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Conditions

Winds: Calm

Seas: Calm

Air Temp: 79

Water Temp: 72/75

Current: slight south

Visibility: 30ft

After several attempts, I finally got Christos to go out with us on the boat. Since I had originally invited him, I got the pleasure of diving with him. Since it was his first time out on the boat I gave him the grand tour with all the safety equipment. He was smart enough to bring a fully rigged O2 al40 with him just in case as he didn’t know there was O2 on the boat. We stored it down in the galley as there were 4 70 ft deco bottles and 4 more al80 stage bottles for the second dive. Five sets of doubles and two single tank rigs plus gear filled the back of the Wave Dancer. It’s a beautiful site seeing all the DIR gear ready to dive. We might need a bigger boat?
 

Dive 1: Narwal

9:54 AM

SI: 21:48

S: Matt and Christos

A: 21/35, 50%

D: 119’

D: 61 minutes

D: around the site, swim to reef

D: 90 deep70/3 60/1 50/1 40/1 30/2 20/5 10/3

Loss of deco gas 50/2 40/2 30/4 20/10 10/6

PSI: 3600/1800 back, 3100/1500 deco, 500 for Christos

Our plan was to dive the Pimellous, but there was a large fishing boat on the site that wasn’t interested in moving. Second choice was the Merci Rabbi, a newly published site by DERM. But there were two smaller fishing boats there. So we motored North to the Narwal, a 137’ steel ship sunk in April of 1986. Jody has said that there was a ton of fish life on the wreck and it was broken up in Hurricane Andrea so there was a lot to see. We attempted to dive this site before, but missed it due to current.

This time I tossed out the plow anchor and we put a ball on it with 150ft of rope. There was only one fishing boat anchored just off the site. Christos and I would jump in first and Jody and Charlie would follow us down. We dropped on the ball and pulled down the line. We spotted the wreck as we came down, the anchor again was hardly dug into the sand next to the wreck.

The cargo hold has fallen in on itself with lots of debris for fish to live in. The stern section was twisted off and lying on the starboard side. We swam down the side, into the south current into a large school of grunts. As we cleared the stern a freight train of Jacks came flying by. The starboard propeller is half uncovered lying in the sand. The stern section was cracked open with lots of large opening for Grunts to live. I didn’t attempt to swim into them as there is fishing line draped all of the wreck.

We swam up the stern section and went around it again. A large Black Grouper appeared out of nowhere. Christos and I both got a look at it before he ducked under the side and disappeared. Blacks are so mysterious; they disappear like phantoms. At the top, there was a crusted over Danforth anchor and chain. The clip was solid so I didn’t thing there was any hope of recovering the chain and let it be. Charlie and Jody were down shooting the anchor to the surface as the plan was to swim to the reef when we were done on the ship.

Heading up to the bow there was another large school of Tomtates almost thick enough to block out the light. Plus there was a school of baitfish above the grunts. I rolled over on my back and looked up at them swirling around. The bow was also listing to starboard and the hull was covered with Deepwater Seafans. There wasn’t much growth on the top deck.

Back where it was torn, from the cargo hold there were several sections just big enough to penetrate, but I didn’t see anything worth the trouble as I peered in my light and then Christos’ 18 watt HID. I backward kicked out and ascended to look inside another hole. I tried to remain very conscious of the fishing line all around. As I backed out I knew I hit some, I froze while Christos moved it from my manifold and then backed up some more. Some of the monofilament strands were heavily grown over with invertebrates looking like ropes. The fresh line is clear and hard to see, especially in dim light.

After 20 minutes of bottom time we decided to swim off to the reef with our last 10 minutes. While heading southwest we ran across Lantern and Chalk Bass, Blue Gobies, and several nice Hogfish. Along the way I heard a buzzing sound. I looked back and saw bubbles coming out the center of Christos’ right post first stage. We called the dive and started up at 27 minutes bottom time.

We switched to our deco bottles and Christos pulled out the small Halcyon sausage and 150 spool he already had rigged up. I almost stopped him to ask if he had a bigger lift bag. But with the lack of current and flat calm seas, we should be easy to find as we hadn’t swum that far from the wreck. At 60ft I noticed Christos was switching his regs and I didn’t realized he has switched to back gas until he was stuffing his deco reg back into the rubber bands.

I signaled to ascend to 50ft and pulled out my wetnotes to recompute the deco. While working I felt my ears and noticed we were back down at 60ft. I had to become fully alert and take nothing from granted as Uncle Charlie was knocking on the door and cousin Foxtrot wasn’t far behind. I showed Christos the new schedule for 30 minutes and got an ok back. At 45 minutes I had hoped to hear the rumble of the twin diesel screws of the Wave Dancer, but all I heard silence.

At the 10-minute 20ft stop, I was clear after 5 minutes and gave Christos my deco bottle so he could do the last amount of time on the 50%.

Debrief

Through out the week we had an engaging debate about several of the small issues on the dive and how we can correct or prevent them in the future.

1. Not everyone on the boat knew where all the first aid gear was on the boat. William and Andrea had jellyfish stings on their arms from pulling in the descent line that snagged some tentacles. William had to self medicate on the stern of the boat, yes it does work!
2. We need to make bubble checks at the beginning of the dive mandatory. I didn’t notice Christos was bubbling from the right post until the end of the dive.
3. Christos used the small sausage as the surface marker. It was hard for the boat to see it on a calm, flat, day. It would be near impossible in rough conditions and current.
4. Someone should have checked on us and dropped in on our marker when they noticed we were over due. There should have been more concern when Jody and Charlie were on the boat before we were. They assumed we hit the shallow reef and extended our bottom time.
5. None of the surface support people on the boat knew there was a rigged O2 deco bottle in the galley. None of them knew all they had to do was clip it on the line to send it down to us. Jody will bring his O2 deco bottle on all dives and we’ll try to have an extra 70ft bottle on all dives. It’s the technical divers job to review their plan with the captain and crew and inform them of tools to assist with problems.
6. Ralph suggested reviewing the SCRET website: http://www.scret.org for their Surface support protocols to see if we can adapt them to our own.