Buoyancy

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SAFETY TALK - January 2008

Buoyancy

The ups and downs of the National Instructor Exam

Look I’m good at this buoyancy control lark; actually I’m fantastic at it! For years I have been perfecting the skill so that I am 100% confident I can maintain a position in the water ±0.2m. I have done it in very stressful situations where buddies have been panicking, whilst multitasking (which of course for any bloke is virtually impossible even when on dry land!), gas switching / shutdown drills at a 3m stop, deploying DSMB’s and tying off distance and penetration lines – I could go on.

So why was it when doing my National Instructor Exam in August 2007 did it all go wrong? On three occasions I embarrassed myself in front of the examiners (usually the same one); fortunately not enough to fail however but it did result in a ‘borderline’ in my diving skills section. An outrage.

Following the exam I read the examiners comments and analysed what went wrong. I came to the conclusion that it’s the particular type of stress that does it. In this case my particular desire to demonstrate to the examiners how ‘good’ I actually was as opposed to getting on with it. This is the sort of stress that you don’t practice. So the moral of the tale is make sure that you practice the crucial skill of buoyancy in all stressful situations.

My top tips for buoyancy nirvana

Make sure your weighing is correct so that at the end of the dive you can hold a stop at 6m with 50 bar in your cylinder and very little gas in your drysuit/BCD (just enough to prevent pinching – no more)
Make sure your trim is correct. By this I mean that adjust your weighting / kit configuration so you can sit totally horizontal in the water and totally stop finning whilst maintaining your buoyancy (more difficult that it sounds)
Breath normally, don’t hold you breath when you are concentration on a task
Be progressive. Don’t try and maintain your buoyancy within too tight parameters at the beginning
Try and get it better in every dive but don’t become obsessive (is it really me saying that). Of course you think you have really sussed it and then something will happen to shatter your confidence (see above)
Once you have it sorted, start to task load yourself by checking your gas or writing on a slate with a reference in sight such as the bottom / marker on the shotline and then moving on to deploying DSMB’s
Oh! All this is covered in the soon to be released Buoyancy and trim workshop.

Any queries, mail me at simon.campbell@bsac.com

Simon Campbell

NDC Diver Training Development Officer

WHAT IS PERFECT BUOYANCY

Apart from being the fundamental skill that underpins all diving from both an enjoyment and safety point of view what do we really mean by proper buoyancy control. The objective level of required skill will however vary depending on the activity an experience but what should that be?

Training

+/- 2m

Well not the ideal but a minimum tolerable target

Ocean/Sports

+/- 1 – 0.5m

Well not the ideal but a minimum tolerable target when diving at this level and not doing anything other than a safety stop or two

Deco procedures and Instructor

+/- 0.3m

Get into deco and this should be the objective.

Instructors should be looking at demonstration quality at this level. For teaching decompression and more advanced stages then an even finer level of quality demonstration should be the level to aim for.

Think SAFE - Dive SAFE

Any suggestions for further items for inclusion would be welcome and can be made to divesafe@bsac.com

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Page last modified: 31st Jan 2008 - 15:17:22