First Class Diver Experiences 2007
First Class Diver Chief Examiner - Dave Lock
With a view to continuing to help divers aspire to and achieve the First Class Diver award we have compiled the following information from those members who achieved the award of First Class Diver during 2007
We have invited each of them to provide information on their experiences and aspirations and I'm sure you will all find these as varied and colourful as the individuals themselves.
I congratulate them all for their hard work and commitment in gaining this award and wish them well for their future adventures diving with the BSAC
Dave
GORDON MACKIE – FIRST CLASS DIVER
Why did I do First Class?
I attended my first DOC in 2006 and when they were awarding the FCD certificates I had a sudden “I’ll have a bash at that” moment. It was mid January before I applied and then I realised that the theory exam was in March and the practical in September, a tight schedule.
My reasoning was that I wanted to find out what I didn’t know and to push my diving further by diving in different places with people outside the club. Most of my 2004 & 2005 diving had been training dives with Ocean and Sports divers and I wanted to do self-development for a change. Just to add to this, I signed up for Advanced Instructor at the same time.
What was my experience of FCD Exam?
Luckily, there were a group of us in South Scotland doing the exams, so we took a past paper each and every week we met to go over our answers, taking a different topic (medical, decompression etc) each week. We also did a prep weekend for the practical together and were already a good team and worked together well on the practical exam. They were a great group, I learned a lot from them.
Theory Exam
Luckily, I had studied hard but there were still a couple of questions that had me thinking very hard, as I had skimmed over those topics. The paper had me scribbling right up to the line, it was a good one.
Buy loads of books, do all past papers and discuss your answers with others. Remember that there are 30 questions and 60 marks and try to get 2 points at least on every one and don’t forget the clock.
The WWW has a host of sites that are useful; BSAC site has some fantastic stuff on it – use it!
Practical Exam
This was a tough one; at the end of the weekend I was physically and mentally exhausted. I had not realised that the combination of depth, task loading and having an examiner watching every move would be so stressful. In hindsight, I think it is like driving. If a driving instructor were sitting beside me while I drove to work, I would probably do the worst 3-point turn ever.
The non-stop questioning and expecting “incidents” makes the whole weekend one that seems to last forever. The questions are very searching, expect your answers to be challenged, a bit like Chris Tarrant, the “is that your final answer?” can make you wonder whether you are REALLY sure about your answer. The questions were actually very well thought out and some were tricky to answer verbally, I should have drawn diagrams.
One great point about the diving bit – they can’t ask questions during that bit!
Know every knot in the book, and some that are only used by Mongolian goat herders.
Remember who you are, everyone has to play every role on hard boat and RIB over the weekend. It is easy to forget your role. Get a red hat for the Dive Manager!
Take loads or rope, weights, reels (marked for distance), quadrants, survey measuring tapes, wet books, slates, clips… in fact – take the contents of your house and garage.
Keep a sense of humour and don’t forget that the objective is to find your limits and get outside your comfort zone. Expect a lot of “why did you just do that?” or “shouldn’t you have…” And a load of “where are we RIGHT NOW?”
Don’t try to impress by being pushy, teamwork is the important thing and your ability to be led is as important as your ability to lead. But also try to be seen to be always doing something when examiners are in the room and you are planning. You may be deep in thought, figuring out how to get every candidate diving with every examiner and everyone playing a role, but that looks very similar to being “not involved with the team”.
Do a prep weekend and form a team as soon as you can. The more preparation you put in, the better it will work.
Don’t forget the paperwork – Risk Assessment, Passage Plans, Day Plans, Task Overview, Task Breakdown, Roles for the day, Buddy Pairs, Logging dives. And do not lose any of the paperwork; you need to produce a report at the end, every scrap of data will be useful.
Expedition Plan
I decided to base mine on Scapa Flow with a few twists to make the logistics challenging. The biggest problem is getting it in to 15 pages without going to print too small to read. You have to get passage plans, day plans, dive briefs, weather, travel etc in to meet the template but then find yourself with War and Peace. Keep it simple and read the instructions!
What Lessons did I Learn?
That waiting till I was 52 was not smart – the younger and fitter you are, the easier the weekend will be. That I knew a little about a lot of things, but that there is a load of detail in the understanding of dive theory, navigation, medicine, physics etc. Doing club theory lectures does not prepare you for 15 mins being questioned by Sean Gribben on first stages (in his dark glasses). I now know far more than I expected to learn and I know where to find just about anything you need to know. Go on, quiz me!!
