In March we held technical courses under both TDI and PADI, with Marie and Pavel finishing off their Advanced Nitrox and Decompression Procedures courses and Cesar continuing on his Tec45 programme.
The ideal technical dive team size is the group of three so having three divers at similar course levels in the water is a please to teach in terms of team awareness and communication, as well as watching how individuals respond to a different team dynamic.
With everyone using the same Shearwater Petrel computers it was also good to be able to spend the last dive focusing on decompression diving using a computer and the importance of gas planning before the dive and monitoring the required deco gas reserves during the bottom phase of the dive.
Pavel also got to try out his new custom made to measure Santi eMotion drysuit which fit like a dream and came in very useful with the water temperatures still hovering at around 24C.
Congratulations to Marie and Pavel on completing their TDI Decompression Procedures and Advanced Nitrox courses and looking forward to their TDI Extended Range course next month. We'r also looking forward to seeing Cesar again in April for the final part of his DSAT TecRec Tec45 course.
We've decided to start using a colour coding system for all of our decompression and bail-out tanks as part of our annual stage tank overhaul.
The intention of this isn't to use the colour coding underwater, but to make visual recognition of tanks much easier on the surface, especially then having tanks passed town from boats on while donning tanks at the shoreline.
The colour coding also provides a quick visual reference underwater (we only used colours at the end of the visual spectrum - i.e. black, white, greens and blues).
We normally use standard gases for all our courses;
Black on White - Oxygen for Decompression from 6m upward
White on Black - 50% Nitrox for Decompression from 21m upward
White on Blue - Trimix 18/45 from 67m upward
White on Green - Trimix 10/70 from 130m upward.
The only other standard gas we use tend to use for decompression is Trimix 35/25 which we tend to make specifically for dives rather than have as a pre-filled standard gas.
