The Wreck Site
It was a damp morning when we left the Harbour for the dive, the trip took us 35 miles away and onto a dive in 62 meters of water, and we were to lift some items from the sea bed, However I had no idea how big or how many and the bags I had I hadn’t used so I was a little unhappy about the dive but not enough to call it; You know the feeling lets see how it goes type dive.
Well the trip there was long and a bit rough so this was making me feel ill, but once there I could get into the water and I’d be allot better. To take my mind off things I kitted up, I would be diving with three cylinders (Two Deco and one air for the lift bag) and twin 18’s with the back gas. This was very heavy and I thought I could loose a kilo or two off the belt; stupid later on but we’ll get to that.
Once we reached the dive site the wreck was plotted and the kit was assembled, the shot went in and in the 2/3 foot swell we went in, I was carrying 3 stage cylinders a bag of stops and lift bags, torches and all the other kit I needed to complete the dive, we reached the 6 meter point and performed a kit check and torches check, all ok so onward and downwards at 45 meters the plankton cleared but it got very dark and past 50 it was black but the torch light cut through the gloom for about 3 to 4 meters, I could see my buddy in front the wreck came into view and we orientated ourselves to the wreck, there was a huge mono net draped around the rear of the wreck which had dead fish and crabs in it a recent addition.
We came through the boilers and onto the recovery items they were allot bigger than I expected, I stropped up the smallest item and inflated the bags, it didn’t move, I put another bag on and inflated that again it stayed there “bollocks” this wasn’t moving, my buddy tapped me “time” I had been so focused on this I was at 25 minutes, I asked for his knife and cut the bags loose this took the strop’s, bag and air cylinder to the surface. This left me with the back gas and two deco cylinders 50 and 80%, I looked at my buddy and we headed off, the shot wasn’t visible due to the silt and mud kicked up so we bagged off, as my buddy sent the bag up I felt a tug on my fin, I turned to see what it was, it looked like a small piece of netting which I easily pulled loose, I turned back to find my buddy gone, I had dropped and he had gone up.
No problem I’ll bag up; I checked the air 105 bar good, I got the SMB out and switched to the backup reg I used the primary to fill the bag the bag went off and due to the cold the reg went into free flow, I pushed it back into my mouth but the back up reg free flowed, I turned that down and put my finger in the reg it stopped but after checking the air it was just under the 50 bar and I have deep stops to do, I didn’t have enough! And I was on the SMB alone.
I came to the first of the deep stops and stopped for the time on leaving I checked the air again about 17 bar by the time I got to 36 meters I was out but I was slowly moving up the only breathable gas was the 50% …… 36 meters PPo2 of 2.3 OK I clipped the reel to the chest ring and switched on turning on the 50% small gas bubbles blew past my face the first stage was leaking; I took a breath and turned it off and tightened the screw back on another breath, back off tighten again. I did this five times and eventually the Gas was virtually stopped but for a steady stream of small bubbles. It must have come loose whilst I was digging in the mud and silt, I checked the gauge 90 bar 21 meter stop and 35 minutes of stops between here and gas switch, the deeper accent was a little fast due to me switching to a high O2 gas. But I was still here and hadn’t passed out I looked back to the VR3 use tables mm well that was to be expected, this is why I love this piece of equipment I had blown a few deep stops off and was now on tables, I switched the mode to BUH to give longer shallow stops rather than deeper stops that I haven’t the gas for; the beauty of the VR3 is that it is constantly working to get you out of the water and even the tables adjust when you switch gas and change depth £1400 well spent on them.
I had to calm myself down and reduce the breathing rate, Think Pink used to be a method I used in climbing and I went through the process again this calmed me down and the extra light that broke through from the surface was a welcome. I was now moving through the stops and constantly checking the gauge it was coming down, between 15 and 12 I had to switch to 80% PPo2 of about 2. With the Gas switch done I was on the move up from 12 to 9and on to 6 meters here I had 58 minutes of deco to do, but due to the empty 50% cylinder and the empty back gas the rig was light and I was finding it harder to hold the stop I was cursing myself for dropping the lead at the start.
Thinking what I could do I unclipped the 50% and clipped it to the SMB line and sent it up things were a little better and it wasn’t bad but I still drifted up, I took the decision to open the suit zip and flood the suit a bit the water rushed in and I zipped it back up, it was really cold but after ten minutes the suit heated the water and the Xerotherm Arctic worked brilliant keeping me fairly warm, the deco time was spent with me thinking about the dive and how one small thing lead to another, which was making it worse and worse, but here I was at 3 meters exhausted and drained of any thing else. I came to the surface at a run time of 125 minutes cold and tired I grabbed the SMB signalled to the boat and flopped onto it, as the boat came in I could barely grab the line to the lift but at last I was on and going up, sat on the bench I used the last of the 80% and they helped me out of the kit. I got a tea and changed out of the wet gear, things started to get better. Why do I do this? The trip back was long and rough but after all that we had achieved what we wanted to do, recce of the site and a better understanding of what we need.
We got back in at 20:30 hrs and after de-kitting the boat we got away at 21:30; I was back in by 23:40 and thought sod it I’ll empty the car tomorrow ………….so what lessons learnt? Well it’s good to have a person watch the time as you can get so tunnel versioned on the task, air doesn’t last forever, my SAC working was 34×7.2 on the bottom but it was hard work. I can breathe 2.3 PPo2 but NEVER will I try that again, the reason I clipped the SMB was that if I passed out there would be no way I could go down just too much lift. Apex first stages are fine and shinny but the chrome wheel is hard to turn when your gloves have mud and silt on them And finally when the dive is called go don’t think you can have 5 minutes more it’s not worth it
And so on to the planning of the next dive to that site and better equipped for the task
Graham