Sentinel instructor training

yves

Last week I drove to England to start my Sentinel Instructor cross over course with Phil Short. More specific, to Wales where the National Diving & Activity Centre is based in Chepstow Welcome to the National Diving & Activity Centre
Once arrived in Dover a 325 km drive brought me to a very nice Bed & Breakfast in a
renovated farm, top class and only ten minutes away from the quarry.
Coalpits Farm Bed & Breakfast - Wye Valley
Wednesday afternoon John & Rick joined in to do there user course on the Sentinel,
we rebuild my unit as it was nearly stripped to the last bold. The day after we started with a 2 hours dive full of skills.
To me the unit felt comfortable in the first hour, that was after closing the ADV, an option I personally hate on any rebreather. I had the advantage of being diving rebreathers for many years, but to my big surprise my two fellow students found their way in trimming the Sentinel in no time! The usual bouncing between surface and bottom for novice ccr student simply didn’t happen. After a surface interval we hit the water again for another hour, intense training as we say The following 3 days went on at the same rate. Phil called this “warm” water, I had a complete other idea about it being spoiled by a lot of Red Sea diving and never without my dry suit To be as much open minded as possible I did not read the manual of the rebreather beforehand. A big hand here for Phil who guides you true the course in a superb way, building up the skills step by step but at high speed. His +800 hours experience on the Ouroboros and a few hundred as test monkey on the Sentinel are clear to see. On the last day of the course I flooded my suit completely as the zip was damaged by a loos part inside, and had to abort the dive. As it included a very specific Sentinel skill, being finishing a deco dive on the HUD only, we needed to do that one over. Lucky for me Phil could do it a few days later on in Vobster. To make my day the suit filled up again up to my nipples with the gracious warm water 20 minutes into the dive. We still did 1 hour run time, kept ‘warm’ by the fourth element sub zero and thermal under ware. So the clothes do make the man here.
So my personal view on the new borne CCR:
The unit needs for sure more care in pre diving than some other CCR I use and instruct on, but the name LSS (Life Support System is for sure an understatement. By my knowledge it’s the only rebreather that for example will bring you home without a mask or a disabled primary display, a flashing white LED on the HUD shows you when to stop and when it’s save to go up. The packing of the stag is indeed a bit of a cow, so the upcoming cartridge will be great, on the other hand the bit of time spend at careful filling rewards you with an incredible dry and easy breading unit, even after 3 hours diving in a quarry.
A visit at CCRB where I was presented to Kevin Gurr and his staff gave me a confident feeling in the human approach off it all. Small upgrades like adding a protection plate under the solenoid and changing a broken cover, due to the sweet way some transport companies handle our babies with, was done on spot.
I added the off board gas connections available at CCRB and an additional
back plate to loose 2kg of my weight belt made by Kent Tooling.

What rests me now is to log 40 more hours to get into teaching status
on this wonderful machine. For those interested: I have a unit mod 3
available end of August, including training.
Mail or call me for more info.

Yves Christiaens
Adv.TMX CCR IT 7061
Sentinel ccr training

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__________________
Yves Christiaens
aquatec@mac.com http://web.mac.com/aquatec

Mixaddict

Yves,

Excellent report! Welcome to the club!

Regards,
Randy

__________________
Randy Thornton (MixAddict)
Inspiration, Evolution,Hammerhead & Sentinel
CCR Instructor