Experienced Advice needed

Mohamed Mousa

After 1 year of skimming the web, talking to high accomplished rebreather divers and reading any article about rebreathers.

i bought my first ccr (deffinatley Megalodon)

Its great that there is such a great resource for information such as this, really made my life alot easier,(comparing to when i first started oc)

i'm currently certified as padi master scuba diver trainer, tdi, iantd,dsat trimix diver and blender

I have some questions and i need some guidence.

1. Having been diving for the past 7 years and technical diving exclusively for the past two years, with an average of 100+ dives a year, would this contribute to the time it takes a person the get the idea of rebreather diving?

2. I'm taking a few month off and starting mod 1 and mod 2 next month, then for some 10 dives of practise then off to mexico for oc cave courses and a rebreather cave course. When do you decide you are ready for caving on a ccr(regardless of requirements)?

3. Having no problem what so ever during my oc training, and constantly peacefully pushing my comfort zone deeper in diving later. There is just a time that comes, where you feel you now understand what going on with your gear dive planning. How long would it take to feel that a person has a firm grip on operating the unit?

Would you have any advice whatsoever especially that i'm doing multiple courses in a small time interval.

Regards and i'm sure your opinions will contribute to my plans and expectations

Mousa

chunter

Mousa,

I'm sure you have already done a lot of research. If you have not read it, I would read some of Richard Pyle's stuff like:
LGRB Pyle IANTD Scuba & Rebreather

The most important thing is to realize that even with a lot of OC training and experience, you must consider yourself a novice on the rebreather. Although the technical training helps a lot, you need to begin with basics and learn your unit INTUITIVELY. Know everything about every part of it, think thought failure situations and how you will react, and put many hours on your unit. I would put 50 hours on the rebreather before pushing into any kind of decompression, and 100 hours before pushing into trimix depths.

You are off to a good start by asking for advice here. There are a lot of very experienced and helpful people on Rebreather World.

Aloha,
Charlie

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Gilles

OC experience is definitely relevant, but there's much to re-learn. The amount of time is person specific.

When you have mastered stationary bouyancy and trim. For me, what has taken the longest to learn, and still learning.

Again person specific. Prep and gearing up is more involved than in OC, and you will find all your previous muscle memory wrt to buoyancy control will be non-relevant. To me, this is what may take time. Once you feel you can maintain staionary boyancy, controlled ascent, do the drills in shallow water without surfacing (or dropping), then you're a long ways there.

Be patient and tolerant. Don't go too far too fast, nor expect too much from yourself. You may get disappointed...at first. Don't be surprised if at first you can't control boyancy, breaths bad, and generally uncomfortable. Give it time.

I assure you, it becomes heavenly.

You are about to turbo boost your diving interest. Best of luck.

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wedivebc

I am not sure I understand why you want to do OC and the CCR cave. I did do intro cave on OC then CCR cave a year later but going full cave on bot OC and CCR seems like overkill. I assume you will be training with Matt? Have you talked to him about your plans? I would definately trust his judgement in this as I doubt he will try to sell you training you don't need. I can't see any reason to dive caves on OC ever again having done CCR cave diving. Possibly OC sidemount for certain conditions but do you need to repeat full cave training?

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Mohamed Mousa

hey

i would like to thank you for your concern and yes i'm doing the training with matt and i know he's not the kind of instructor who would try to sell courses in fact i postponed my trip to mexico for 6 month just to dive with him.

As for going open circuit caving its due to working in two projects in Egypt which will require both penetration and cave skills in beyond 90 meters of depth where the dive starts so it's not the time for me to try to do it on a ccr yet especially i'm just an elementary rebreather diver.

projects will take place in july buddying up with a british friend who is a well known diver( sorry this is as much info as i could say)

Later when i get to surface from more ccr dives i'll then use that training i took for that kind of diving

Thanks for your concern

Keep Finning

Mohamed Mousa

Thanks guys for the advice

anymore advice is welcomed

keep finning

mempilot

Mousa,

First, congrats on your decision to go silent and do so on the Meg. Like you, I did about two to three years of exclusive OC technical diving prior to buying a Rebreather. I did over two years of research before making my selection.

As for training, I did so with a well known cave diver/Rebreather diver. The idea was that I would do my MOD1, and then, when comfortable, continue on to Full Cave on CCR with that same instructor.

Like others have stated, OC experience is relevent, but the skills are different. Being comfortable underwater is paramount. The skills for Rebreather diving will make you feel like a neophyte again.

It took me about one year of Rebreather diving to feel comfortable enough to think about cave diving on one; however, it sounds like you dive more frequently than I. Therefore, time isn't as relevent as number of dives. I think about 50 dives for me, and I was comfortable doing deco. At 75, I felt like everything was coming together as I wanted. Most noteably in that time was the need to bailout on a few occassions for real issues. Practice and reality can often be quite far apart in how one handles a situation. These real life events are what gave me the comfort to move forward because the mystery of the unknown was gone at that point.

So, by the time I get around to doing Full Cave, hopefully this summer, I will have over 100 dives and about 18 months on the Rebreather. I will probably be a lot more comfortable in the cave than I would have been at dive 50, but this would be subjective.

This probably doesn't help you much, but hopefully it gives you a relatively new Rebreather diver's perspective on exactly what you are engaging in.

Good luck, dive safe,

Eric

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Mohamed Mousa

Hey Eric thanks for sharing the thought, wiching you the best of luck with
your cave training and ccr diving

Keep Finning

bobby

IMHO you are on the right track keeping CCR and cave diving separate for a while. Both have their own task loading that will take your attention. Monitoring the CCR and checking that everything is as it should be will eventually become second nature but it takes dive time for that to happen. The same goes for caves. Line awareness and knowing where you are in a system takes dive time. As you get more dives it becomes easier. Putting the two together right off could lead to making an easy mistake with one or the other.

Another advantage taking the cave class OC is that you will get to honestly evaluate your dive skills. If you took the class CCR right off you might have difficulty distinguishing between CCR skills or just diving skills that need to be worked on. Most people find they need to tweak their trim, buoyancy and fin control when they get into cave diving. You seem to have a lot of diving experience and I would bet very solid dive skills. Cave diving still tends to be a little different.

Good luck with both, I am sure you will have a hoot.

Bobby

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