Plongee.tk
Report of Tim's first encounter with the Titan CCR
that he won thanks to the contest sponsored by
I'm Tim Dunn, the lucky guy that won the eDiving.us contest for a Titan CCR and
training with Jeff Bozanic. Since I know there are divers out
there interested in CCR, I thought I offer my experience with everyone on
eDiving.
Prior to this training, my dive experience consisted of an Advanced
Open Water cert., Nitrox cert. and about 80 dives in the
last three years. Recently I've been doing in Lake Erie and I've
gone to the local quarry, White
Star, with some friends a few times. When I won the contest I contacted
Jeff and got a copy of his book, 'Understanding Rebreather'. I read and reread the
book many times prior to meeting Jeff so I could be as prepared as I could when
the class started.
Monday - July 13,
2010
I left Cleveland at 3PM and arrived at Orange County (e. n. -
the one is Southern California) airport at about 7PM. The good news was that the
small SUV I reserved was unavailable so I got a no charge upgrade to a Suburban
which turned out to be a great thing later in the week when we needed it to haul
gear for several dives. The bad news was that I didn't have much to put in
because my gear never made my flight. Found the Hotel and went to
sleep.
Tuesday - July 14, 2010
My gear
showed up overnight in the lobby so that was good. I got to Jeff's at 8:00am. I
knew I was in the right place when I saw the bronze propeller in the garden. I
met Jeff and chatted for a few minutes before the other person taking the class,
Edward Tu, got there. Later I found out Edward had a two hour drive each way -
dedicated guy!. Ed had done some tech classes with Jeff previously so they were
already friends. Class was held in Jeff's kitchen which seemed to always have
plenty of activity with kids, dive people and relatives passing through. Class
was started with a discussion of SAC rate and pretty soon we had the calculators
out and between calculating MOD's, PPO2, EAD's, ATA and more, we didn't stop
using them the whole trip. Jeff didn't seem to need a calculator and routinely
did all the algebra in his head. I don't think he made an error while I was
there. Jeff constantly asked us questions to make us think about all of the
principles involved which was very helpful. There is no sitting like a bump on a
log in Jeff's class. At the end of the day I went back to the hotel, ran a few
miles and started reviewing the subjects for the next
day.
Wednesday - July 15, 2010
Wednesday was
a repeat of Tuesday with discussion of various CC designs and theory of
operation plus plenty of dive planning equations to go over.
Thursday - July 16 2010
On Thursday I
finally saw the Titan (e. n. - CCR) I had never seen a Titan in person before
but I was impressed right away with the overall appearance, fit and finish. I
manufacture industrial pressure controls for a living so I have seen a great
deal of various types of equipment over the years. There did not appear to be
any shortcuts on this unit. Everything seemed to be well integrated such as the
way the separate counterlungs were encased in the frame. The whole unit was
compact and lightweight.
Bill Strong of Hollywood Divers joined us at this
time. Bill already dives a KISS and wanted to get checked out on the Titan. Jeff
instructed us on basic assembly and disassembly of the units going over the DSV
and hoses, O2 sensors, scrubber and counter lungs as well as the gas addition
manifold, the off board gas addition valve, the Shearwater Predator (e. n. coming soon to eDiving)
controller and heads up display. We used checklists for assembly, immediate
pre-dive, post dive and disassembly / service. This took up the whole day. The
Titan simulator at eDiving.us had prepped me for the basic screens necessary to
operate the rebreather but I needed to learn a lot before I was able to
interpret the information and make proper decisions based on the Shearwater controller information. I
didn't completely understand why it is necessary to change PPO2 set points when
descending and ascending until I read Jeff's book and went through the classroom
work. Now that I have a much more complete understanding of the controller I
have gone back to the simulator at eDiving.us and found it to be very useful.
Without a doubt I will continue to use the simulator
between actual dives. 
Friday - July 17, 2010
On
Friday Edward took me to Shaw's Cove with his friend Deborah. I didn't have my
OC gear but Jeff had enough stuff lying around to outfit a dive shop so getting
me set up was easy. We dove twice and had a great time. The reef is fairly
shallow so the dives were well over an hour. Edward gave us a great tour of
Shaw's and I'm glad I got a chance to go.
After leaving Shaw's, I
went to the Titan factory and met Dr. Randy Klein-Gross and Web Jessup, their
Engineer. Web spent four hours with me completely disassembling the unit far
beyond the amount required for normal day to day service. A complete set of
tools came with the unit and included are several special tools specific to the
Titan. Seeing the unit completely torn down just confirmed what I had seen
initially, a very well engineered, well executed unit.
