Technical Diving – A Late in Life Guide…
Like a lot of itches, my tech diving itch began quite small and spread slowly. It started during the pandemic with an innocent question about the GUE training a friend of mine had recently completed.
Her answer was that it had been challenging, but rewarding and had made her want to more. And indeed she did, going on to rebreathers and cave diving!
At that point in time I had been diving recreationally for over 40 years. Having started with the British Sub Aqua Club back when it could take six months of pool training before you got anywhere near the sea!
Of course PADI changed all that and BSAC went through several reinventions to stay relevant.
But the thing was that the BSAC training was comprehensive, complete and good! I eventually went on to become an Advanced Instructor (AI718) and the Diving Officer of the Awali BSAC branch in Bahrain, where I lived with my family for 7 years in the late 80’s before we migrated to Australia. Getting to Advanced Instructor was, for me, a big deal. The training was hard and I really felt that I had earned that qualification!
It’s obvious to me now that the chat with my friend touched the same nerve my BSAC training had. But that was when I was a young man, not coming up for 70… Was this something I should even be considering at my age? So, I put myself through full regular and diving medicals plus went to see a cardiologist for a stress test. They all said the same – you are good to go!
Technical Diving – GUE and TDI
And go I did… Starting with the GUE Fundamentals and then the Recreational Diver 3 courses in Sydney. I did both courses during the pandemic with Dive Centre Bondi and Duncan Patterson, who is both an excellent instructor and one of the nicest guys you could hope to meet!
What those two courses taught me was a couple of things… Firstly, despite having over 3,000 logged dives and 40 nears of experience, I simply was not the capable diver I thought I was. Secondly I realised that I both wanted and needed to get better at technical diving.
Post pandemic, my wife and I returned to our home in Bali. And I decided to switch to TDI, as GUE has a very limited presence in Indonesia. By this point in time I had mapped out my technical diving ambitions and for 2024 that meant the WWII recreational depth wrecks in the Solomon Islands, followed by the incredible WWII wrecks of Bikini Atoll.
Which meant that I needed to move up the TDI capability curve and get qualified to ANDP on sidemount for the Solomons. And Extended Range for Bikini Atoll. I did all that and successfully completed both trips – but… And it’s a big BUT, because the full-on deep technical diving at Bikini Atoll was, for me, life-changing!
Technical Diving – CCR…
On about the 4th day at Bikini I had, to a degree, got my head around diving to 55m on air and the deco obligations that entailed. I was on the mooring line of the USS Arkansas at 21m doing my first deep stop on 50% O2. When I looked down the CCR divers were still down there… But because they had less deco obligation were back on board before I was.
That was when the penny dropped and I realised the way forward was going to CCR. I am now booked for a month in Truk Lagoon in October 2025 and two back-to-back trips in Bikini Atoll in 2026. To do what I want to do, I need to get get trained to what used to be called MOD 1 first. Which basically means able to dive to 40m on a rebreather, with air as a dilutent. But. it seems thing are changing at IANTD and MOD1 is now Deep Rebreather… Then to do Bikini I need to get qualified to what used to be MOD 2 – 60m maximum depth, with Helium as the dilutent.
MOD 2 appears to now be Normoxic Trimix Rebreather but very little information is currently (November 2024) available on-line. Which is all very confusing – more to follow as I proceed up this learning curve!
