Mavericks Diving Scuba Review
A Mavericks Scuba Review takes key components from our Mavericks entry level course including a pool-based run through of essential scuba skills, an introduction to basic rescue including casualty lifts and in water expired air resuscitation (the kiss of life) and a precision buoyancy mini workshop. In the classroom you'll review important theory including diving physics and physiology, decompression concepts and the defensive use of dive tables and computers. You'll also look at what can be learned about avoiding and coping with diving incidents by examining real events, including multi fatalities, drawn from reports by the British Sub Aqua Club and Divers Alert Network. Our courses are run according to the Mavericks training philosphy.


Prerequisites:
  • Qualifications: entry level diving qualification from any agency (including NAUI, PADI, BSAC, CMAS, SAA, SSAC, etc.)
  • Experience level: none
  • Minimum age: 12
  • Diving medical: self assessment acceptable

Equipment:

  • If you own your personal diving equipment, it's best to take the workshop using this. If not, Mavericks Diving will loan you all that you need, except for a prescription face mask.
  • You will need your own bathing costume and a towel.

Duration:

  • one day

Dates & availabilty:

  • on request



Our goals during this one day workshop are to ensure you leave with the best possible in-water diving skills and to provide personal coaching wherever we feel we can help you make improvements. We also want to be sure your diving knowledge is accurate and current. The emphasis on the day is in helping to keep you safe while enjoying diving. We also hope you'll learn a few new skills and gain a better understanding of diving than you had before. Additionally, we really want you to have some fun along the way!

Your diving instructors, Andrew Pugsley and Steve Warren, share a vocation for teaching diving. Both have many achievements to their credit including writing on dive safety issues for leading magazines and working with the on-line show TheUnderwaterChannel. Andrew and Steve are patient, easy going and also meticulous. They want to see you achieving high standards from this workshop for your own benefit.

This full day intensive course includes

  • A review of basic diving skills. You'll demonstrate mastery of regulator clearing and recovery, mask removal and replacement, no mask swims, black out mask swims and tasks, scuba set removal and replacement at the surface for example.
  • An extended session on personal diving safety. This part of the day is designed to hone your self-rescue skills. You'll practice out of air problem management. This will involve sharing exercises including locating another diver's alternate air source while that diver is swimming away from you and other real world sharing scenarios. You'll thoroughly review controlled emergency swimming ascents, including covering progressively longer distances on a single exhalation. Under controlled conditions you will also practice making buoyant ascents by inflating BCDs and jettisoning weights.
  • Assisting other divers is also included in this Mavericks Diving workshop. Don't worry if you didn't cover this in your own initial training. Andrew and Steve will teach you on the day. You'll learn how to bring an unresponsive diver to the surface using several methods. Once on the surface, you'll learn simple expired air resuscitation techniques that can be used to maintain life until others can help you. On our course you'll practise these skills on a special mannequin that Mavericks owns specifically for teaching these parts of the course. We find it much more efficient that using a real person as you can actually breathe into the mannequin and throw it around a lot more. You'll also practice cramp removals and a few tows.
Precision Buoyancy Control Mini Clinic
Good buoyancy control is absolutely fundamental to safe and enjoyable diving. Many entry level courses gloss over buoyancy control. At Mavericks Diving, we don't. We'll review with you how to weight yourself properly and go over fin pivots and hovering. That's the basics. Then it's on to the Diamond Reef. The Diamond Reef was developed by Peter Wallingford of Buoyancy Training Systems Inc. to address common problems with scuba divers' lack of precise buoyancy control. At Mavericks Diving we feel that many divers have not had the opportunity to really get to grips with precision buoyancy control because many dive schools simply don't teach it thoroughly.

The Diamond Reef is much like an underwater assault course. We use it to help you develop neutral buoyancy, perfect trim, spatial awareness, manoeuvrability, multi-tasking and ascent and descent skills. All of these skills are essential---combined they allow you to dive more easily and save you wasted energy and prolong your gas supply. They make you safer by putting you in complete control of where you are in the water column, especially during the descent and ascent phases of the dive. Good buoyancy control means that you won't kick the coral or create a silt-out inside a wreck and that you can operate a camera or clear your mask without momentarily rising or falling unexpectedly.

During your pool work, you'll be guided by Andrew and/or Steve. Personal coaching is a key benefit of this Mavericks Diving scuba refresher. The maximum number of students is only four and usually two instructors or one instructor and a divemaster will be working with you to maximise the personal attention you receive. Your instructor is able to talk to you underwater via an unobtrusive radio receiver you'll wear on your mask strap. This lets our instructors coach you one to one during skills practice.

In between pool sessions, you'll go over some diving theory. We'll keep it interesting and lively with scientific demonstrations you can get involved in. Steve or Andrew will explain a little of the science of diving and why you need to understand it. Building on this information you'll look in detail at the effects of pressure on your body, how breathing gases at depth affects you, simple decompression theory and guidelines for safely using dive tables and computers. We'll also make a special presentation that examines real diving accidents and what can be learned from them. At Mavericks Diving we do not agree with playing down the risks of this adventure sport. This presentation will help you understand how dangerous sport diving can be, assist you with recognising the risks and better prepare you to avoid problems or, when they do occur, cope with them. Our examples, from the seemingly trivial and annoying ones that simply make a dive uncomfortable to the tragic dives that leave large groups injured and dead are taken from the records of the British Sub Aqua Club and Divers Alert Network.

A Mavericks Diving Scuba Refresher will normally cover the syllabus outlined above. But if there are specific skills or certain theory topics we haven't mentioned that you'd like included on your own Scuba Refresher, then please let Steve or Andrew know. They are always open to new ideas and will always try to help if they possibly can.

To book this course we recommend you get in touch by phone, e-mail, or by dropping into the shop to discuss the requirements. If you've already done that, you can download the booking form (editable pdf).