After reading more, I came to understand that DIR stood for "Doing It Right." In a nutshell, it was an approach to diving based on a strong emphasis on a cohesive team and a streamlined, standardized set of gear. The core of the latter is a backplate-and-wings in place of the usual recreational scuba buoyancy compensator. The regulator is rigged differently from the usual in recreational diving; the primary is placed on a long hose (preferably 7 feet, or at least 5) so that it can be donated to the out-of-gas buddy, and the secondary is worn on a bungee necklace so that it can be used after donating the primary.
Discussions of DIR seemed to cause a lot of ruckus on the Internet. Some DIR advocates struck others as abrasive in promoting their cause, referring to non-DIR divers derisively as "strokes." Noting that DIR grew out of the caving community in Florida, critics argued that its rigor might be useful in that high-stress environment, but was not really necessary in a lesser-demanding environment such as recreational open water diving.
Between the lines and through the noise, however, it seemed to me that there was a lot of good thinking in DIR. Frankly I was very underwhelmed by attention to safety among many dive professionals I ran into early in my open water diving. Many appeared to give only lip service to safety, and on several occasions it seemed to me that I was rather casually tossed into diving situations that I felt were beyond my experience level.
Though I made a note of being interested in DIR, I subsequently got interested in freediving and underwater photography, and my regulator sat in the closet. Early in 2002 I saw announcements of a new class from Global Underwater Explorers called "DIR Fundamentals," and emailed a local instructor. Alas, you had to have 25 scuba dives logged to participate, and at the time I only had about 15; he told me to get more dives under my belt and come back later. In the summer of that year, GUE released a book on DIR Fundamentals by its president, Jarrod Jablonski, which I bought and read.
In late 2002, I decided to put my scuba rig (Seaquest buoyancy compensator, Dacor regulator) on Ebay and buy a DIR-compliant setup (Halcyon backplate-and-wings, Scuba Pro regulator on a long hose). I did two dives on it in early 2003 to get a nitrox card, and then veered back into freediving.
Finally, in early fall 2003, two things happened that rekindled my interest in developing scuba skills. First, I increasingly noticed interesting underwater photo situations that were difficult to grab on breath-hold dives. At this time my deepest breath-hold dive was to 50 feet, but my typical operating range was more like 20-25 feet. One day on a dive trip to Santa Barbara Island, an acquaintance on scuba was getting great shots of nudibranchs in about 35 feet of water. I could do a touch-and-go freedive to 35 feet without too much difficulty, but getting to depth, getting the shot set up, strobes arranged, etc., was just a little too demanding.
The second development that came along was that I saw an announcement that a DIR Fundamentals class was to be taught that fall by Tamara Kendel, one of the most highly respected of GUE's instructors. One of only four GUE instructors in the United States who were rated to teach overhead (cave/wreck), technical (deep) and recreational classes, Tamara had taught cave classes in Florida but had relocated to Southern California early that year.
Early in 2003, GUE made changes in the DIR Fundamentals class. Among other things, the 25-dive minimum had been dropped. I sent Tamara an email and signed up.
By way of preparing for the class, I got out my scuba rig and got in a total of three dives, bringing my lifetime scuba total to 20 dives. Although freediving made me very comfortable in the water -- and unfazed by situations such as finding myself 30 feet underwater with no air source -- I was unsure about my ability to keep buoyancy and trim on scuba. The DIR world places a lot of emphasis on remaining horizontal in the water; hovering in a vertical position, or even worse kneeling on the bottom, are big no-no's. Also, with only a few dives on the Halcyon rig, I hadn't yet built up the muscle memory to do things like quickly clip and unclip my submersible pressure gauge from the D-ring it was to be attached to when not being consulted. By the time the class weekend arrived, I wasn't sure that I had entirely worked all of this out, but I figured I'd just show up with an open mind, do my best and see what I could learn.
The Class Weekend
We gathered Friday evening at the Ocean Institute in Dana Point, where Tamara now worked. In all, five students were enrolled. Two, Bruce and Rob, brought doubles rigs (setups with dual scuba tanks). The other three -- Ben, Chris and myself -- were using single tanks. Ben and I carpooled together from Pasadena.
Our first order of business was to spend a few minutes introducing ourselves, summarizing our diving careers and our objectives in taking the class. The two fellows on doubles had received the most technical-flavored dive training. I was on the low end of the scale in diving experience (at least on scuba).