On the practical side, my compass, chart and navigation work is back up to scratch; my dive management is a sight to behold. I can tie better knots than a black belt bondage master (though the highwayman’s hitch always has me doing 3 attempts) and can survey with quadrants and lay out any geometric shape you fancy using reels, lines, SMBs and spare kit on any type of seabed.
What do I intend to now as First Class Diver?
I have already signed up for Instructor Trainer Development Course and hope to achieve National Instructor some time in the future.
I would like to help others with FCD study, prep weekends, expedition planning and more instructing.
I am also going to do Trimix and get back in to cave diving as well as doing my usual weekly dives, planting the odd gnome garden here and there in Scotland and abroad.
Where do I dive?
Having a house in Edinburgh and another in Maratea in South Italy (where I am starting up BSAC clubs) I get the best of both worlds. I can dive the East and West coast of Scotland, the Hebrides and do Scapa at least twice a year. I get at least 2 dives a week every week all year round in Scotland and have around 480 sea caves to explore around my home in Italy as well as some great wrecks “created” by a busy Royal Navy submarine in 1942.
I have also dived Truk, Palau, Yap, Bikini, Papua New Guinea, Belize, Cuba, California, off the North East coast of USA, Andaman Islands, Borneo, Red Sea and all over the med.
I have never had a bad dive, but some have been more interesting than others
Biography
Growing up on the Clyde coast with a holiday home in Arran, I started snorkelling as soon as I could swim. At 14 started diving with Scottish Sub Aqua club in 1970 (gear was pretty basic then).
As I went to a military school, I was able to do Royal Navy CCF diving at HMS Vernon and spent a lot of time feeling my way around Horsea Island in a SABA set with a set of brass spanners. I also used the old O2 horse collar rebreather (and they say modern rebreathers are dangerous?)
I then did a lot of diving around the Clyde and West Coast with friends and when I moved to Edinburgh in 1987 I joined BSAC 21 in Edinburgh and also Kirkcaldy BSAC when I lived in Kinghorn for a couple of years. On my return to Edinburgh I rejoined BSAC 21.
I also started BSAC 2418 BSAC Italia, which has an equal split of Italian and Scottish divers (plus 2 Australians and 2 Lithuanians). The Scots like diving in the sun on our trips south and the Italians are now Scapa fanatics! I am chairman and D.O. as well as Training officer.
I have around 5000 dives logged and a few years that didn’t get on paper.
The other stuff
I have to thank my partner Lorrie for her patience over the past year. If I wasn’t studying and saying, “did you know…?” – I was tying knots while watching TV, fiddling with dive gear, buying books or gadgets, plotting courses on charts and reading chart 5011 or off diving somewhere.
Thanks to all the guys who were in the group last year, I learned a lot from you all and had great fun.
And finally – thanks to everyone who gave up their time to examine us, help with prep weekend, assist and organise and, in the usual BSAC fashion, do what makes BSAC the great organisation that it is.
FCD Experience – Andrew Allan
Although as an overseas-based diver my FCD experiences may not be typical they share with others a common theme. If FCD can be summed up in a few words then they would be “Make It Happen”.
Like many people my experience started with a little chat with my Regional Coach, in this case sitting beside him flying back from an ITS event (in Saudi Arabia 1000 mile round trips are not uncommon for such events). He suggested that it was time I thought about FCD and NI. The two have always been closely linked in my mind and initially I thought of FCD as an essential development on the way to NI, interestingly as I progressed down the FCD path it became much more important in its own right both as a personal challenge and as way of broadening my diving experience.
The first hurdle was to complete the prerequisite SDCs. Most I had already done, but three were not readily available locally. Diver Cox’n was obtained from a BSAC Centre in Cyprus and similarly I undertook the medical program from one of the technical agencies (again in Cyprus), which I was able to cross over to complete Rescue Specialist. At that time ERD was still a requirement for FCD and with the help of the local coaches we managed t arrange a course in Bahrain. This took some time and in the interim I had taken a technical nitrox and deco course during my summer holidays in Cornwall. The ERD event was successful and four other divers from my club went on to obtain ERD qualifications. Having been bitten by the ‘Techy bug” I went on to Trimix!
