Sunday, April 3, 2011

UASBC NAS Intro Course 19/02/2011

On Saturday February 19th, Jacques Marc and John Middleton put on a Nautical Archaeology Society Intro course for the UASBC.

The NAS site, and the course write-ups are here:

http://www.nauticalarchaeologysociety.org/training/index.php

The UASBC site, and the course write-up is here:

http://www.uasbc.com/introtonascourse.cfm

There were some pictures taken by John that I put up here. The first two are of the land-work we did, then there is myself doing some tasks in the pool, then a group shot.

https://picasaweb.google.com/AntonNorth/ScubaFeb2011NASCourseVictoria#

The full course participant list was myself, Jason Kolba, Keith Bossons, Greg Bossons, Greg Nuttall, John Campbell, Joe Smith, Rob, Randy Parke, and Jiri Kotler. We met at the Crystal Pool and Fitness Centre in Victoria, and it was a beautiful sunny day. Many of us came over the night before to have more of a civilized morning arrival, but a few like Keith and his son came over that morning. Jason and I crashed at Jaques' house, which was very nice of him. He even made us pancakes!

There was some organizing to be done in the morning, as the room was not quite ready for us. Fortunately everything went relatively smoothly, although Jacques had to drive to his office to get a projection screen.

We started with introductions all around, and explanations as to why each of us were there. It was quite a mixed group. Most of us were there to expand our diving in some way. Some mentioned wanting to dive more wrecks, some mentioned learning new skills. One mentioned how it may help directly with his occupation (RCMP police diver; very interesting!). For me, I was there have fun at a new aspect of diving and to learn new skills.

Jacques handed things over to John, who started everything off with an introduction to the NAS program and the types of archaeology. After that, Jacques ran us through underwater survey techniques and the skills we would be practising in the pool. We had some donuts and coffee and headed outside to do some dry-land survey practice in the playground. I found the trilateration exercise very interesting. Taking two measurements from different points really made sense in helping increase accuracy when measuring things. Jacques also went over some of the things we might forget in the pool session. Tips on how to get better measurements, checking the markings on your tape, going over how you will measure things before you get in the water, and things like that. He joked that he still fully expected everyone to make all the usual mistakes, but that was part of the learning process (and the fun!).

We got changed and set up our gear at the deep end of the pool. Jacques had help from Holger who set up the underwater portion of the course before hand.

Each of us were split off into buddy teams, and sent on the various objectives. The tasks included three exercises. One was doing a perpendicular measurement of several items to a baseline. There was a scuba cylinder, a mitre box and a tape measure. On the other baseline we had to do bilateration (the trilateration we learned, but a bit less accurate). On that one there was an elbow shaped PVC pipe and a home base plate. It was tricky to get enough measurements to reproduce the objects accurately later. We ended up going back to both of the exercises to re-do and make some new measurements before we got out of the pool.

The final exercise was to sketch several objects under a grid. I had to sketch a dive knife, a light, and a garden hand-rake. It was very hard. You had to keep the grid at the same distance or things would be off. Buoyancy and being able to keep your position was very handy. Part of the trick was to keep the grid-lines lined up with each other, since there were two sets, one under the other. So if the lines were one, you were in the right spot. Jason and I did an extra exercise by doing a side profile of the side of the pool.

After all that, we did one last lecture on maritime law and plotted our measurements. We did it on tracing paper to a 300 scale and used simple drafting tools. I figured I'd be buying grade-school math equipment again! Once it was plotted, everyone put their plots on the window. With the tracing paper, the light shinning through let you see how everyone's matched up. The tape measure moved all over the place. People kept picking it up and putting it down, because it didn't look like part of the exercise! Jaques had some good comments to help people do better measurements, and said that we all did a pretty good job.

It was a great course in the end. I learned a lot and it was very interesting! Jason and I would be putting the course material to work on the next dive, which was coming up fast.

No comments:

Post a Comment