The Bluebird Project

To be fair, the suit is the right length and the boots are a snug fit. I can imagine how an overly large suit would be lethal !!! He deliberately inverted me in the pool while I held onto the grate at the bottom and he over inflated the suit as far as it would go. I had to open the dump fully, then curl up into a ball head facing down squeeze my legs into my chest pushing the air into the upper half of the suit, then roll over and it seemed to work....... Hard work after having to repeat it a few times, but I got there. The issue with the hover was all my weight was around my back so if you imagine this "V" is me, the bottom of the V being my bottom then one leg is my tank and back, the other is my thighs.... the tank and the weight on my back would tilt me back....... Had I had my weights on the side or spread out, I reckon it would have left my torso vertical leaving me in my usual legs down position.

Had I had my weights on the side or spread out, I reckon it would have left my torso vertical leaving me in my usual legs down position.

Maintaining buoyancy in the shallows is tricky at the best of time. Normally the shallowest you'd want to bother as a wreck diver would be the 6m stop and once that's done you just drift upwards towards the tea and coffee.

There is a cheat for upside down buoyancy.
Put ankle weights on, they're a pain in the neck and when you get to depth they flap about and get you stuck on things or slip onto your fins stopping you finning properly.
Put lead in the bottom of your boots. Use flat roofing lead cut to your foot shape, get decent weight and then cover with a shoe sole insert.
Neither are great options but sometimes when you have a close fitting drysuit you can't 'slide' your feet into the boots due to the tightness of the ankle part of the suit and have to get oversize boots to get your feet into them.

If you suffer from this problem, plenty of pool practise doing straight leg forward and reverse rolls will give you the confidence to do them in open water to overcome the problem

There is a cheat for upside down buoyancy.

Clip the lanyard for your shovel to your ankle and when the panic sets in you'll drop your shovel and the weight will pull you upright and act as a sea-anchor to moderate your ascent.

I refuse to use ankle weights... Will practice to death than face that indignity.

To be fair I had the drills nailed on by the end of the session and the instructor was more than happy to take me into open water.... Time will tell.

I need to sort the suit out, I must have hydraulic'd most of the pool into my suit during the session.. The purge is not fitted correctly on the shoulder so will let aqua north have a look at it.

I need to sort the suit out, I must have hydraulic'd most of the pool into my suit during the session.. The purge is not fitted correctly on the shoulder so will let aqua north have a look at it.

All you need is more weight and a bit of experimenting to find out how best to distribute it, more water to play in and a little practice. It's really not a drama.

I have a simple solution to the problem of upside down bouyancy in a drysuit:
Dive where the sea is warm, limit your dives to around 30min/30metres and a wetsuit will be fine. You won't need tea or coffee when you have finished either, just something chilled and amber in a frosty glass.

Well you see, we have a coast full of wrecks here..... And rather than the likes of Egypt or the med, where you dive a wreck and you can't move for divers, you can drop onto a wreck in peace and forage for goodies and brass alone or even just take in the view (when you have one)

IMHO If you can dive the North Sea, you can dive the world.

I have done wetsuit dives here and it's a miserable life, granted that was 10m for 40 mins or so in the middle of the summer... But I am reliably told you drop down to say 20+m in a wetsuit, your dive will be short, cold, and miserable.

Hopefully if my finances are sorted before May 2015 I will be doing my advanced OW in Cyprus.. My deep module will be on the wreck of the Alexander, (30m) my wreck module on the Zenobia (42m) (or vice versa), a night module on a local wreck, and no doubt the nav module at Green Bay. Then the search and rescue module somewhere else.. (Searching for kit and recovering it..... Not recovering divers)

a night module on a local wreck

I can do you a catching lobsters at 1.00am module on a local wreck called the Rennen. Simply put the pick in at the up-tide end of the wreck, ty-wrap a cyalume stick to the shot line about 12ft out of the bottom then lift and drop the pick the whole length of the wreck and be pulled along by the tide whilst scanning to the sides for lobsters, which are out looking for munchies at that hour in the dark. Swim out, blind said crustacean with torch then shove into a bag. Switch off your torch and look for the cyalume stick and return to the shot line. Repeat as necessary then trade your lobsters for a free, slap-up meal in a quality restaurant the following night.

Ahh the PADI lobster speciality