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Congratulations to the new Wreck and Advanced Open Water divers!
Advanced OW & Wreck: Dan Snyder, Bob Sado, Katri Snyder, Rachel Fetter, Sandy Coventry, Dave Krawzsenek, Cathrine Bonin, Dennis Smith, Jonathan Wilson, Pam Spiedel, Dave Claypool
Divemaster: Roger Stienke
We just finished up our Wreck and Advanced courses taught by John Ellerbrock who helped to start Dive Animals way back in 1984. We all had a great time, and learned from John's experience. John kept all of us interested and entertained with some great stories pulled from his past classes and diving adventures. We also enjoyed the best conditions I've seen...I could see the surface from 90' on the Yukon.
In the Advanced Open water portion, we learned the skills and techniques for Night diving, Navigation, Deep diving, and Search and Recovery. Once you learn how to do it right, you realize how often navigation techniques are important. We discovered how navigation skills can be used to swim effective search patterns, but instead of recovering our lost weight belt we had GPS coordinates on, our search turned up an encrusted(but working) dive
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light. The deep dive was entertaining, watching everyone trying to sign their names and do multiplication tables at 100'. Katri was actually 3x faster at 100' than she was at the surface, but I think she might have cheated!
We found in the Wreck course that important considerations, techniques, special equipment and planning should go on before trying wreck penetration. We used the Yukon for the training dives, but approached it as if it were an unknown wreck. We spent the first dives exploring the exterior, assessing hazards, and planning for future penetration. We learned how a reel should be used to guide divers back out of a wreck if visibility goes bad, or you get disoriented. I feel confident now with the knowledge and proper techniques to safely explore more of the Yukon, or dive unknown wrecks.
John is offering to teach Medic/First Aid(MFA), Rescue Diver, DAN O2, and Divemaster in the near future. There is a package deal, or you can pick individual courses. I'm putting together the class list. Send me an e-mail at kd@pacific-ocean.com if you are interested.
Dan Snyder
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