Dive 1: Watertower Wreck

S: Matt (lead), Jody (deco), Robert (bag)

A: Backgas 21/35 Deco: 50%

D: 150ft plan 163 Max

D: 30 minutes bt, 65 minutes rt, bailout 17 min

D: around the wreck

Deco: 120/1 110/1 100/1 90/1 80/1 70/5 (switch,bag) 60/3 50/1 40/1 30/2 20/8 10/5

Bailout: 110/1 100/1 90/1 80/1 70/1 (switch) 60/1 50/1 40/1 30/1 20/1 10/1

It was good to have Robert on the boat again! He is a mini version of AG. He loves running drills, asking questions, and always looking for ways to improve. Such a positive attitude is a pleasure to team dive with.

We geared up and hit the back platform. Mike W. was driving the boat and was briefed by Jody on how to make the drop. This is a small site and hard to drop on. We stood at the back ready to dive for several minutes, but my back said it was longer. Hearing the call to dive was a pleasing relief. We made good time to the bottom, in less than two minutes, to find the blue water on top was hazy with 35ft of visibility at the bottom and a bottom current running North which was not in the plan.

Jody took the lead to “smell out” the barge. We found some debris with a large nurse shark napping. It took off so fast that the sharksucker had to swim off after his ride that just got up and left him. In the distance was some more debris heading into the current, so we headed off to make slow and steady progress. We found a large concrete square object with juvenile fish hovering about. I thought we were on the right path, then Jody pulled the thumb.

We started up and it occurred to me that we did not cover “bailout” in my Tech 1 class. We had never discussed this scenario in our past dives. We left the bottom at less than 5 minutes so really this was a PADI “no-deco dive” but more accurately stated, “minimum deco dive”. My guess was that we would slow down at the deep stop and do ones to the surface. Switching to deco gas would be nice, but not really necessary, I decided to follow the team on that call.

At 80ft, everyone started prepping their deco bottles and we switched at 70ft. Robert shot the bag. We did do ones up from there. On the surface we could see the Wave Dancer about 300-400ft away hovering over the GPS #s at planned. They did not see our bag as we told them it would be up at about 35 minutes into the dive and not 10. Jody deployed his sausage and we floated patiently for about 4 minutes until the boat made way towards us for a pick up. Andrea, Mike, and Ralph were a great help getting us back on the boat.

Debrief:

Our bailout table was fine and safe for the dive we did, however, I didn’t feel it was optimal. The question was raised, “What is the best bailout?” With regards to criteria like, saving gas for the a second try, getting out of the water clean for another drop in 10-30 minutes, and keeping it in your head to be done on the fly.

Jody published a summery of our discussions for Quest:

Using 150ft for 5minutes (21/35, backgas all the way to the surface), I can come up with 6 bailout tables:

A B C D E F

150 5 5 5 5 5 5

110 1 P P

100 1 P P

90 1 P P

80 1 1 P

70 1 1 1 1 P

60 1 1 1 1 P

50 1 1 1 1 P

40 1 1 1 1 1 1

30 1 1 1 1 1 1

20 1 1 1 1 1 1

10 1 1 1 1 1 1

A is 1’s from 80% of the ATA’s to the surface

B is Pauses from 80% to 65% of the ATA’s, then 1’s to the surface

C is Pauses to the “Max stop depth” in Decoplanner, then 1’s to the surface

D is 1’s from the “Max stop depth” in Decoplanner to the surface

E is Pauses from the “Max stop depth” in Decoplanner, then 1’s to surface

   from where Decoplanner starts calling for them.

F is 1’s where Decoplanner starts calling for them.

I’m still debating between option C and D. As long as it works out to about a 10 minutes ascent on backgas or 5 minutes on deco gas, we should be in the clear.

Dive 2: Narwal Reef

S: Matt (lead), Jody (deco), Robert (bag)

A: Backgas 21/35 Deco: 50%

D: 110ft plan 116 max

D: 20 minutes bt plan, extended 5 minutes during dive

D: around the wreck

Deco: 80/1 70/3 (switch,bag) 60/1 50/1 40/1 30/1 20/4 10/3

SIT: 45 minutes

Fish Count

We didn’t have enough gas for another 150ft dive, so we scaled back to the Narwal, a 110 ft wreck 5 miles North. It is an older wreck sitting very close to some patch reef. We asked Mike to drop us 100ft North of the numbers so we could hit the wreck.

On the boat, Robert asked about running some drills on ascent? I mentioned that I was still getting comfortable with deco diving and that I didn’t feel like running any drills. Jody said he didn’t mind as long as it didn’t interfere with a clean decompression as we all wanted to do a second shallower dive that day.

We hit the bottom in less than a minute with no wreck in site. My guess was to go North, Jody and Robert pointed South and we swam with hope. 3 minutes later it didn’t look good. We headed West to some patch reef and began looking around. There were some nice hogfish everywhere. We varied heading West, then South, then West so more. There were some different fish than I was used and I whipped out the wetnotes to start a quick survey. We had decreased our profile so I requested another 5 minutes of bottom time. After that Jody was low on gas and we started up.

At 70ft, after Robert shot the bag he signaled me to take my mask off. I declined the offer. Then he signaled to Jody, who also declined saying that he was cold. As we worked our way up I knew to keep an eye on Robert, as we were not being any fun, he would create some. At 30ft after locking the spool Robert took off his mask, Jody and I were right there for the assist. Jody brought Robert up to 20ft and he deployed his backup mask and secured his primary.

A couple minutes later, I felt a tugging at my deco reg. I looked at Robert and nothing seemed to be wrong. He must have been checking to make sure my mouth piece was secure on the reg. Then Robert turned and pulled the deco reg out of Jody’s mouth. After the gas sharing drill, Robert put the back gas reg in his mouth instead of the deco reg and waited for Jody to notice. Back on the surface I was glad everyone was alive and good, we survived again!

Dive 3: Trench 62

S: Matt (lead), Jody (deco), Robert (bag)

A: AL80 stage of 32%, 21/35 backgas reserve

D: plan 70ft, max 88ft

D: 50 minutes

D: Up the trench and drift over the reef

Deco: 20/3 10/3

Fish Count

Robert and Jody dove this site for the first time yesterday and liked it so much, they wanted to do it again. I was game, since I didn’t blow the trimix and do it with them yesterday. Mike dropped us right on the numbers and Jody pointed the way to the trench. We started deep, and headed East upon finding the rubble.

The trench started growing right next to us. As we swam East the walls grew out of the sand to over 15ft tall by 15 feet wide at the deepest part. IT was dug straight through the reef. Both walls were coated up and down thick with Grunts. There were many holes, nooks and crevices in each wall. I found Barred Cardinalfish, Dusky Squirrelfish, and others hiding back in the dark corners. We swam up on a large Nurse Shark napping, a free swimming Green Moray heading in the opposite direction we were, and huge Roughtail Stingray buried in the sand in the middle of the trench.

We had to fight a slight current on the swim East, once we got to the other edge of the trench, I gestured the coast with the current back down through it again. All the creatures were in the same places. It felt good to dive and not disturb anything by being there. Once we finished the trench the second time we let the current take us South. Robert shot the bag as we drifted off over more nice patch reef.

Now for the big question, what is Trench 62? Why was it dug? For that I will have to do some research.

--Matt