So You Think You Can Dive by Ashley Mills

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Long overdue but I promised Matt and Mike T that I would write this and it has taken me this long and months of therapy to be able to put pen to paper. The agreement made after a heady cocktail of Jaegermeister and San Miguel one night in Puerto Galera was to “Come and try Tec”. I will never drink again…..probably

Ashley getting ready for a CCR tech dive in Dumaguete Philippines Asia

Firstly let me declare from the outset that I am biased. I previously counted Matt and Mike as friends and therefore I cannot claim this literary effluent to be entirely without prejudice. These guys are very committed to what they do, for that read skilled. Above water Matt is a pleasant, personable, knowledgeable and very experienced diver, who buys his round and aside from a passing likeness to David Beckham and a penchant for wearing excessively tight 70’s style silk shirts, I cannot fault him. In the water imagine Matt as the aquatic equivalent of Lewis Hamilton taking you for driving instruction, sitting there with a video camera, taking notes in his wet book whilst holding buoyancy and perfect trim at all times. Add in the flawless execution of the skills and the social ability of Genghis Khan doing the post dive debrief. By comparison Spike the ex Royal Navy clearance diver was Kofi Annan. .

Mike is an argumentative socially challenged ex accountant but once you get past this initial façade you find he is actually an argumentative socially challenged accountant and professional northern git. As I was brought up in Sheffield and given that I lived in Nottingham I can forgive him this, and openly admit to that fact he makes me laugh. He is also genuinely knowledgeable, has more patience than he gives himself credit for, and has a personal desire for nothing less than a pursuit of excellence which he is passionate about bringing to his teaching methods.

As trainers they make an intimidating but particularly instructive duo, as their contrasting styles mean that from a student’s perspective if you cannot get a handle on the skill or theory from one, the other usually has an alternative approach that might just get something to click. Take for example an afternoon where without prompting and in his own time Mike came to sit by the side of the pool as I tried to develop a truly effective reverse fin movement to give me the benefit of his ideas.

What did I learn?

The good stuff

Mike and Matt set themselves high standards and demand the same from those they train and dive with. Accept this from the outset and approach the courses with the desire to improve and you will enjoy it and you will learn. Over the course of the week I stopped worrying about the 3 tanks, back up equipment, and seemingly endless clips and started to focus on the diving. This is serious stuff, the training is aimed at making you think at all times, and about steadily building confidence through lots of time in the water amidst all sorts of simulated failures and by reinforcing previous training. I also spent a fair bit of time messing about in the dive room, playing with options for equipment location, knot tying, stripping and re-assembling gear and genuinely learning more than was just in the course books.

The tough stuff

This is not easy to get through so don’t show up for this course if all you want is the card to say you did it. Be prepared to come and be tested and accept that maybe you will not pass. Seeing yourself on video and having every move noted and then debriefed is not easy either but critical to getting quality feedback on what Matt and Mike see, and you will need a thick skin at times. There is also a lot to take in on the combination course I opted for and therefore I admit to being knackered at the end of some of the days.

My tips if you think about doing this?

Make sure you have been in the water recently. It had been 4 months since my last dive and it took a couple of dives to get back in the rhythm, so think about doing these the day before you begin the course if you can. Do not try to pack too much in. The Thai airport protests shortened my time to do this by a couple of days and on reflection these would have taken the pressure off from trying to combine all the courses together (3 in total) which meant a lot of study, diving, and not enough time to really get the benefit of Apo which is a great dive site and I wish I had spent more time diving it. Read all the manuals before you arrive as they suggest, but also go through the powerpoint slides as well – it will help. I covered the manuals and knowledge tests but did not get through all the powerpoint and gases is what I work with, so that was not tough for me and it still took time. Think about the gear you will need and get some guidance from Matt / Mike as it saved me wasting cash ahead of the course and take them up on the chance to try it before rushing out for new toys.

In summary as I said I am biased. I like diving with Matt and Mike, and like being challenged by diving with people who are more skilled and more experienced than I am especially when you are asked to lead them. I arrived thinking I could dive and some skills were no issue, for some others that confidence was knocked when the gaps were pointed out, but each time guidance was given and lots of opportunity to practice. In the same way that rescue diving changed the way I dive, the tec approach influenced my next rec dive trip but the skills can be carried though. My diving improved and I still know there are things for me to work at, but I had a lot of fun with this, and for me my first dive at Apo with just two of us down at 45m for 25 minutes was worth it.

Personally speaking I will be going back, to reinforce, practice and to get a better look at Apo and if like me you wondered what it was like to dive with all that gear on, and why, then I can think of no better way to try it, nor a better group of people to try it with. I also owe them both a few Jaegermeisters and won’t be taking no for an answer

Triton Tech

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