Hollis Prism 2 Rebreather Training now available for all levels.

Hello and welcome to Diversync, the Netcast and podcast for scuba divers. My name is Rich Sinewick, and you're listening to episode 525. Again, recorded in August, way late than what I wanted to. But we're going to talk about the end of May, beginning of June of my summer, and all the cool diving that we've been doing, and hopefully bring you guys up to speed with some of the stuff. It was, again, a really weird summer. It didn't start for me. No one was coming to the quarry. Pretty much empty, pretty much nobody coming through. But then I people started signing up for Tech 40 and tech rebreather, and rebreather diver, and CCR diver. So we have guys from all over the country who were calling me and saying, hey, when's your next class? I want to sign up for it. When's this one?

I'm going to sign up for it. So I had a bunch of people from all over the country this time, guys from Oklahoma, guys from Missouri, guys from Indiana, guys from California, a couple guys from all over North America who were calling me to get on our score. One guy from Sweden called me and get on a couple charters. But May and June turned out to be pretty much three weeks of teaching Tech 40, Tech 60 and rebreathers. So let's talk about that for a second, because this was something cool. You guys have heard me in past episodes talk about how Patty changed the rebreather program and now calls the prism two a rebreather, not a technical rebreather. There's no distinction between technical rebreather and recreational rebreather. So I taught my first recreational level course.

Now, it was an, it was called the inter, can't remember what it's called, the integrated. Integrated course because you have to be a rebreather diver in order to be a advanced rebreather diver. And I was trying to figure out, I had someone sign up for the integrated course because he'd not been on a rebreather before, but he qualified for advanced rebreather. So that means that he has 25 dives. Plus he's got the prerequisites for advanced because for rebreather you only have 25 dives, but you're limited to 60ft for advanced rebreather. If you have deep dive or you can go to 130 if you don't, if you have advanced open water and the prerequisite amount of dives, you can just go to 100ft. But it's no decompression. And then we have the tech 40 ccR, which is a decompression.

Now, based on your prerequisites, all of these rebreather courses are entry level. So if you've only have 25 dives in open water with nitrox, your rebreather diver qualified, that can be your entry level into the prism, too. If you have advanced open water over 25 dives, deep diver, you can have. And a couple other prerequisites that I can't remember. You can go into the integrated program, because you have to finish rebreather first, and then you can go and do the advanced rebreather. Or if you have 25 dives, rescue diver, and all the prerequisites that go with 50 dives, all the prerequisites that go with it, you can jump into the entry level in the prism. Two, as a tech 40 ccr diver, which is the one you guys are familiar with me talking about all the time.

So anyway, I had one of the classes was all tech 40 ccR. The other one, I had a tech 40 ccr diver and a diver who was not. He was integrated. He would have been advanced open water with deep diving, and he was coming and integrated, and I was trying to figure out how to squeeze him in without being a month out of my store. Well, sitting down and having the, I was writing out all of the booklets with all the skills. And the rebreather diver and the advanced rebreather diver differ from the tech 40 in that you can surface and just bail out and surface is the answer for almost everything. So there's not as much diluent flushes, there's not as much sensor disagreement. Drills basically, at the advanced rebreather level or lower, you bail out and you come up.

Now, on rebreather diver, the bailout is optional. But if I include that, which I would rather do, give the people the practice, then all of the skills on dives one through four pretty much line up, except for the Tech 40 CCR diver does a few more skills in order to facilitate the requirements of their program, because they're going to be in a place where they have to solve it underwater, where the rebreather diver can always directly ascend to the surface. Now, Hollis requires a few skills. Hollis rebreathers requires a few skills additional, because the way that works is the manufacturer dictates what needs to be done. So I had to teach the rebreather diver some of the tech 40 ccr diver skills, like how to do a diluent flush, how to do some manual stuff.

