Day 1 of the doubles clinic with Beto!! An early drive down to Monterey started off with prayers for not-a-crap-ton of rain (the forecast called for constant rain for a couple of days) and not-a-frick-ton of traffic (the Pebble Beach Pro-Am was happening at the same time). Both were answered.
We started off with equipment setup and going over the working of the manifold, regulator setup, what's on which post and why, weighting options, etc. I had done a fair bit of reading on this and so it went pretty quickly. All this was done on Beto's already setup rig, following which we set mine up from the ground up. Turns out not having the bottom 5th port on the DST meant that I needed slightly different hose lengths than what I had on my singles setup. Some pawing through the random parts bin, and harness adjusting, later I was good to go. The main things we were going to work on today were just getting used to having two tanks on my back and the dreaded valve drill. I was a little nervous about this because of everything I'd read about it and specifically gotten the DGX long neck manifold to make things easier. The land drills went fine but the real test would be once I had the drysuit on.
After some lolly-gagging to play with the cat (and waiting for the rain to subside a bit), we headed to the Breakwater. The plan was to do one dive to feel things out a bit and try a valve drill, come back out to adjust the harness as needed and dive again to work on the skills some more and figure out weighting and any trim adjustments with close to empty tanks. I have to say that after the first few minutes, it didn't feel that much different than what I was used to in singles (apart from the "oh crap" moment when I realized I needed to add a LOT more gas to the wing during the descent to avoid cratering in the sand). Basic 5 and the kicks went totally fine. And then came the signal for the valve drill. If there's one thing I can honestly say I impressed Beto with it's the range of motion in my shoulders. Even with my elbow sticking out perpendicular to my body and my head not quite looking up, I was easily able to do the valve drill. Not that I'm satisfied with doing it this way, it's just a huge mental sigh of relief knowing now that I can do it without killing myself in my drysuit and thick Thinsulate undies.
I also found out exactly how sneaky GUE instructors are. I've read reports from tech and cave classes where they sidle up next to/above/below you unnoticed to steal stuff and initiate all kinds of failures. In my case, it was unexpected drysuit inflation - not a little puff either, he had my inflator activated for a few seconds while I was attempting a back kick before I realized what was happening. Doesn't sound like a lot but at 20ft it required some concerted action on my part to not pop up to the surface. I had specifically spoken to him earlier about working on drysuit skills so I guess I was asking for it.
The other thing I need to mention was just how insanely amazing of a dive it was. We had at least 40-50ft viz in blue water and tons of jellies everywhere - salp chains, pyrosomes, hula skirt jellies, sea butterflies, egg yolk jellies and the ubiquitous sea nettles. Probably a lot more species that I just don't remember or can't ID. And, um, a couple of seals that decided our doubles were super attractive and started humping them. Beto showed me a way to drive them off - go head down, stretch your legs out and try to get 'em in a scissor hold. True story.
-> 1hr 48min, 20ft, 53F
Beto was very satisfied with the setup and my ability to manage it in the water so we decided day 2 would essentially be a sneak peek into Fundies 2.
- U