As our summer hiatus continues, it's awesome to be able to bring you with the support of XDEEP, another great episode from the Speaking Sidemount Patreon vault.
This time I catch up with PJ Prinsloo. PJ is a technical diving instructor trainer and the Director, Technical Diving for RAID South Africa. As you'll hear, he is passionate about the benefits of sidemount and has a wealth of knowledge from the perspective of a sidemount diver, instructor, instructor trainer, and in his role at RAID.
Last year PJ was inducted into the prestigious Explorers Club and in this episode, we go deep into his involvement in the stunning exploration of the Phoenician Wreck in Xlendi Bay off the island of Gozo, Malta. As you know, I spent two amazing seasons at Gozo Technical Diving and this is definitely a place very close to my heart. The exploration dives were at depths over 110m with 3-4 hour dive runtimes which took an immense amount of planning and attention to detail to execute safely.
We also discuss sidemount diving and continue our voyage into the state of sidemount diving and instruction. We talk about what it takes to be a great sidemount instructor, the economic argument for focussing on smaller class sizes and more attention to course quality, PJ's thoughts on optimising your sidemount setup, sliding d-rings. We continue discussing sidemount CCR and how he sees this through the students that come on his courses. We finish reminiscing about our trips to Chuuk and the wrecks of Truk Lagoon.