How To Become A Sidemount Technical Scuba Diver Machine

It was difficult to get into the pool for my first session. I felt like an open water diver, securing myself in twin tanks and conducting valve drills. As we went through the Tec 40, 45, and 50 courses, I found new skills and was enjoying the course. The best part about Tec diving is the ability to improve your buoyancy, awareness and dive skills. It's quite an experience to know that you can manage life-threatening emergencies at depth without having to go to the surface due to decompression requirements. It's also satisfying to execute your dive plan with military precision.

Sidemount Diver is one of the most challenging courses that I have ever completed. It was because Big Blue Tech, my trusted dive shop in Koh Tai, and Fiona my instructor included many more skills and dives to my course than necessary. Although we made sure my task load was manageable, we still practiced skills. These included tank removal underwater, mask removable, out-of air drills, SMB deployment, and many other things while maintaining (or trying to maintain) perfect trim.

Mindfulness - Technical diving can still be fun. Technical diving is all about seeing cool things. However, technical divers can see more than sport divers and are able to see deeper, further, and in places that are not visible to sport divers. Technical divers can still be fun, but they are also very focused. While jokes are still allowed, there is no denying that laughter can be had. However, it is important to be serious about dive planning and execution. There are risks to diving. Those risks increase if you don't plan well, practice your skills and execute properly.

Tech diving is gaining popularity. We were so excited to see it here at Girls that ScubaHQ! There were a lot of questions, and we were nervous so we headed to Theresia Geller, a Blue Marlin instructor in Gili T. Lombok. She taught us the basics of twin sets and introduced us to technical diving. Here's what she taught:

Sidemount diving stems from the cave diving world but has also found its way into the recreational, non-overhead diving world in recent years.Simply put: instead of wearing one or two tanks mounted on your back, you will wear your tanks on your side. The tanks are attached to a Sidemount BCD with clips and/or bungee cords allowing for great flexibility. Initially, it was this flexibility that allowed cave divers to take their tanks off underwater to fit through narrow spaces as well as making their overall profile smaller.

Computer-aided instruction is an integral aspect of almost all courses we teach. The Why? The simple answer is that eLearning allows students to get in the water faster and spend more time there. This is why we include any applicable eLearning program -- typically a $140 value -- in all our courses at no extra cost. This is equivalent to an additional day's in-water training. This is what it's worth. Priceless.