Rescue Diving

Who would of thought that becoming a rescue diver would require so little diving.  The course took three days.  Day one was classroom time.  It was not too terribly exciting.  We went back over all of the questions that we had to answer prior to class.  There were 5 chapters and 10 questions for each chapter.  In case anyone is mathematically challenged, that is 50 questions, each one with a short video segment from the Rescue Diver DVD to reiterate the answer.  Once we went through all the answers, we had a test, also 50 questions.  It was a standard multiple choice, true/false test.  The whole class combined only got three wrong.  We each could have gotten 12 wrong.  Obviously it was not a hard test.  The whole thing took about three hours.  

Day two was in the pool.  We practiced the skills we would need to use in the open water session.  The skills you learn during Rescue Diver include how to tow people who need help making it back to safety, how to bring an unconscious diver to the surface, how to stop a panicked diver from making an unsafe ascent, how to escape from a panicked diver, and my personal favorite how to ride a panicked divers tank so that they cannot get to you.  The pool water was nice and warm and clear.  That would not be the case for day three.

Day three was in Goose Creek.  It was a clear, windy, cold October day, I even wore a sweatshirt.  We started by going over our emergency contact numbers and the emergency action plan and how to perform an expanding square search pattern.  Then it was time to get in the water.  We had four scenarios that we had to go through.  Scenario one was an out of air simulation.  The hardest part of the scenario was finding the person who was going to be out of air.  As soon as you dropped below the surface, visibility dropped to less than a foot.  The only way to find them was swinging your arms around until you found an object, and hope it was the person you were looking for.  Scenario two was approaching a tired diver who turned panicky why you got there.  This one was on the surface so it was much easier to complete.  Scenario three turned out to be a mess.  We were supposed to locate a missing diver, who looked oddly like a bucket.  We were supposed to perform the expanding square to find the bucket.  It did not really work to well.  I could not see the compass to use a heading to make a 90 degree turn and could not see far enough to have any sort of orientation for turning.  After several failed attempts at an expanding square we tried a different approach.  We created a line by holding onto the octopus of the person next to us and swam forward.  Then spun, and headed back in the opposite direction.  We completed this pattern somewhat successfully, but swam right over the bucket without ever seeing it.  The last scenario was an unconscious diver at the surface.  

After completing all four scenarios, we went to the assistant instructors house to dry off and warm up.  The water temperature was a balmy 53 degrees.  One instructor was wearing a dry suit and I was wearing a 7 mm wetsuit with hood and gloves.  Overall, I spent less than half an hour underwater.  However, each scenario counts as a separate dive, so four dives in less than 1000 psi of air, talk about efficiency.