But all in all, it was the first six dives. The both of them could do that together. And so if I was going to start the class, I can start the class with three people, with one being a rebreather diver, one being an advanced rebreather diver, and one being a tech 40. Except the rebreather diver and the advanced rebreather diver would finish up at different levels, and they wouldn't get into decompression, where the tech 40 CCR has to do a decompression dive on the last dive. So it was really cool to be able to line that up and have it just be perfect, because they all learn how to pack a scrubber the same way. They all learn how to program their computer the same way. They all learn how to do pre checks the same way.

And so it was an easy lineup, which allowed a person to be really advanced, along with a person who's not as advanced as far as their diving education goes. So that was really cool. So I also did a tech 60 ccr diver. That was cool. That was a couple people, again, from all over the country. That was done at Wazi to finish up, and that was. That was cool. But all in all, man, June was weird. There were nobody coming to the quarry, nobody coming out to get diving. I'm gonna say that now here in August. We've been slammed two or three weekends, but we've also had a dead weekend, so I'm not sure what people are doing. If you're listening to this on YouTube, do me a favor.

Type into the comments what you've been doing all summer if you haven't been diving, because a lot of guys that I know have been listening to my podcast and been calling me back and forth, and some people are on the Patreon, going back and forth and asking me questions and doing that because we have a Patreon page. Thank you very much for everybody who supports that. But the. But the tech. But the tech guys have been pretty much the only ones out there diving. So that's something that's really a surprise, because we had. I didn't really have a trip scheduled.

We went to Milwaukee at the end of June, and that was, like, the first time that I became aware that it was going to be a really weird summer, because I had people call me up and say, hey, can you order this and this? And I said, sure. And I'll just bring it to you this weekend. I'm not going to see you this weekend. I would be on this trip. I'm like, you guys are signed up for charters. When did that happen? You paid in full last year. Okay. I'm not going to be there. So at least they're cool about it. They're not asking for their money back. I mean, two days before the trip, I can't fill their spot. So there's no really way to get it.

But for the most part, we've had, every single trip this year has had someone sign up for it and then not be able to go. So I think that's probably the first true sign that Covid is over, that restrictions and lockdowns are over, and that most manufacturers, and what do you call it? Not manufacturers. Most employers are now starting to try to get back to normal because people are finding that they have to do things on weekends again. Where before weekdays used to be really easy. A year ago, weekdays were easy. But it's like I said, it's been a weird summer. Election years are always a weird summer for me.

So from a dive business standpoint, there's two things that affect my business the most that I can actually, in all my logbooks and all of my journals, I can tell you exactly what was going on. And that's if it's an election year, doesn't matter who's running or who's in office. It's just the uncertainty that goes along with election years. And, I don't know, presidents don't have anything to do with anything that we're doing. I'm more worried about my city council people and the school system people than anything else. But for what it's worth, people are weird, and I think they're getting angry for stupid stuff. It doesn't matter who you're going with, but it's weird.

And the other thing that really affects my business is when gas prices are up and gas prices are really up, food prices are really up, my socials aren't going as well as they are because people don't eat out anymore. I haven't eaten out. That used to be a hobby of me and my family. We just all go and eat out. Now I'm back to making dinners again. And it's just because you can stomach a $70 bill and you can stomach $100 bill, but, man, when it gets up into the 130, I mean, if you're drinking, it's 150, and that can be just crazy. And I'm not drinking as much anymore because I'm getting back in. I want to be in my fighting trim, but that's kind of where it is. The summer has kind of turned into summer now two months late.

I'm talking about June still, from the standpoint of having 2020 hindsight, all the way back to August. But we've really only had really big months at the quarry, and we've had a lot of blowouts with the charters that we've had. And I'll talk about that in a minute. But so far in June, I was really hopeful that things were going to happen in a different way. But it did and it didn't. And so we're going to talk about that in a little bit. We're going to move on to July, because July we got into some seriously cool diving. So until next time, until the next session. We'll see you. Bye.