BSAC IFC May 8, 2007
Posted by chris in : Uncategorized , trackbackStereotypes, they say, are made to be broken, or is that rules? Whichever, the stereotypes were broken by the weekend’s BSAC Instructor Foundation Course (IFC). For a start of the eight of us and two instructor trainers only I had any facial hair and not a full beard anywhere in sight all weekend. Brian, the branch secretary and our host did have a well-trained beergut though!!
The course was at NATO Joint HQ in Germany. As you drive up to the gate there is a machine gun and a very bored squaddie looking at you. But the security chap was a lot nicer than anything I have ever met at an airport and our UK passports were glanced at and in we went with a friendly thank you.
Once inside I could see where my tax was being spent, the dive club is a superb facility at the side of the base’s swimming pool, complete with 4m dive pit. The guys say the MOD want to shut the base down and move back to the UK. That would be a bad thing for the divers there I’m sure and for us as this facility is only a couple of hours drive away.
It was all very “English” and Brian soon had the kettle on and as other folks turned up we got to know one another and break the ice. There were four students from the NATO branch and four of us that had come from elsewhere including two very pretty young women one of who was already a PADI OWSI doing the crossover. As the weekend progressed it turned out the other young woman (the daughter of someone on the base) was also from a PADI background. So of the 8 people there four were PADI.
We split into two groups (I got the missus and the two other women were in the other group - hmmph..) and we would be working with the North European Regional Coach, Laurent, a French guy living and working in the Netherlands, who spoke better English than me. The pool was open to the public in the afternoons so we had a quick academic and then set off for our first pool session. We struggled with our unfamiliar recreational gear. I guess its about 5 years since I last wore a stab jacket and octopus rig. Laurent demonstrated a CBL for us then we each took it in turn to do a demonstration and mimic as if we were with real students. Then we moved down into the 4m dive pit to repeat it. At about 2.5m there was a thermocline and I began to regret only having a pool suit. By the end of the exercise I was visibly shivering and everyone was frantically checking OK OK? The shallow water soon warmed me up again though and then out onto the poolside for some more exercises.
The afternoon was academics with the squeal of kids in our ears from the swimming pool - now full of people enjoying the wonderful sunshine. There was some very interesting scenery to see in the coffee breaks… The end of the day came really quickly and we set off back for the hotel in town out past the machine guns again. Sadly, it was a noisy night and we didn’t get much sleep - the next morning was a real drag getting out of bed. Thankfully the Holiday Inn managed a decent bacon and eggs breakfast and we set off back to the base for day two. No-one had done much work for the presentation it seemed - the previous day had drained everyone and the “homework” had, by and large been eaten by the dog. One of our group, Carl, had done a first class effort with a DVD clip of wreck diving and a PowerPoint presentation. Sadly, none of it worked as we couldn’t get the laptop to read the disc and in the end he had to wing it as well.
Our second pool session was a 20 minute lesson each and Kelly and I decided to wear drysuits this time. A bit of overkill in the pool but for the long session it was so much better. It all went well and we managed another CBL some AAS exercises and even my surface duck-dive went OK despite not having done one in about 15 years.
Back to the classroom and we had our academic presentations to do. As with the practical lessons it was a mixture of peer review and input from Laurent. I was hugely impressed with Laurent - he really knew his stuff and gave you really constructive and useful feedback without pointing out too much that you had screwed up. We chatted about diving in one of the breaks and then I really felt sorry for the guy - he spends more time in the pool than the sea and you could see a wave of homesickness spread over him when Kelly and I were jabbering about our recent wreck dives in the South of France.
All too soon the thing was over and we were shaking hands and getting our little stickers for the qualifications books. We had made good friends in the short time we were there and all hoped to meet up for some diving and social weekends. I’d like to go help out with their branch training some time and get some practical experience if we can, although there are some complications as they are MOD. I hope we can work round that.
This was the first ever BSAC training I had done and while it wasn’t as “polished” as some (but not all) of the commercial training I’ve done it was really good. I can’t fault Laurent and both Kelly and me really enjoyed the weekend and felt we had learnt loads.
I hope we can put some of our new skills to use soon, meantime many thanks to everyone from two very new Assistant Diving Instructors.
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