The focus of these combined courses is to train students to be successful in technical diving. These classes are taught as if they are a small piece to a much larger picture, not as entry level technical diving. These courses build the foundation for sound technical diving. What you will learn will be utilized in higher level trimix courses. This is not a course to learn or re-learn fundamental diving skills. Students will be held to a higher level of performance not found in many technical diving courses.

Students are taught and evaluated, not only on skill proficiency, but control, leadership, situational awareness, teamwork, and judgement. Successful students will have a finesse that few divers have. You will finish this class with the confidence, competence, and comfort to be able to complete dives at this level of training prior to receiving a c-card.

This course requires a minimum of 5 days with 10 or more dives and involves a minimum 40 hours of instruction. Expect to dive every day with lectures in the afternoon and evening for each day. The majority of dives will be conducted in shallow water for critical skill evaluation. However, each day will get deeper as the class progresses. The final day is reserved for experience dives that will be at depth with a real decompression obligation.

Course content will include, but not limited to: enriched air Nitrox usage, decompression mixtures, diving physics & physiology, dive tables, advanced decompression theory, oxygen exposure/management, team diving procedures, and contingency planning.

The tuition for these combined courses is $800. This includes the manuals, supplemental materials, and certification fees.

Please view my Calendar for course offerings. This classes may also be run by appointment. Contact me for more information.

Course Timeline:

A typical day, we start out at 7:00 AM. We start out getting in the water right away. We'll dive till 1:00 PM or so. Then we'll break for lunch and do the video reviews. After that we'll spend the remaining day with lecture. Plan on diving every day.

Day 1: Basic skills refinement
During day 1 is when I get an idea of where students are at skill wise. Day 1 is also the only day where I "checklist" skills. We'll cover the basic 6, trim, propulsion, buoyancy, situational awareness, and bottle work. We also cover this on land as well.

Day 2: Valve Isolation
Day 2 is completely reserved to work on valve isolation. We will go over all 9 failures, both land and in the water. This starts the transitional process into a thinking diver instead of simply following procedure. Valve failures are simulated. Students will have to determine the failure and respond accordingly. No "flash cards" are used. Time is reserved for some swimming around with some light "task loading".

Day 3: Line Work and Simulated Decompression
This day starts out with line work. I added basic line work for one main reason. Line work is great for working on situational awareness and team building. After running line on land and underwater, we'll move into simulated decompression. We'll now start to go deeper and increase the task loading/failures. We'll start doing ascent/descent drills and 6 minute ascents from 20 feet. Performing decompression stops, team placement and communication are stressed during this day.

Day 4: Bottom Stage
This day, we'll go over how to use a bottom stage and continue working on ascents/descents, team work and communication. Basically, it is an extension from day 3 with bottom stages.

Day 5: Experience Dives
Once students have gotten to this point, they are ready to perform real decompression dives. This is where we will do dives to a maximum of 140 feet and incur light (i.e. ~15 minutes or so) decompression. Of course, more task loading/failures. This day we'll do two dives to a maximum of 140 feet.

Requirements:

* Minimum age 18
* Advanced Open Water or higher certification (Rescue diver highly recommended)
* Recreational Nitrox certification
* DAN Master level (or equivalent) dive insurance or higher
* Must have logged a minimum 100 hours of bottom time
* Must have logged a minimum of 100 non-training dives

Required Equipment:

* Backplate with one piece continuous harness
* Regulator with primary 2nd stage on a 7' hose, backup 2nd
stage on a bungee necklace, SPG, BCD inflation hose, dry
suit inflation hose (if needed)
* Wing style Buoyancy Compensating Device (BCD)
* Depth gauge and bottom timer device
* Backup bottom timer and depth gauge
* Stop watch capable of a minimum 200 feet
* Low volume mask
* Stiff fins (i.e. non-split type)
* Primary light (HID Canister Light Recommended)
* Backup light (recommended two)
* Backup mask
* Surface Marker Buoy (SMB)
* Finger spool with minimum 100 feet of line
* Wetnotes
* Dive knife & backup cutting device
* Weighting system
* Exposure suit adequate for conditions
* Double tank configuration with isolation manifold**
* 40 cu. ft. deco bottle or larger (minimum one)**
* Oxygen clean regulator for deco bottle

** Recommend that tanks be cleaned and serviced for oxygen use.