Saturday - July 18,
2010
Saturday was a day off. I did laundry and more homework.
Jeff is always challenging us to think so I tried to stay on top of the material
as best I could.
Sunday - July 19,
2010
Sunday was pool work. We prepped the rebreathers using
very carefully prepared checklists with detailed explanations of each step. We
started the first hour by just swimming around getting the feel of a rebreather
without any drills. Different positions in the water make a distinct difference
in breathing effort due to the hydrostatic difference in depth between your
lungs and the counter lungs in the unit. The rest of the day we did drills in
the pool on removal and replacement of the mouthpiece, switching to our bailout
gas and back to CCR, mask removal and replacement, hose retrieval all with and
without our eyes closed. After that Jeff would propose different scenarios such
as 'You are at 100'and you start to hear gurgling that was not noticeable a few
minutes ago'. He would then send us underwater so we could think about what was
going on and what our response should be. When we had the proper response we
would discuss why it was right. When we had the wrong response we would discuss
the principles involved at great length. At the end of the day we did the post
dive procedure checklist and prepped the units for Monday's diving off of
Catalina Island.
Monday - July 20, 2010
Now
it is now clear that not getting my SUV rental and getting bumped into the
Suburban was a great piece of luck. We loaded up the Suburban with 3 CCR's and
gear for an overnight for me, Jeff and Edward. We loaded up on the 'Second Stage', a 50' dive charter out of San Pedro.
Loading all the gear was easy compared to OC, 13 cu/ft cylinders for the CCR's
and 40cu/ft for the bailout compared to 80's or 100's normally required for the
dives we would do. Gerry Montejo, the captain is a CCR diver and does plenty of
recreational charters as well as a lot of tech charters. Breakfast was waiting
for us as we got on the boat (Gerry fed us constantly).
During the ride out
to the island we reviewed procedures and dive planning. As soon as we anchored
we geared up for the first OW dive. The plan for dive #one was simple: fly unit
manually, don't get lost, breathe. Just familiarize yourself with breathing,
adding dil or O2, watching buoyancy and swimming around. Jeff constantly kept an
eye out for us and showed us cool stuff like abalone when he wasn't asking us
our PO2's. That was plenty for the first dive. We surfaced, debriefed and went
right back in the water. On the second dive we did basic drills, duplicating our
pool work in the ocean. The 3rd dive went a bit deeper to about 60'. By the end
of the day I had over 3 hours of CCR time in the ocean. A good day. Out of the
water we went through the post dive procedure and prepped the units for the next
day. That night we worked on more dive calculations and dive planning until we
fell into the bunks pretty tired. 
Tuesday - July 12,
2010
Gerry cooked us breakfast as we prepped for the day. First
dive was to 100'. I opted for a wet suit instead of my drysuit to minimize
buoyancy issues but the tradeoff was 58F. Combined with the long dive time I was
cold but not enough to end the dive. As always there was always time to see
critters along with things like lift bag drills. On the third dive of the day we
found an almost new small anchor and chain (zodiac size?) that Jeff put on a
lift bag and brought back to become another artifact or piece of equipment at
his house.
Dive 2, As soon as we dropped in to the reef at about 45' we saw
several very large black sea bass that did not seem the least bit alarmed by us.
Sadly, one had been speared in the side. Sea Bass are protected so this was an
illegal attempt at poaching. Jeff was almost able to cut the spear off but the
bass was not cooperating. We all felt bad for his predicament but there was
noting we could do. We went back to Huntington Beach that evening but we were back on the
boat Wednesday morning.
Wednesday - July 13,
2010
Wednesday was the only day we would run the units as an
'E', electronic. Previously we had only operated the units manually and made a
large number of ascents and descents on almost every dive to get used to
adjusting PO2. Now that the units operated automatically, I was really impressed
as to how close to the set point the unit was able to maintain, distinctly
better than I was able to manually. By the end of the day we had over 9 hours
total of open water logged. We reviewed our final exams and then all of the
sudden it was time to go. Jeff stayed at
Catalina Island so that he could instruct some of the recompression chamber operators and we went back to
LA.
August 29, 2010
Since I got home I have
purchased some equipment and supplies so I can get back in the water. I dove at
WhiteStar on Saturday for the first time since the training and I used my dry
suit for both dives. >Buoyancy was not difficult to maintain even with the
extra buoyancy source. All of the training in California taught me the
fundamentals well and I felt good to get back in the water again. Hopefully I
will get out again soon.
Jeff has an updated version of his book coming out
soon and I know I will be buying a copy. If anyone is interested in going down
the CCR path I am sure it will be a worthwhile addition to your dive
library.
Tim Dunn
