Triton CCR Courses at Blue Label Diving.
In the middle of July we had the pleasure of having the Mercier family diving with us. Agathe, Ann, Arthur and Jean-Manuel were on their first holiday in Thailand and had decided to dedicate it to further their training in the use of the Triton CCR unit.
Blue Label Diving is one of very few dive centres in the world that offer training on this unit and have 2 in-house instructors. Ben Reymenants that holds the levels up to TDI Triton Advanced Mixed Gas Instructor and TDI Triton Air Diluent Decompression Instructor Trainer and Claus Rasmussen that is an TDI Triton Air Diluent Decompression Instructor.
The Equipment
The M3S Triton CCR is a compact, manually controlled, chest mounted Closed Circuit Oxygen Rebreather. This means it is one of the most flexible units on the market when it comes to configuration as it can be used with recreational back mount, twinset or side mount. You simply clip it onto your chosen configuration and connect your diluent gas with a low pressure inflator hose. It weigh less than 13 kg/ 27 lbs when ready to dive and has CE ratings down to 100 meter.
The Mercier family chose to combine the Triton CCR with X-Deep Stealth Tech Sidemount System as it works wonderful with their passion for Cave diving. On our normal courses we use the standard big dive boats here on Phuket. Combining Tech diving with normal Recreational diving can be challenging at the best of times. Due to the amount of people in our group and to get the most flexibility in dive site choices and in-water time, all ocean diving was done using a chartered speedboat.
The Diving
Ann and Jean-Manuel are both Megalodon CCR certified and they had previously done a X-over to the Triton CCR back in France. For Agathe and Arthur this was their first introduction into CCR diving. The first couple of days was a bit rough. The weather was showing its less pretty side with rain and wind. The guys was suffering a bit from jet lag. As the weather changed and sunshine and flat ocean was greeting us every morning -all went back on track.
Agathe and Arthur learned the hard way that for extremely experienced divers (they are both Recreational Instructors, Trimix and Cave certified divers) to get comfortable with a completely different way of breathing is not always easy. Open Circuit Divers generally breathe long, slow and deep. Using a CCR system you breathe less deep and more constant. And as the gas that you breathe at the same time is more warm and moist, the feel of it is different as well.
After a few dives the advantage of Agathe and Arthurs experience level, comfort and them being used to diving with each other, really came into play. All further skill development and emergency procedures training automatically became a breeze..
While “the kids” was doing the initial courses with Claus, Ann and Jean-Manuel was fundiving with Henrik. Once we were ready to head to the caves, Ben took over the teaching with Claus assisting.
With a dive schedule on the boat and at the caves ranging between 1 and 3 dives and between 90 min and 4 hours dive time per day -everybodys experience level very quickly increased.
Memorable dives during the month they all spent with us include:
An almost 2 hour dive at South Tip, Racha Noi with sightings of Whale Shark and several Manta Rays; Black Tips at Bida Nok; Turtles at Koh Doc Mai; Hours on end spent in and around most of our local wrecks -including 3 hours penetration training on King Cruiser; Seeing Pichachu in Song Hong; The traverse between Sa Kaew 1 and 2 -and probably the best part.. Connecting Sa Kaew 3 to Sa Kaew 4!
By the end of the month all of them could go home with not just amazing memories. They also had the following TDI levels completed:
Triton CCR Air Diluent and Deco Diver
CCR Full Cave and Cave Trimix Diver
Triton CCR Mixed Gas Diluent Diver
Amazing achievement guys..
A big thank you goes out to not only the Instructors; Ben Reymenants, Henrik Rudolf and Claus Rasmussen for their hard work. But also to Gilles Mangin, James Bardo and the rest of the team at Red Marine Diving for the support during the ocean diving.