We then unpacked each of our dive rigs and set them up so that Tamara could review them and make suggestions. All of us had already adopted more or less DIR-compliant rigs, so most of what Tamara told us was in the realm of fine-tuning. She gave quite a bit of detailed advice on such topics as the power inflator, D-rings, backup lights, knives, dump valves, HID lights, spools, pockets, fin straps, regulators, tank valve knobs and lift bags. Before we knew it, three hours had gone by and we adjourned for the night.
Saturday
The next morning, we met at the Ocean Institute and moved to a nearby park. Tamara told us that the required core curriculum for DIR Fundamentals would not take up the entire weekend, and there would be some time available to accommodate optional subjects. In her case, she chose to give us an introduction to working with lines, material that she said is normally covered in a Cave 1 class rather than in Fundamentals. We spent about an hour in the park using spools to tie off lines and attach them to objects. She then showed us how to move along the lines in buddy teams, including such details as where to place our hands at all times so as to avoid losing the line, and how to communicate between buddies when visibility has dropped to zero.
Then it was time to drive to the YMCA in Mission Viejo for three hours of pool work. Our first order of business here was to complete two required swim tests -- a 300-yard surface swim that must be completed in under 14 minutes, and a 50-foot underwater breath-hold swim. I was happy that I could do the surface swim in half the allotted time without undue effort; as for the breath-hold swim, I easily went for 75 feet (an even length of the pool).
Tamara then introduced a series of skills and had each of us practice them. There were the various styles of fin kicks used in DIR -- flutter kick, modified flutter kick, frog kick, modified frog kick and backward kick. Although I'm lefthanded and nominally left-footed, Tamara pointed out that my left foot is a bit lazy and so my kicks like the frog kick are not altogether symmetrical. I was aware before taking the class that the nerves in my left leg and foot are a little rickety -- I can balance on my right foot much easier than on my left, for example. I made a note to work with a balance board and do pool practice to address this.
The backward kick was the Mt. Everest of all of these exercises. Tamara acknowledged that very few Fundamentals students perform this well; the idea is more to simply introduce the kick so that students can practice it before taking subsequent classes. After we flailed around a bit, Tamara had each of us grasp the side of the pool so that she could approach us from behind and move our fins to demonstrate the proper motion. This was very enlightening to me, as it was the first time I really "got it" on what the kick was supposed to feel like. However, even with this help I didn't find myself moving appreciably in the water when trying to perform the kick.
We also practiced the safety drill, or S-drill. This is the DIR ritual in which one buddy donates a regulator to an out-of-gas buddy. In itself it's not too difficult to do, but there is a sequence of events that is supposed to be followed that's easy to forget under duress. Also, and perhaps more importantly, Tamara told us she would be watching to make sure that we kept horizontal trim during such drills. Most divers, she said, tend to drop their feet when performing tasks, which takes them out of the desired horizontal position.
Yet another skill was the valve drill. Here, a diver reaches back, finds the tank valve, turns it off and then back on. This skill is most critical to divers wearing double sets of tanks, as they may have to shut valves down in the event of an equipment failure on one side. Those of us on singles, however, were also required to learn this skill. In the pool I found I could do it without too much difficulty.
The final major skill that we practiced in the pool was shooting a lift bag. Here you unwrap the bag, tie it to the line from your spool, remove the hose to your power inflator and use it to inflate the bag. In addition to actually lifting objects, bags can be used to provide a frame of reference on a line while hovering midwater on a deco stop at the end of a dive, or to signal a boat crew when doing deco at the end of a drift dive. This skill seemed fairly straightforward.
Although I felt that I did most of the skills reasonably well, I found it slightly challenging to maintain buoyancy in five feet of water in the shallow pool. Compared to an ocean dive at a greater depth, a slight fluctuation of depth in the pool results in a proportionately greater pressure change, making it easier to rise or fall in an uncontrolled way. But I soldiered on the best I could.
After the pool, we headed to a restaurant for a late lunch and another classroom session. Tamara brought her white board and felt pens, and we tipped the waitress extra to make up for the fact that we spent 2-1/2 or 3 hours in a booth at the back. Tamara devoted this time to an extensive discussion of many forms of emergency procedures -- how to respond to loss of vis, light, buddy, line/home and gas. We finally broke around 5:30 p.m. and got on the freeway to head home.
Sunday
At 9 a.m. we pulled into the parking lot of Laguna Sea Sports to get Ben a quick air fill, running into Tamara, Bruce and Rob. A few minutes later we had parked near the top of the stairs at Shaw's Cove, and were gearing up for our ocean checkout dive.
