My Inspiration Rebreather Course

My Inspiration Rebreather Course
By Lisa


Reproduced with permision from and copyright of www.outlawdivers.org.uk


Not Much Gas!

That was my thought as we arrived back in our favourite place (the Lizard Peninsular, Cornwall) for our 'TDI Closed Circuit Rebreather, Entry Level, Module 1 (Inspiration)' Course. The Inspiration only has two 3 litre cylinders, one for air and one for Oxygen; also the fourth member on our course was an American.

Paul, Beanie and I arrive back at Lestowder Farm, our home for several of our recent Cornish adventures. We unpack our very small amount of kit before heading off to see Gary Fox of Dive Action to double check the start time for Sunday. We have no cylinders, no regulators, no wing or BCD and no backplate and harness. Very strange! We find Gary on Porthoustock beach; very quickly, he ropes us in to help get his boat out. He won't let us see our Inspirations until tomorrow.

Off we go to watch some Gig racing and then back to the accommodation to play with Scottie the farm dog. The next-door house has eight children and one adult, from Germany staying; they are very quiet, it was amazing! The three farm kittens have all had babies of their own and I get to see two 5 week old kittens, so cute!

Saturday night was spent in pursuit of dinner. First, we tried the Three Tuns (no food as they were catering for the Gig racing, beach party), decided that The Five Pilchards would be packed, due to the gig racing, and so drove off after some nice pubs. We finally found one that had spaces, just as my stomach was sounding like thunder. Everything they served was chargrilled outside, including the monkfish. I played safe and had steak. Very nice.


Sunday

All are up early as we are very excited. Paul has decided that he is supervising a kindergarten, which Beanie and I are the sole pupils, as we squabble our way through the week, having hand fights and picking on each other1.

We arrived early, as we could not wait any longer; in a rush to see my new toy. It was ordered with extra colours and not the normal 'everything black'. I ordered one pink counter lung, purple for the other, with a pink wing with purple gusset in the middle, as well as pink and purple hose covers. Beanie ordered purple counter lungs and Paul has red/ orange counter lungs with red/ orange wing with a bright yellow gusset and hose covers. My Inspiration is sat up in its box looking at me; Gary just stands there saying how horrible it is. Wow, I fall in love with it but don't think anyone else likes it? We meet Luke, our American colleague. He was straightaway jealous as he did not realise that you could have different colours. We settle down to tea (Luke is now hooked on British tea), biscuits and theory with Gary. It was heavy going, even though we had studied both our training manuals and everything else we could find about rebreathers and specifically the Inspiration. After lunch, Kevin shows us how to take the Inspiration apart and maintain it. We pat our unit's goodnight and head home.


Monday

The plan is: more theory, then into the water with our kit and then a tour of the AP Valves factory (who build the Inspiration). First, we have to pay, easier said than done! No banks are open in the US (Labour Day bank holidays) and after about an hour, Luke decides he will have to go to a bank and get the money out the next day. My turn and as I am paying for both Paul and myself, it is a lot of money! Well it's nice to know that my money is well protected; it took an hour to get the money out of them! At this point Gary was pulling his hair out. Thankfully, Beanie managed to pay within 5 minutes. All this took so long we head straight for Porthoustock to start diving.

All of us loaded more weight on our belts than any of us had used before but still fail to descend more than a couple of feet. Kevin (our other instructor) hands out more lead from his cache on the beach, still none of us can sink; Paul goes back to the van for more lead and after handing this out, Beanie manages to get under. Kevin gets more lead from our van, hands it out and we just manage to descend. So, at last off we go bouncing along the bottom like all good novices.

Kevin settles us down on the seabed and starts going through our emergency and other drills. These we will practise, time and time again, on every dive for the rest of the week: First we remove our mouthpiece making sure we close it first, this to avoid flooding the unit. Then we remove the mouthpiece and stretch it out above our heads to empty any water from the hoses. Then mask clearing and further skills. Being underweighted causes problems! Practising 'Diluent flushes’, we fill our counter lungs with air, while emptying all the oxygen from our counter lungs at the same time. This causes chaos with our buoyancy and after ascending/ descending/ ascending several times, Kevin calls it a day and we go back to Gary's to get some more lead. I ended up with 15kg's and Beanie was about the same, with Paul and Luke with a lot more.

