Today was the first day of the underwater navigation specialty course. We started in the classroom. The Instructor was Carl, ans other participants were; Keith, Michelle, Alex and 'Pixie'.
After going through the knowledge reviews we headed to Oak Park for a double dive with lots of skill assessments.
Dive 1 saw us calculating our time and kick cycles over 30 M. Then we performed a 5 minute swim in blue water at 5 M and set a reciprocal course to the flag. We then took visual and compass references over "split rock" to see if we could relocate the site on the second dive.
Before Dive 2 we plotted a rectangle with an equilateral triangle on top "house shape" which we attempted to reconstruct using 2 separate teams in the ocean.
Our first attempt was a disaster and we actually ended up losing one of the marker flags:
Our second attempt was much better and we managed to layout the flags and navigate fairly complex patterns across the site.
We went back to the surface of "split rock" using the visual aids from the first dive. I was quite pleased to descend within 5M of the target even with a moderate surface current.
The course covers a lot of "common sense" and anyone who has been diving a while will already know a lot of the subject matter. It is really good to practice these skills in a course environment as you get a better understanding of your abilities. I was quite surprised at my lack of ability to use my compass very accurately and this course has helped me to sharpen those skills.
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