Mod2
The next step in my rebreather learning is the 60m trimix course. Its name varies between agencies, but it is widely called MOD 2 (after the 45m MOD1). SF2 instructors seem fairly thin on the ground, but I was able to get in touch with an instructor in Malta.
I’d been to Malta before so knew the basics of how to get around, and although I did dive on the previous occasion, it was a small rec level dive. This time I hoped to see some of Malta’s famous deeper wrecks.
I’m a little reluctant to give lots of information on my course, mostly because it was tremendously hard work, made harder as we battled with poor weather conditions. Also truthfully I’m fairly self critical and felt there were some issues, some kit related, some to do with the fact my kit is set up for cool UK waters and not the warm Mediterranean leaving me often too warm and some just not being as smooth as I would have liked at points. Also I slept like crap most of the time I was there.
It was, despite all that, a fantastic learning experience and I really feel it has improved my normoxic trimix diving. The instructor was solid and knowledgeable, the shop was excellent. The course itself was as mentioned, pretty stressful. Doing a planned bailout from 40m was mostly ok. My buoyancy is generally good anyway and although hanging at 6m breathing heavily from one of my stages wasn’t my favourite thing I was ok. Reaching the surface I’d happily gone back on to the loop once the skill and decompression was completed. A thunderstorm had blown up and we were the last two up, and the dive boat was slamming up and down. I flooded my loop with o2 and kept it pumping in as I had to swim hard to a drift line then haul myself back to the boat. Getting up on the lift finally, I was extremely grateful to the dive/boat master helping unclip my stages. A mercifully swift journey back soaked to the skin followed.
Skills and drills at 40+m is always exciting, I especially didn’t enjoy the SCR mode despite how easy the SF2 makes connecting up offboard gas. Pure oxygen rebreather mode is interesting and something I may do more on deco when doing 1 dive to hit that o2. Other skills were the useful jump in learning. Lots of playing with stages, and getting used to 2 or 3 being clipped on. Some improvements need to be made to my rigging and hose routing. A little interesting theory/practical application on pp02 and dil flushes to take account of gas or cell changes needs some deeper thinking about but re-enforced lessons from MOD1.
So in brief, another step along in my learning on the SF2. For now at least I’m not rushing to 60m, just feeling happier and safer in the 40-50m range with some more UK diving.
Travelling with the SF2 was a new thing for me - I’d packed the body into a huge peli-case (style) container along with the loop, the attached metal stand (from TechDiving Holland) and a few bits. It came to 31.5kg of my 32kg Scuba allowance. Another 25kg was taken up with all the regs, wing, backplate and assorted bits. Then another bag for my clothes. I packed the head unit in its normal hard-case and had it as the bulk of my 10kg cabin allowance. Happily Gatwick security passed it after a swab test. Malta security looked dismissively at it and declared ‘Scuba’ and passed it immediately! Everything else got there and back in one piece although for future trips I might re-think the giant hard-case in favour of the padded SF2 bag. Pretty sure I could have the 32kg to include pretty much everything with a few bits in with my clothes.