Off to AP Valves for a tour of the factory. Very interesting, we see the complete design and manufacturing process. Also we were able to see some of the new products that will be launched in the near future. End up by seeing pictures of Paul and my unit's, as a screen saver on one of the staff's computers, and they asked us to send them some pictures of us in them, our rebreathers are the only ones they have made like it, so far!

Back to Dive Action and we clean and prep our units for the following day followed by some more theory (the first of several 12 hour days), before going straight to the Three Tuns to recover. Luke joined us. It turns out that Luke tried the beer the previous night and found it very strong. He also found that coke over here is much stronger. We found him one day with a bottle of concentrated orange, drinking it neat. Apparently, it was nice, and they think the British are strange!


Tuesday

We plan three dives, to make up for missed time. We manage to finish our two hours confined water time doing all our skills and learnt some new ones, including high O2 drills and how to fly the unit manually. I saw a cuttlefish and start to see the real benefit of rebreathers by having an inch and a half long blenny sit by me while I was doing the skills. No bubbles really does get the fish life close to you! Paul had an O-ring problem with his O2 cylinder where it leaked during the drills. This meant that his 3 litre unit was empting quickly so we went back to the unit to refill the cylinders and sort the problem. Back into the water for a second dive, this time to 10 metres. This time I saw a Red Mullet bottom feeding, amazing, wish I had my camera. We do a free ascent, which was very hard and showed I had too much lead, so I get rid of 2kg's. Back to the unit, clean the rebreathers and yes more theory.


Wednesday

As we missed our third dive yesterday it was 3 dives to be done today (hopefully). Kevin is very happy with our skills! On day one, we are at the stage that most people achieve on day three! Better than any other course that Kevin has taught on, and he has done 22 Inspiration courses this year alone. He decides we are ready for boat diving down to 20 metres. So a dive on my favourite wreck the Volnay. Off we go with some open circuit divers. It is amazing how noisy they are, you would not believe bubbles could be so loud. We swim around, our buoyancy much better and run through our skills. Did not get time to dig though and the viz was only 4 metres.

We have just over an hour's bottom time, and then back to Porthoustock; we stay on the RIB, while the open circuit divers swap over, this time we head out to the N G Peterson. With just an hour's surface interval, another hour-long 20m dive on open circuit air or Nitrox would not be advisable but on the rebreathers, we are well within our safety parameters. So off we go. A great dive, viz still only 4 metres and not many congers, but I find a cuttlefish and a John Dory with a tiny spider crab climbing on it. I was able to swim within a shoal of fish and because of the lack of bubbles, they don't swim off!

We are allowed lunch before heading back out for our third dive of the day. This time it was to a nice 12 metre wreck called Rock Island Bridge. We swim around and do more skills, then off for a bimble. During the swim instead of spending the time right at the back looking at the fish I move up and swam behind Kevin, bad move as I spotted the tail of a conger and started to look for the head. Not a problem you say, well as I was the one following Kevin and the viz was only about 2 metres, we all lost Kevin as I came to a stop looking for the rest of the conger. We sat down in a circle and did all our checks and made sure we were all Ok. Kev soon found us. Off we went for another bimble and further drills. After returning to St Keverne it's time to strip and clean the 'breathers. We were all tired and crash before 10 o'clock.


