Just finished day one of my MOD1 rebreather course with Mike Potts and I am knackered. Today has included a couple of dives with lots of drills under the pier in Swanage.

It is a funny thing after hundreds of dives giving over control of what you are breathing to a computer, albeit a analogue computer with plenty of redundancy built in.

Breathing the warm air in almost total silence, as opposed to the noise of high pressure air coming from a traditional regulator and consequential exhaust bubbles, is very relaxing.  It takes a while to overcome the fact that you can no longer control buoyancy using your breath and automatic additions of gas by the computer may affect the total amount of gas in ‘the loop’ - and therefore your buoyancy.

I’ve been diving on an Inspiration Classic today - named unfairly by some as the ‘Yellow Box of Death’ (due to its luminescent yellow cover which is removed on the above photo, as well as the disproportionate number of users that have died using Inspirations) or ‘Yellow Box of Debt’ (due to the initial cost of the unit and ongoing running costs).

Tomorrow we are off at the crack-of-dawn to Vobster Quay to crank up the pace of training.

Good fun so far. I think my future may lay now in Closed Circuit Rebreathers rather than in open circuit scuba.