Day four...Wednesday December 21st. Christmas is just around the corner. You wouldn't know it here. The temperatures are in the mid 70's and there's no Christmas music playing anywhere that we can hear. Thankfully Alex has a small Christmas tree in the room and there are a few Christmas lights on the trees and cactus outside the room.
The day started with a rescue demonstration in the pool. Rescues are one of the most important skills the candidates need to perform. The candidates had a chance to surface a non-responsive diver from the bottom of the deep pool. If they did it well enough they were given a 'pass'. Five candidates have to repeat the skill.
We had an early lunch and headed to Founders Park Pool for Watermanship Skills. These consist of a 400M swim, an 800M mask, fins, snorkel swim and a 15 minute tread water. There will also be a 100M inert diver tow later on. This is very physically demanding and we urged the candidates to practice before the DMA. Again, the group did quite well as a whole. There were just a few that have to re-do the swims.
We also tested the candidates on four skin diving skills; a surface dive, underwater swim, blast clearing and displacement clearing. This went very well with very little remediation.
The pool work ended early enough for us to return to the classroom for sessions on Wreck Diving, by Rich, and Deep Diving by me. Hopefully we'll be doing a dive on the Eagle tomorrow.
After dinner we returned to the classroom for another session by Rich...Search and Recovery. We will also be doing a S&R dive tomorrow if the seas cooperate.
We ended the evening early, giving the candidates an opportunity to study for the first part of the Exam, set for tomorrow.
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