Cadet November 2005

Had a blast yesterday on the Independence, I will be on that boat nonstop next year. Clean as a whistle (I think its only a year old), comfortable, great captain and crew, pulls 29 knots when he wants to. Captain Dan and crew are ccr divers, megs, inspirations, prisms, so my S-Kiss felt right at home. Lots of tech trips, also chases numbers, which is one of my goals. Nice guy to boot. We were scheduled to go to the Stolt, but conditions were kicking too hard. We instead tried for the Brunette. The grapple pulled three times, so the captain dropped a buoy on it and had the tie-in go down and tie that way. Wound up instead on the Cadet, which was even better. Big, busted but still intact enough to see its form, with about 8' of relief at its highest. Also covered in fish, and a cozy 58 degrees. Despite my dry suit leaking I was still toasty through both dives and nearly 2.5 hours of bottom time. As I swam down the gunnel I spotted an iron porthole, and made a mental note to come back with a prybar and see if I could detach it. A little bit farther down I found a 4' dogfish just hanging out on top of the gunnel. Closer inspection showed it was snagged by fishing line. I wasn't sure if approaching it with a sharp tool would constitute provoking it, but I managed to sneak in underneath and cut it loose. It was remarkably calm through the process, but still had plenty of energy to swim off when it was free, and now it has a cool piercing to show its friends. I also found about a 3# lobster, but without a bag had to leave that for dive 2. I even managed to find a scallop in 75', something I have heard of but never seen before. After a bit more poking about I headed up. I was pumped up for dive 2, and borrowed a tool bag with a hammer/chisel/pry to pull the porthole and bag the bug. Heading down I found the tool bag seriously heavy, and of course the tie was at the stern and the stuff I wanted a few hundred feet away at the bow. So, I hauled it over, giving myself more co2 buildup than I would have liked. After getting to the porthole I took a rest, cleared the co2, then went to work on it. I got a little freaked when I started to hear sort of a roaring droning sound in my ears. My first thought was "oh fuck am I toxing?", and immediately looked at my guages. I had to laugh when I realized it was just a ship passing by. What is that they say about being a paranoid ccr diver? Unfortunately the porthole was just too fragile, more like a piece of graphite than steel, and broke up about halfway through recovering it. Oh well, off to the bug. It was still there, hiding in one of bob nash's toilets. A little sleight of hand and I had her. HER being the operative term, and gravid, so back in the hole she went. With this I decided to haul the tools back to the anchor line (huff puff). Every time I moved the bag I had to add/delete dil, and in the process I blew through a ton of it. At this point I had covered most of the wreck, so I tied my reel in and headed off into the sand to see what I could see. I found a nice weight belt, with plastic covered weights on it. Now, I don't need another weight belt, but I figured what the hell, I might as well have the raise it on a lift bag, I can practice safely doing that. So I hooked it up, got it neutral, and pushed it on over to the line. When I got it there I hooked up the tool bag, pulled my strobe, and began my ascent. When I was in Bimini I learned not to use a lift bag as an surface marker buoy, because the vent at the bottom is too prone to dumping when shot from serious depth. What I learned yesterday was not to use an smb as a lift bag either, as the bottom is too hard to add air to. I started up the line, and when the bag got positive I dumped some air. Too much, as it turned out, so I tried to add some. Nothing doing, NFW, I could not get the bottom open enough to stick my bailout reg in. With weight on it its lips were sealed. Tried a bunch, but at this point I was past due for getting up (I had told them an hour, and it was now past that). So, I figured I'd just raise it up the line some more, the gas would expand, and I'd be back to neutral. Great theory, but man, I dragged that bitch all the way to 25 feet and she was still negative as hell. At this point I was starting to get a little concerned, as I had probably 25 lbs of wt belt on there, plus maybe 6-8 more in tools, and I was fighting hard. I had looped the wt belt over one side of the anchor line, the tool bag on the other, but when I got to the 25' granny I couldn't get it past the clip, and was concerned I was going to entangle it. It pretty much sucked ass at that point, I had way more co2 in the loop than I wanted, between the hard work and the ascent my PO2 had dropped quite a bit, I was fighting this heavy thing, and if I let go I was going to lose my lift bag, and more importantly the captain's tools. So, I took the other option, dropped the wts, got the bag neutral, flipped the dsv to open circuit, and made my ascent. I had picked up the wt belt figuring I'd practice and maybe learn something, and that is exactly what I did: 1) lift bags for lifting, smb for signalling 2) be very careful moving a tool bag around on ccr, you better have lots of dil to spare 3) at the surface going open circuit is not a panacea. In fact after a few breaths I went right back onto the loop, did a flush, and ended on a nice juicy po2. Felt much better for it too, my body did not like going from 1.0 to .21. So that was my Wednesday, thought I'd share the experience and pass along the lessons I learned.