Simon Campbell

BSAC Talk: 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)
• Breathe normally, don’t hold your breath when you are concentrating 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. Cheap ad.

What do you think?

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BSAC Talk is the monthly newsletter for the British Sub Aqua Club. It is sent by email to all the members who subscribe to the e-bulletin service and to all branch Membership Secretaries in the post.

There is always a section in there called ‘Safety Talk’ where Jim Watson (aka Watto) BSAC’s very own BSAC Safety & Development Manager spreads general safety messages for the benefit of not only BSAC members, but all divers who read the BSAC website.

This is my humble contribution on my favourite subject, buoyancy control.