring it up to 1.2. Lots of scuba divers around at the shallower stops to keep us entertained, especially the single dive guides holding two over-weighted try-divers over a 45m drop – must be an accident waiting to happen!


Second dive was a non-course dive on Woodhouse for Andy, Natasha and I to play without stage cylinders and enjoy the scenery. Woodhouse is not my favourite of the reefs in Tiran but all of the usual suspect aquarium fish were there, I spotted a nice small white moray eel (peppered?), a group of blue spine unicorn fish at a cleaning station (both head-up and head-down) and we were surrounded on our stops by a large school of Red Sea fusiliers (very ordinary but still a favourite).

Day 5 – Now we’re getting somewhere!

• Thomas Canyon – 73.5m for 96 mins

Natasha and I had visited Thomas Canyon earlier in the year with air as the diluent, so we were very keen to get a bit further down the canyon. Whilst we were getting our kit together I heard a resounding "Oh f**k!" from Natasha who had just stripped a thread on the sealing plug on one of her PPO2 monitors. You might think this might not be too much of a problem, but without sealing this somehow, her unit would flood. Using a combination of Phi’s ingenuity, gaffer tape, a weight belt retainer and cable ties we bodged it up as best we could – ‘heigh ho’ we reasoned, the threads are only there to hold the thing in place, why shouldn’t 70m of water do the same thing! Alarmingly this worked, not only on the 72m dive but also the subsequent 65m and 50m dives!


I really like the dive on Thomas Canyon – it starts as a crack in the reef at c.35m and continues down away to a cave at something like 98m at the bottom. Various rocks have tumbled in to create arches, swim-throughs and caves, and at our deepest depth we could sit and look up at the sheer walls of the canyon about 2-3m apart and rising about 10-15m above us – beautiful!


Day 6- Last Day’s Diving

• N. side of Jackson reef – 67m for 88 mins
• ‘The Tower’ 48m for 36 mins.

Usually the wind blows down through the Straits of Tiran from the North and it gets a bit choppy unless you’re in the lee of the reefs. When we got onto the boat there was no wind (apparently this happens only for 1 or 2 days a month) and I managed to cajole the dive guide (thanks Chris!) to try for the wreck of the Lara which lies on the back side of Jackson Reef.


History Lesson – In 1982 the 5,000 ton Lara was on her way from Aqaba and drove straight onto Jackson reef – crew were probably asleep or watching football!. According to the dive guide the Second Officer found some obscure piece of maritime legislation that said if he lived on the boat for three years, then it became his. He did, and then retired on the proceeds of the salvage operation. Don’t really know if this is true or not, certainly the Lara is much salvaged, and because of the exposed position and weather only a framework of the wreck remains upon the reef. However, this was the best dive of the holiday and for me ranks high amongst my best dives in the Red Sea.


We dropped straight down a debris field scraped through the reef with pipes, plates etc. and very quickly we could see the mast which comes up from the wreck to 55m, and not resting on the reef. It’s not really a wreck so much as the remains of one with a section of the stern including the single four-bladed propeller and some of the bridge superstructure lying on the reef at about 60-65m. What was amazing was that I could see the water rippling in the sunlight on the surface (we were at 60m!), a lifeboat lying further down at 94m, and the sandy plateau sloping away even further. Our 20 mins bottom time was up all too soon, so it was time to head up to the first stop at 48m and then drift round the reef with the current.

Second dive was to practise a full OC bailout from 50m with a simulated bottom time of 20 mins. I hated it! I hope that I don’t sound too rebreather-snobby, but I’ve haven’t dived on open circuit for nearly a year, and all that noise, bubbles, chuffing away through the gas was just horrible! What was quite alarming was the rate that we went through the gas in our stages.

Stuff which might be of interest…

Natasha and I had fitted Inspiration scrim filters in the scrubber canisters (top and bottom) – they made no noticeable difference to the WoB and kept excess moisture out of the SpheraSorb (which we took with us).

We have to think along the lines of standard kit and gases – Natasha and I are fortunate in having a couple of twinsets spare in the garage which we decant Trimix from, so we should consider having one set of gases for all of our diving, plus a deco mix which gets us off the deep mix early enough to be practical/effective.

With the positive/negative checks on the KISS – do not hold the negative check too long as it will distort the diaphragm, maybe about 1 minute will do. Phi suggested that a positive check is not that worthwhile but, as Dave pointed out, it will show up problems with the dump valve (n.b. Ourobouros owners).

I’m not convinced that the VR3 algorithm is suitable for me – minutes on the VR3 are not minutes on a stopwatch, depths are not accurate, and I don’t like the big gaps between deep stops and then long shallow stops (which can be at 6, 4.5, or 3m – doesn’t seem to make much difference). Unfortunately I don’t think this is going to be fixed with the new plans for VPM as it seems that DeltaP are going to use VPM B/E – more padding - would be nice if someone had an integrated computer using Bühlmann and gradient factors.

For open circuit bailout I’m considering doing the plans using a straight Bühlmann table – no gradient factors. If I really have to go OC then I’ll be happy enough to get to the surface quicky with enough gas.

From discussions with Dave and Phi, it’s clear that they think that production of the Classic KISS will diminish as it’s just not as cheap to produce as the Sports KISS. I think this is a great shame as I much prefer the hand-machined and solid aspect of the Classic (similar to the way I feel about the quality of the moulded Inspiration parts I’ve used in the modifications to my KISS).

Future KISS Mods

• Replace the KISS flapper valves with those from the Inspiration – it is possible if you’re using the Inspiration loop adapters and might improve the WoB, but will certainly reduce the risk of the valves getting stuck.
  
• Too many problems with the handsets! I was worried enough when changing the batteries that I’d strip threads, and Natasha has now lost three out of three monitors. I am now on the search for something better, Dave suggested that the secondary handset from Kevin Juergensen's hammerhead might work, or maybe Phil/Tech Blue will have an answer soon.
  
• Find something better than the AP Valves Gas Connector system – with the KISS integrated DSV it did not supply enough gas for me to breathe at depth – looking at the Swagelok catalogue maybe something from the QTM series?
  
• ‘T’-off the oxygen inlet port to allow the use of a secondary oxygen supply (or high nitrox mix).
  
• Replace the metal din fittings on the Apeks first stage with the newer plastic fittings – only a small thing but I’m tired of trashing my waterlogged hands (and as I learned in a previous career – ‘Any fool can be uncomfortable!’).
  
• Sort the manifold out. I’m happy enough having the manifold and a big set of failure points, but what’s the point of the ¼" NPT fitting – why not have all the holes 3/8" UNF.

Thanks very much to Dave for running the course for us, and thanks very much to Phi for helping out.

Robert


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