Before heading down to the sand, Tamara presented a briefing on what we'd be doing during the dive. The plan was to swim out to about the 25-foot depth range and descend, after which she would run a line in a large square of perhaps 20 feet on each side. We would then spend an hour-plus shooting lift bags, performing kicks and doing S-drills and valve drills. Bruce and Rob, both wearing doubles, would form a two-diver team, while those of us in singles -- Ben, Chris and myself -- would be a three-buddy team.
Walking down to the sand, we were gratified to see that the surf was at most knee-slappers. But an even greater surprise was in store when we swam out beyond the breakers. While not exactly gin-clear, the water was the most transparent I'd ever seen in mainland beach diving -- in the 40-foot range, Ben and I estimated. Surge was minimal. I had read reports of many DIR Fundamentals classes where conditions were extremely challenging, sometimes to the point where the dive had to be scrubbed and rescheduled. But we could hardly have asked for more benign conditions for our dive.
After descending, we headed out a bit over the sand until Tamara found the right spot to set up. Along the way we passed several sanddabs, a baby halibut and a patrolling juvenile ray. Tamara then stopped, set up the line square and we got to work with demonstrating skills.
I'm happy to say that, for the most part, our performance in the ocean was better than in the pool. At a depth of 23 feet I found it much easier to keep buoyancy and trim than at 5 feet. We had a bit of buddy miscommunication initially in getting our lift bags shot, but finally got them deployed. Moving on to the finning, Tamara later said that my lazy left foot had gotten much better from one day to the next. The backward kick was still a big challenge to most or all of us.
One thing that I didn't do as well in the ocean as in the pool was the valve drill. For some reason, when Tamara came around to watch me perform this, I just couldn't get a good grip on my tank valve knob (my steel 72 tank had a relatively small knob; I made a mental note to get a bigger one). Tamara motioned to me to loosen my straps so that I could pull the tank up more. She moved on to another diver while I continued to wrestle with the rig, feeling like Harry Houdini trying to escape from padlocks and chains in the Detroit River. Eventually I got ahold of the knob, and swam over and motioned for her to observe while I performed the drill. I didn't want one small gaffe to screw up completing the class.
The final skill we performed was the S-drill. In our three-buddy team, we took turns as donor and recipient. We completed this without incident.
One concern in the back of my mind was whether I'd have enough gas to finish out an hour-plus dive. Of everyone in the class, I had the smallest tank (a steel 72), and as the most novice scuba diver probably had the worst consumption rate (I had gotten down to about 0.50 surface cubic feet per minute in previous scuba dives three years previously, but when getting back into it recently had found myself much more of an air hog). Throughout the dive, though, I concentrated on keeping a measured breathing rate while performing skills. I was therefore pleased when I was able to get through the entire dive with a little gas to spare.
After surfacing, we had a leisurely swim in to the beach, headed up the stairs and put our gear away in our cars. Tamara gave us a quick dive debrief on the tailgate of her pickup truck. Overall she felt we'd done better than we did the previous day. Things were looking pretty good.
We then drove into downtown Laguna Beach to hit a pizzeria for lunch. While eating Tamara shared some stories from her diving career. Originally from Saskatchewan, she worked in the dive industry in Canada, Grand Cayman and Mexico before taking up residence in the cave country of Florida, where she taught caving and served as a team diver at Wakulla Springs.
After lunch, we walked across the street to Laguna's main beach, where Tamara set up her white board for our final classroom session. Here she lectured us on buoyancy and trim, achieving a balanced rig and buoyancy characteristics of different types of tanks. She spent quite a bit of time on accident analysis, discussing statistics of the various failures leading to deaths in cave and general diving over the years. She then spent a while covering various forms of buddy communication, including lights, hand signals, slate/Wetnotes and touch. In the final segment she moved into gas management, explaining the background and use of the rule of thirds, as well as managing gas when buddies have dissimilar tanks. She wrapped up by discussing different decompression tables, the GUE concept of the oxygen window, and "M values."
As it got to be 5 p.m., Tamara pronounced that we had all passed the course and would be getting our cards in the mail from GUE within about a month. Then it was off to our cars, the freeway and home.
I have to say that of all the dive classes I've taken, this ranked at the top. I thought I was fairly familiar with DIR philosophy from reading about it and diving with Fundamentals graduates for the past year or so, but I still came away feeling I'd picked up a lot of information. Tamara is a great teacher -- she is very experienced and can be demanding when it's called for, but she does this in a gentle and friendly way. If you have an opportunity to take a class from her, I'd highly recommend it.