Thursday

The last day of the course! More lectures, then because the wind has turned we head for Mullion Cove. Memories of carrying up my twin set for the Trimix course came flooding back. Carrying the Inspiration is lighter (one of my reasons for going for it). Out we go for a dive round Mullion Island. Wow 8 metres viz and loads of life. I was at the back as usual and found a Tompot Blenny. Now on a rebreather, because of the airspace you can talk (not that a regulator ever stopped me), but both Paul and Beanie could here me talking to the Tompot Blenny (embarrassing). Also it meant that as everyone disappears out of sight Paul can yell at me. I swim off after everyone. They have all stopped and are waiting for me to do some skills. According to Kev, I came hurtling along swimming with both my hands and feet and grinned at him like a naughty schoolgirl as I landed. As much as I tried to watch the skills Kev was doing and getting us to do, I couldn't as I was watching the sand eels that surrounded us. It was amazing watching them, as you do not normally get to see them. It was time to ascend and we all had to use Delayed SMBs. Now Luke had not used one before, as they don't use them in America, they carry SMBs on all dives for the whole dive. So Luke had a 10 foot yellow SMB to blow up. On rebreathers, you do have an open circuit bailout, so Luke had to swap to this and take a breath and blow out into the SMB, take a breath and blow out into the SMB etc. As this was going on I couldn't unlock my reel as the nut had jammed and then I couldn't open the SMB bottle either (now I know why I take a man diving with me), so Paul opened it for me. During all this, we were swapping our reels and SMBs back and forth, as he had already sent his up. Also my reel was now tangled. While all this was going on Luke was still filling his SMB. Kev decides that this is a bit of a circus, so starts singing the clowns theme tune, then gets bored so pretends to go to sleep. It was so funny! All this done and we got to the surface Ok.

Gary was waiting for us and was in great form making rude comments at Luke's SMB. He decided that if it were any longer he would not need a reel and could just climb up it. My turn and he decides that all I need is a pink and purple hood with bobbles on and I would be a proper jester. Lunch break and off for our last dive of the course. All was going well on pre dive checks and kitting up and as I made a grab for my fins, I saw my weight belt, so there was an amusing 5 minutes as Gary yells at me and tries to put my weight belt on over my harness. No good, the thing was just hanging on to my hips. No go. So unclipped everything, then Gary attempts, successfully, to put my weight belt under my unit and then me clips me back up. I think he was ready to throw me over.

We have a good dive and then have to do our last skill, open circuit bailout with ascent to the surface from 20 metres on a 3 litre. On our pre-dive brief Kev's words are 'Don't hang about'. I was not planning too. All was going well until I got to 6 metres and as I had forgotten to dump air from my counter lungs, I took off like a rocket. I won the race to the surface and definitely took Kev's words literally.

Back at the unit and we cleaned our unit while Kev rushed off to his leaving do. Did I forget to mention, we were Kev's last course. He has given up teaching; 'because he wants to get back to a proper job and proper diving, apparently it was nothing to do with us?

We meet up with Luke at the Five Pilchards for the traditional last night meal. Luke was late as he just could not get use to the small twisty roads and got lost. The guy that runs the kitchens in the pub lives not far from Luke in America in the winter. We introduce Luke to British mustard, which was fun to watch. But he would still not try Ostrich steak. Logan the dog was there and I played and then a German shepherd dog came in and I was off to play with him. He was a guide dog, which was amazing as if I let mine lead me I would end up in a bush or river.


Friday

Morning found us going through our exam. We all passed with flying colours. We wished Kev luck and Gary threw some "Just like de Caribbean" t-shirts at us. The farm where we are staying has a cove at the bottom of the road. The farmer had lost his mooring and wondered if we would look for it. What a good way to do our first dive without an instructor. So off we went. After 40 minutes of swimming up and down we found the chain and Paul and Beanie tied the buoy to it. It was a great shore dive with loads of life, so maybe we will be back there to dive, also an excellent venue for snorkelling! So off we went for ice cream, which we had not had time for before. And then off to the Three Tuns for dinner.

Saturday had come around really quickly and it was home time again, but not for long as we will be back in a few weeks for a weekend diving and back for Christmas.

The rebreather is great but it will take a lot of time to get back to our open circuit ability levels, and will need a lot of practicing to get ir right, so here comes Vobster, Lake 12, Wraysbury and the NDC this winter.