Commercial Course No 59 week 3
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| Students enjoy their night dive |
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Monday 25th January
Back to The Pit today each student must log certain number of dives within certain depth ranges and today we hope to finish all the shallow dives. Today is much the same as Friday using full face masks and its back to finish our pipeline surveys. We must also complete a night dive as part of our course and tonight is the night. Although a very long day we were prepared with the BBQ, steaks & sausages - just the sort of food for long HOT day. After a few sausages off the BBQ and a couple of cold drinks, tonights task is to try and break a link of chain using a mash hammer, cold chisel and anvil. it sounds so easy on the surface, however underwater everything is more challenging. The biggest thing to concentrate on is not to get your fingers in the way - It still hurts underwater!!
Tuesday 26 January | | Mick's all ready for his night dive |  |
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Australia day, staff & students enjoy a day of on this public holiday
Wednesday 27th January | | Tom & Peter are all geared up and ready to go | |
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Back into the classroom today and straight into TABLES !!! Rick runs through all the rules and explains the tables thoroughly then it’s the student’s turn to practice - with table question, after question, after question. As tables are a no fail part of the final exam it is imperative that everyone understands them completely. We finish calculations, after much practice and look at suction forces which then leads us nicely into our next topic— risk assessment.
Thursday 28th January | | Luke helps Jon set up | |
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Today we are heading to a new location, Hume Weir and our first day of boat diving. A welcome change of scenery, although the heat wave is still with us and like yesterday, everyone is happy to be out on the water.The group is divided into two teams, one team completing a metal saw task and the other a wooden saw task. The team using the hack saw have to cut a 10mm piece of RHS without breaking the blade. Again, a simple enough task on the surface, however these guys are at 15 metres, limited visibility and doing the task by feel. The second group are using a bow saw to cut a piece of red gum railway sleeper, this is a real challenge underwater, as it is difficult enough on the surface. Both tasks are good challenges and also makes the divers concentrate on their gas consumption as well. The guys staying for part two are looking forward to getting their hands onto the power tools!
Friday 29th January | | Michelle exits the boat at Hume Weir | |
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Its the end of the week and after a couple days of diving, the students are glad to be back in the classroom. Although the relief is short lived, the first task for the day is the Recovery Exam. Obviously the students were listening to Rick, everybody breezed through the exam and were happy to have one more exam out of the way. Decompression tables were next on the agenda, a very important part of the diving process. Understanding the decompression tables is paramount to the divers safety. We also start on Equipment. We cover regulators, hydrostatic pressure testing, cylinders, valves and compressors. The students quickly realise there is a lot more involved in the equipment that we use and get an increased understanding of the functionality and internal workings of the equipment we use.Everybody is looking forward to the weekend to consolidate all the new information learnt.
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