Advanced trimix Diving on a Rebreather combined with a recreational diver.
They said recreational diving can’t be combined with Technical diving. They said the differences in equipment would be confusing and dangerous. They said the dive sites and environment wouldn’t be suitable. A Sydney couple proved those statements wrong. Gary, an experienced deep rebreather diver to the challenge and brought his Finnish girlfriend Annukka for her open water course to Thailand, whilst he enrolled in his Hypoxic Trimix rebreather course, Using his AP Evolution rebreather. Blue Label Diving was up for the challenge and engaged in a week of logistical challenges. Of course both Gary and Annukka wanted to dive together as much as possible, so we planned it as good as we good. Deep diving in Phuket itself is not so easy as we use the daily dive boats from the dive operators here. Due to weather, as its low season, we did not have so many options. But putting our heads together also with Kamala Dive Center we found a great solution and Annukka finished her OW diver and Gary did all the dives required here in Phuket. The 2 last days of Gary his course which incl a 70 meter and of course the 100 meter dive we conducted in Song Hong lake. Even Annukka did a few dives in the lake as brand new open water diver.
Theory was kept is separate classrooms, but pool sessions and Open Ocean training dives were done together. Annukka even did her first wreck dives hand in hand with her Technical buddy, who was dragging 3 mixed gas cylinders through a hefty current.
For the deeper dives, we drove to the famous sinkhole in the south of Thailand called Song Hong, where Annukka did her first sinkhole/ night dive, whilst Gary plummeted to the depths of this giant cave.
The last day, Gary reached 100m, his goal for a long time.
The Rebreather Advanced Trimix course is a 5-6 day intense course, where candidates are updated on the latest physiology, decompression algorithms and latest industry findings, while a string of working dives ensures the candidate is properly trained in all emergency drills, before deeper diving is engaged.
This course is truly the pinnacle of diving.
