Commercial Course No 59 week 6

Students watch as Mark sets up for dry runs in the car park

Monday 15th February

Nothing like an exam first thing Monday morning to start the week off. The rigging exam consists of 90 short asnwer questions on all facets of synthetic and natural fibre ropes, steel wire ropes, chains and rigging practices. We then marked and debriefed the exam all students passed well. We then finish off the day with the hydraulic prac in the dry. The training rational is that all students use the tool on dry land, for exactly the same task they are to complete underwater so they know exactly what to expect. The systems are set up in the car park and everyone has a dry run practise run under the watchful eye of Descend instructors. Everything is then dissembled and loaded for the following day.

Tuesday 16th February

Mick does a dry practice run

 Off to the pit today, students get to test out the pnuematic & hydraulic tools underwater. Stay tuned for more details.

Wednesday 17th February

Omer & Mick gear up

Diving at "The Pit" again today and was much of a repeat of yesterday. Tasks again included using the hydraulic drill, chainsaw and cut off saw. With much practice students will now be ready to tackle these tasks in deeper water tomorrow at Dartmouth.

Thursday 18th February

Diver prepares to exit the boat

After a fantastic day yesterday, it was off to Dartmouth today for a day of boat diving. We started a new task - the flange survey. This involves measuring up a valve assemly to get all the dimensions we needed to dram three dimensional engineering drawing. Not an easy task in low visibility water. All divers require several dives to achieve this. We then lowered the workbench from the winch on the dive boat and went onto hydraulic tool tasks. Today we used the drill to bore holes through a steel beam.

Friday 19th February

Luke & Mark assist divers in the water

A glorious day today but unfortunately we are stuck  in the classroom, another day of theory and today we concentrate on lots of small topics including non destructive testing, concreting, ships surveys, video, welding theory, and explosive power tools.