As we start a new week with a new class of DSAT Tec Deep Students, its gets the cogs whirring about just what it is that makes the course so special.
Perhaps its the challenge. Some might suggest that there's a delight in holding your achievement over others - even at recreational levels most divers have come across this sort of person. But really, your only competition is yourself in technical diving. Your actions must be driven by a value that you cherish, it has to be worht the effort and the risk. You improve only to beat yourself, to further yourself. And at depth, in reality, you must be able to rely on just yourself. Holding outside opinion in to high a priority can only act as a distraction, detracting from your sole focus of achieving the dive in safety.
In order to do this, we become students once again, a joy in itself - learning new skills in theory and also in practice. Of course there is also all the lovely new shiny equipment to enjoy too! Maybe we miss the feeing of excitement and achievement that we felt so long ago when we took our first breath underwater?! Diving on a twinset and wing does mean that we almost learn to dive all over again, with different limitations and possibilities. We must relearn motor skills so that we reach to the right place instinctively - and this is not always the same place that we reached to on our recreational kit. We even learn a new language, different jargon and references.
And of course there is the temptation that taunts every human - to explore, to reach dive sites that were previously barred to us by air and decompression limits. There is something profound about pausing to absorb the quiet beauty of an untouched part of the world. To feel a deeper meaning, a connection that only those who will put in the time and the work can feel...
Perhaps its the challenge. Some might suggest that there's a delight in holding your achievement over others - even at recreational levels most divers have come across this sort of person. But really, your only competition is yourself in technical diving. Your actions must be driven by a value that you cherish, it has to be worht the effort and the risk. You improve only to beat yourself, to further yourself. And at depth, in reality, you must be able to rely on just yourself. Holding outside opinion in to high a priority can only act as a distraction, detracting from your sole focus of achieving the dive in safety.
In order to do this, we become students once again, a joy in itself - learning new skills in theory and also in practice. Of course there is also all the lovely new shiny equipment to enjoy too! Maybe we miss the feeing of excitement and achievement that we felt so long ago when we took our first breath underwater?! Diving on a twinset and wing does mean that we almost learn to dive all over again, with different limitations and possibilities. We must relearn motor skills so that we reach to the right place instinctively - and this is not always the same place that we reached to on our recreational kit. We even learn a new language, different jargon and references.
And of course there is the temptation that taunts every human - to explore, to reach dive sites that were previously barred to us by air and decompression limits. There is something profound about pausing to absorb the quiet beauty of an untouched part of the world. To feel a deeper meaning, a connection that only those who will put in the time and the work can feel...
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