While I was finishing the SDCs our regional NIs held a FCD prep event in Bahrain. This was held over a weekend and took the form of one day of task diving, planned the night before, and one day of theory prep. I think all the candidates came away with the realisation that we had a lot of work to do to reach the FCD standard. I went home and after a lot of reflection decided to “make it happen”.
There were no other candidates locally so much of the studying had to be done on my own. I set about working through the different sections of the theory paper. I have often found that the best way to really learn a subject is to teach it and so both within my club and with the coaching scheme I assisted on and taught the relevant courses. Our Regional coach became my “mentor” and under his guidance I organised the Coaching Scheme and ITS events. Along with other divers in my club a number of underwater projects were undertaken. Over the next 18 months we sank old jet skis to make an artificial reef, rebuoyed the swim area of a private beach and went on several expeditions to Jeddah (the subject of my Expedition Plan). During this time I was enthusiastically supported by many divers in my club, several of who were progressing to Advanced Diver. By the end of 2006 I thought I was ready.
For no good reason other than the availability of the events I chose to take the exam in “reverse order” starting with the practical in Oman in April. I finish my prep two weeks before with some extended range dives in Jeddah and the was staffing an OWI event in Kuwait the weekend before, flying in to Oman the next day for four days of work up dives with the others involved in the event, including the examiners. This allowed us to get used to the boats we would be using and dive some of the possible exam sites.
The exam kicked off on Wednesday night with a briefing from the chief examiner and then we set about planning the next day’s diving: locating exploring and lining a wreck. The examiners sat in on the initial planning session before inviting the candidates to join them for a curry and then left us to finish the planning afterwards. This made for a very late night. The following day bright and early we launched the boats and headed out to sea. One thing that had been apparent from the very start was that the examiners expected to be part of the team and to be actively involved in the diving tasks. This continued throughout the whole event. The day passed quickly with diving interspersed by questioning from the examiners, incidents (one simulated and one real!), navigation, seamanship etc. By the end of the day I was convinced I had already failed (Never evaluate yourself at the end of an exam!) Then it was back to base to plan Day 2.
This was the first of the new style Practical Exams that required the writing of a report on a diving task. We were tasked with preparing a Divers’ Guide to a local “artificial wreck” (the report was subsequently posted on the FCD web site). We therefore planned a series of dives to survey the wreck and map out suitable routes for divers. This time we ate at the planning table while the examiners went out, coming back for a briefing at 22.00. This was a much better plan and allowed for some much needed sleep.
Day 2 was typified by a number of unforeseen problems, which caused delays and hassles and required some serious planning on the fly by the Dive Manager (me!). Despite this it was a very enjoyable day with some great diving and a lot of fun had by all. That night we all went out for a meal and relaxed.
Overall the experience was positive the new exam format was good fun and several new friendships and contacts were made. The report was written over the next week with ever expanding attachments emailed back and forward until we reached the stage of publish and be damned. Within a month of my return my club was planning an expedition to Oman to dive the Al Munasir.
The next two months were taken up writing my Expedition Plan. I chose to write it based on Jeddah (a frequent destination for my club, but a seldom dived venue for divers from outside Saudi). I followed the template of the report published on the FCD web site. I found keeping the length down to be the hardest part and perhaps concentrated too much on the details of Jeddah and the dive sites at the expense of the actual dive plans.
I took the written exam in October. One advantage of having been grilled by the examiners during the practical was that I had identified some areas of weakness. (The answer I said I would have to look up, Sean is two cones pointing at each other!!). The summer was spent with my nose back in the books and repeatedly working through passed papers.
The skill that is needed for the Theory Paper is to be concise and answer the question asked, while not trying to second-guess the examiner. I found it difficult not to give too much information and had to shorten my answers in the second half of the paper as by half way through I was well behind only just catching up by the end.
Overall the First Class Experience was worthwhile. It’s not easy and it requires a degree of dedication. I must have covered over 20,000 miles between prep and the event itself. It is very much a team effort and I would not have made it without the support of the other members of my club who gave up their time and experience to help me. We all learned a lot and I am sure are better divers for it. I started out thinking of First Class as part of the road to NI. Now I think that it much more important in its own right both as a matter of diving achievement and also as an exercise in teamwork and endeavour. As I said at the beginning FCD is about “Making it Happen”.
The question is “What now?” Since finishing FCD I have a lot more spare time so I guess it is time to think about NI before I lose the momentum.
Page last modified: 8th Jan 2008 - 11:19:37
