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Conditions

Winds: East 5 knots

Seas: 2ft

Air Temp: 89

Water Temp: 72 bottom, 79 deco

Current: n/a

Visibility: 50ft

Dive 1: Gimrock Barge

9:15 AM

S: Matt, Christos and Charlie

A: 21/35 backgas (Matt 21/35 AL80 stage and 50% deco

D: 160’ plan 173’ max

D: 20” plan/bottom time, 50” run time

D: around the site

D: 120 deep, 25 minute Ratio Deco

PSI: 3100/900 stage / 3000/1400 al40

How full is a full boat? With the 42ft boat, 6 divers were full, but we stretched it to 9 without too much crowding. Today we packed on 5 Tech 1 divers with AL 80 stages for the second dive plus one support diver in a single tank. The boat was stuffed, but with proper organization and some new ideas, it got done.

There are several Gimrock barges off Miami, today’s site was the newest sunk in March of 2000. The site is a 195ft scow barge with a 140ft deck barge crumpled up inside of it on the North end in 165ft of water. Still no depth sounder so this would be another blind GPS only drop.

Jody and Robert geared up first and dropped in. There was current at the surface and they almost missed the site with an 80ft lead. Water was warm on top and cold on the bottom, with the break at 120ft.

Once they were back up, Christos, Charlie and myself geared up and got a better drop. I was diving an AL80 stage of bottom gas for the first time. The goal of this practice would be to allow for two deep dives on a single set of doubles. I back rolled in and was at 20ft by the time I sorted myself out, got oks and headed down. Jody dropped us right into the middle of the barge.

On the bottom I could hear a slight buzzing sound, but I couldn’t identify the source. Checking my buddies, I saw that Christos had a slight bubble from the right post. His 1st stage wasn’t screwed on tight enough. Charlie offered to fix it, but Christos declined. Swimming north, there is only sand in the barge. I touched bottom to find 173ft, 8ft deeper than what is published by Miami Dade DERM. Swimming back North, halfway up the barge the twisted and sharp remains of the second barge appear. Black Margates were tucked away in the corners. A Blue Angelfish came out to great us and the Yellow Goatfish scattered on contact with our light beams.

I was surprised when computer I borrowed from Jody started beeping hysterically on my arm. My computer was left in the truck because I couldn’t get the battery cover secured after a change. Gamba assisted me, but cracked the cover and I didn’t feel like using saltwater for a pressure test. When gearing up, I turned the computer on, but was distracted before setting it to gauge mode. It was set to air and thought I was going to die. I didn’t like the way the deco time was displayed instead of my run time. Luckily I set my stopwatch on the decent and started using that for bottom time.

The top rail of the barge was 156ft and I followed that to keep our average at 160 after going deeper for the first part of the dive. The barge wreckage didn’t host a lot of fish for being four years old. Some Tomtates, Jacks and Sunshine fish were the most popular. 15 Reef Butterfly fish schooled about and I found another Bank Butterfly fish, which are rare and only found in deeper water. Near the top of the wreckage a school of 10 juvenile yellow Spotfin Hogfish schooled about.

After circling the North side twice, I computed in my head that 18 minutes would be the perfect bottom time for our depth and planned deco. With a minute to spare, we drifted out off the barge to see if there was anything else in the sand. At 20 minutes bottom time I turned around to face my team while drifting. Christos was near rock bottom of 1300 psi and was ready call the dive. Charlie was tapping his finger on his bottom timer indicating that we were going into overtime. I have no problem calling a dive and I hope my team members have no problems working their thumbs either. I decided to wait for one of them to call the dive to make sure my back-up brains are working. I kept starring at Charlie while nodding my head acknowledging that I knew we were over time and nobody was doing anything about it. Charlie finally called the dive.

As we ascended through the deep stops and mentally prepared for switching bottles. I forgot to ask the proper way to do it? I guessed I should go to the long hose between bottles as you always donate from the mouth. At 90ft I pulled out the stage reg and put in the back up reg from under my chin. The back up is easier to get to and didn’t require unclipping the long hose to breath. While stuffing the hose, Charlie came for the assist before I wanted it, but I’m glad he helped get it stowed. I made the full “watch me switch” gesture and went to the deco bottle at 70ft without a problem. I didn’t want to grab the wrong bottle by mistake.

Charlie scored an extra rule #6 point on his liftbag shoot by using the double ender as a needle for gravity to thread the line through the loop in the bag. I held the spool as he filled the bag. Christos timed the deco and we ascend without a problem.

Debriefing after the dive, Charlie said that he had worked out the bottom time for depth and though I would call the dive at 18 minutes. Wow this team diving is started to get scary!

Dive 2: Orion

Jody, Robert and Andrea dropped in on the Orion first. Andrea saw a big turtle on the wreck and huge Southern Stingray with a baby next to it. Five 2ft long sharksuckers loitered with it looking for a free meal. She also found Yellow Garden eels and her favorite, a Red Spotted Hawkfish.

Charlie and Christos dropped in as well 40 minutes later. I got to pilot the new boat and get used to maneuvering it.

–Matt