Journey Underground - TDI Mine 1 - Day 1
journey underground - TDI Mine 1 Course review - Day 1
For Christmas 2018 my partner got what is now the most expensive book I have ever owned. I got a copy of Martyn Farrs book “The Darkness beckons.” After reading the history of Cave diving and seeing the beautiful images it got me interested in trying out some overhead diving.
After looking at UK caves I decided that they were not for me (now, things may change), as they are quite small, dark and normally short. They also require a degree of dry caving skills that I currently do not possess.
This led me to looking at UK Mines, these are a different beast to UK caves. They tend to be a bit larger, have clearer water and for the most part do not require any caving skills to get to the entrances, although some of them do require a bit of a walk.
For the first step on my journey I did a Sidemount course with Ian France. You can read my course write up here.
Once this was competed I booked up to do TDI Cavan & Mine 1 with Michael Thomas, I also added a day’s Sidemount skills in before the course to make sure all my skills were where I needed them to be, rather than find out while doing the course.
Day 1 – Sidemount skills day.
The first two days of my course were to be at Vobster Quarry. As this is a bit of a drive and needing to meet there at 8:00 I drove up the day before and stopped an extra night.
So bright and early on Thursday morning I got to Vobster ready for a long few day.
The day started with the obligatory paperwork; one this was out the way the first thing to was to take another look at my harness.
I had made some changes to the harness after my Sidemount course, and we needed to make sure that it was still fitting me ok. Other than having to lengthen the Crotch strap it was all good.
After this it was time to get into the water, we got kitted up and put the cylinders on in the water.
Dive 1:
We dropped down and swam around to the 6m platforms and it was then onto a skills circuit. This consisted of:
· Removing the rear bolt snap, bringing the cylinder forward, then moving it back and clipping it off again. Then swapping sides and doing the other side.
· Completely removing a cylinder, putting it down, then putting it back on again.
· Free flow drills and shutdowns.
· Mask removal
· Swapping to backup mask.
This didn’t go to badly, I struggled to clip my left cylinder off the first time but got there in the end, just need to work on my muscle memory.
After the skills we went for a little dive around and ended up with me putting a DSMB up. We then ascended, did our safety stop and got out the water.
After a quick debrief, we decided that I could try dropping 1Kg of weight, but other than that there was nothing that was really going to cause any issues.
Dive 2:
This was mainly a repeat of the first dive, same skills but this time after the mask off drill Michael ran a short bit of line out so that I could practice mask switching while keeping contact with a line.
Both dives ran to about 40 mins, so not too bad.
After the second dive I got my cylinders filled ready for Friday and the first day of the Cavern diver course.
As Vobster’s COVID measures mean that you get either a morning or afternoon dive slot, we needed to be away from the main car park for 14:00. So, we headed off to their top car park to do the dry line laying that would normally be done on the morning of the cavern diver course. This meant we were not using up out dive time to do land drilled on Friday morning.
While I have used a reel in the past to run a line on a wreck in open water, I have never formally done any line laying. This was to be my first chance to run a reel properly for an overhead environment.
We started with Michael running the reel and explaining about primary tie off’s Secondary tie off’s and picking belays. Once this was demoed, we reeled back in and I got my chance to give it a go. The biggest take always for me where to keep the line tense, and to look ahead to pick a belay and think about the direction of travel after.
After running the reel, we put some line markers down and I got a stark reminder about sticking to the rule of thirds. Michael timed me walking the line with my eyes open, always keeping in touch contact. After this he got me to do the same again but this time with a blackout mask on. While it only took me 1:01 the first time, it took me 1:59 the second time. As this took almost double the amount of time that would have used almost all my spare 3rd of gas.
The final set of skills to go over where a lost diver and lost line drill. The reminder for this is that you just must keep trying to find the line if you lose it, and always put an arrow down when you leave the line to search for someone.
With all this done and packed away we went over my Theory test scores, Michael was happy with my answers and with that it was the end of the first day.
