By Piers Boileau-Goad
24th September 2024
Today I went down to the port with an open mind. I still had a vague head cold but I could now clear my ears. Would this also be the case in the water I wonder – hopefully! As i write this, I am fearful that my cold will return with a vengeance in the morning and force me to put off tomorrows dive.
I had a new buddy today which was nice but concerning. I had been diving with one chap for the last few days at various depths from 60-90m so he knew what I was like and I knew a bit about him too. I didn’t feel so comfortable with this change but oh well, I had no choice in the matter.
Mercifully our departure from the port was delayed due to traffic coming in, berthing, and generally messing about so for once we had plenty of time to organise ourselves. Rushing to get ready as we had been doing for the last few days, isn’t a good idea. Why put yourself under more stress than you have to?
While we were waiting for the traffic to clear and be on our way my buddy and I discussed the dive plan. At 90m we see if we want to progress to 95m and then to 100m. Step by step.
With the news yesterday from England I was not interested in becoming a statistic so made it very clear that if we hit 100m then great, but if not, it didn’t matter. The site would still be there another day.
As we progressed to the site and got into our kit I visualised my dive, trying to visualise what to do if things went wrong, how to bailout, which cylinder to use at which depth, how to deal with hyperoxia in the loop and all the usual other things i think about before jumping in.
Soon enough my buddy was ready with his Triton Chest mount CCR and we went through the pre dive check. Is O2 turned on, how much do you have, sliders open, suit inflate connected and on, set point etc. Both happy with this and where stuff was on our bodies such as spare bags, masks, we clipped our bailouts on and sat on the starboard side rail, waiting for the order to fall back – all while trying to avoid falling in accidentally as the boat was starting to roll a little.
In we go, splash, the sound of the bubbles around me, floating up past my hands, my legs and arms is always a lovely feeling. I was also telling myself to hold my DSV and mask in place. Once upon a time my DSV came out when i rolled back so its always a mental thought now.
Both of us ready to descend we headed down to the sand 45m beneath us. Here things got a little interesting. My cold had not completely gone so my head went from wanting to explode to peace alternately as we descended and I equalised probably every half metre. Would this continue, would I get a reverse block at depth, what if, what if.
Heading off the sand at 45m we shortly found the canyon at 55m and threaded our way past this down further. I was rather concerned that we were not going to have enough time as we had agreed a turn time of 15 minutes and we were already at 6 minutes. Still, trust is key, my buddy knows the area and all will be well.
We kept going down, 60, 70, 80, 90, 91, 92 and then metre by metre until I saw 98.4m and thought I should inflate my suit a little more as I was still falling a little faster than I would have liked (it felt like I was inflating my suit for an incredibly long time and expected to start shooting up at any second!). We were arriving on a little shelf – purpose built it seems for us – at exactly 103m which was brilliant as we then couldn’t go deeper accidentally. Here it was dark by comparison to the standards 40 metres above, there was a certain milkiness in the water as well due to the rains the day before having washed off the land and then presumably come down the slope we had just come down ourselves, so like the previous days I had turned on my torch and just let it dangle so that people could see me. With both of us giving the OK, and our bottom time now approaching its limit, we headed back up from 102m – a much longer journey than the one we had just done!
Squirting what felt like the entire suit inflate cylinder into my suit (a little 1 litre cylinder i was borrowing for this Exped) did make me wonder how long it would last, but up we now went. At 60m our TTS was now down to 41 minutes which was much better as we made our way to the canyon we had come through mere minutes before. The thermocline here was clear to sea, the water was so much warmer too which was rather nice as it had been a little chilly at depth.
Approaching the canyon, we started seeing the lights of the other group of divers who were making their way down to 110m. We gave them the canyon while going over the top of the wall instead. It was a little surreal, I have to admit, seeing them heading passed us.
My first deco stop was at about 52m or so which cleared as I approached, then it was 49m, and every three metres until the six metre stop. I was venting my loop much more than before and manually injecting O2 into my loop once more to reduce my deco time as much as possible.
As the stops progressed my TTS went down (while maintaining 1.5 – 1.55 bar as a PPO2) and eventually cleared after 31 minutes at 6 metres looking at pretty fish and wondering what they were. One had three long stripes on its length with green and gold while another had some blue on it. All rather pretty but not metal, sorry Tom, but I am yearning for some rusty metal!
Having cleared our six metre deco obligations whilst being moved about like in a washing machine we couldn’t see the boat so decided to have a wander and look for it. We met another group of our divers who gave us a vague direction and we headed there until we seemed a little confused as, still no boat. Getting a little bored i suppose, or perhaps feeling a tad adventurous I opted to surface and search for it. Low and behold it was right ahead of us, exactly where our team mates had said it was!
Getting back onto the boat, however, was awkward. We each had multiple bailouts to remove before climbing the ladder between two large outboard engines. Chances of getting hit by a prop = high!
The skipper took my buddy’s bailouts one by one and he managed to clamber onto the boat without incident while i waited about 10m away just in case. There is no point crowding the area when nothing can come of it is there. My turn. I was really concerned about the props, especially as every seventh wave is usually a little larger than the rest so tried to time things as best i could. One bailout off, swim to the boat, pass up, repeat with the rest. Thank heavens i had a few waves which were not so bad and i could get onto the ladder and out without being hit by any heavy metal object. All in all, a very pleasant dive.
- Dive time: 101 minutes
- Bottom time: 15 minutes (includes descent)
- Max depth: 102m
- Gas Mix: 7/73
