Picture of By Piers Boileau-Goad

By Piers Boileau-Goad

28th July 2024

After three amazing months at sea, I was thrilled to jump back into the water before heading down to Newquay to explore some fascinating wrecks, including a U-boat and a hospital ship. I signed up for a dive with Stormforce Diving, based in Littlehampton, just 20 minutes from me – I couldn’t wait!

The fantastic team at Stormforce use a rib with two 175hp engines and two ladders on both quarters, based in the convenient Littlehampton Marina. The parking is a breeze! There’s a huge gravel car park with a short jetty leading to the boat. The max distance from the car park is 80m, which is really convenient and easy with any kit configuration.

The trip out was quite an adventure! We braced ourselves for a little bump, but as the weather got worse and worse, we got absolutely drenched! It was wild, so we called the original wreck and headed for another. Guess what! The SS Gascony was out and the SS Shirala was in! This was great because it meant we could go deeper, from 28m to 24m, which was no problem at all! I was really excited to test my unit today to make sure everything was working perfectly, and also to make sure I was functioning correctly so that I could focus on the task at hand without worrying about depth.

I was really excited to go in last so that I could kit up easily and send the shot up when I got there. I was happy to help people as and when I could. After all, if help is available, why not take it? It doesn’t make you any less of a ‘hardcore diver dude’! In fact, it’s the opposite. Why make life hard when you can make it easy?

At last, it was my turn! Fins on, unit on, bailout attached, green lights showing, countdown starting – 3, 2, 1, go – splash! I was ready to go! In I go! And into a stronger-than-expected current. I was already breathing hard before I even reached the shot line! I grab it and wait a second to catch my breath, then I start heading down, along a horizontal line!

At 6m, I’m faced with a dilemma: should I carry on, despite the strong current? At 12m, I’m really excited to see what’s in store! At 20m, I decide to turn back. I know the seabed is at 24m, so I dump my air and get myself as negative as I dare, and then—ah-ha!—I let go of the shot line! I touch the bottom and, wow, I’m next to a piece of metal! I take a moment to relax, lower my heart rate and slow my breathing. On a rebreather, you get to control your breathing so that you don’t build up carbon dioxide in the loop (hence the use of scooters at depth). Adding to the thrill of the strong current, my HUD kept telling me to look at my computer with blue and green lights – more on this later!

With my breathing now steady and my heart rate reducing, I move ahead, excited to find the bottom of the shot line that I had promised to send up. I spot a line off to my left front and follow it, and lo and behold, I find a line – it might even be one from a previous Stormforce dive! – Not ours, mind you, so I follow the line it was attached to and find ours in a little depression surrounded by wreckage. And up it goes! I give a rather pointless call of “watch out” (I had no idea where the other divers were and this was still a strong current), but it’s all part of the adventure!

Let's dive into the data! Here's the depth and PPO2 graph: The green line is the actual PPO2, while the orange line is the set point I chose (1.3 ata).

With the bag going up and my position out of the current in the depression, I get stuck in with some skills – a bailout drill which involves going onto my open circuit bailout and switching both computers to open circuit mode. Nothing major, just something to remember – but it’s great to get some practice in! I’ve completed the drill and am back on my unit! I’m excited to dive back into the messages on my computer.
During setup, my O2 and diluent read 195 bar each side, which is more than enough for a few hours at 25m – fantastic! When I got to the bottom, I saw that my O2 and diluent were massively reduced. Wow! I can’t believe I’ve managed to consume 300 litres of O2! I know this is not possible as I usually consume 0.5 bar or 1 litre per minute of O2, so that’s about 400 minutes of O2! Wow! How has the diluent gone down to 70 bar already? Thankfully, the diluent is only used for the descent to maintain counter lung volume, which is great! While on the ascent, it isn’t consumed, which is another plus.

There’s clearly a problem with the sensors. I know how much I consume, so I’m not convinced, but I do have plenty of gas and I haven’t seen a massive amount of bubbles coming from behind me, so it’s not an O-ring problem and the gas hasn’t just exploded out of the cylinder. Plus I have a bailout with 2200 litres of 32% in, so I’m all set!

So with these issues in mind, I am literally thinking ‘I’ve had enough, I’m getting out of here’! So out comes the bag, my bailout low-pressure inflator hose emerges and up the bag goes!

Things get even more exciting now (why not?!) though as my ratchet reel keeps slipping, 24m becomes 23 and then again 24 (as seen on the depth profile chart below). I now have the same strong current that I fought on the way down carrying me back towards Littlehampton, constant alarms telling me I have low or no gas left (on both diluent and O2), plus a ratchet reel that I have to use as a spool – it’s all part of the adventure! I can’t wait to see what goes wrong next!

I reached 6m at 28 minutes into the dive and I’m excited to stay here for a while! My heart is racing, my breathing is intense (stress and current related), so I feel the need to make sure I fulfill any obligations I might have, but probably don’t have. My computer is telling me I’m all good, and my backup computer (an Odyssey by Azoth Systems with my preferred Gradient Factor of 40/70) is telling me the same thing! So, up I go at minute 31, hitting the surface 34 minutes after I submerged. I don’t usually like dives that are shorter than an hour, but today is an exception!

The swell seems a little better and the boat is only about 100m away, picking up some other divers! With them on board, it moves over to me, so I pass up my SMB before removing my bailout and passing it up. With the ladder down, it’s time for me to climb up! I haven’t done this for a while with my unit on in this sea, but it was actually much easier than I was expecting, especially with help removing fins and my unit from David and those nearby. One of the other divers asked how I felt about the dive, and I told him it was pretty interesting. I was happy to know I wasn’t the only one who found it a bit awkward.

The trip back was just as interesting as the first time around! The boat went through all six degrees of motion continually, so at this point my lunch made a second appearance over the side (perhaps I need to start taking some sort of medication as this is not the first time now!).

So, what went wrong?

In an unexpected turn of events, both of my sender units, which send a message from the HP ports on each first stage, giving pressure information to my rebreathers brain, have flooded. I then break them down and empty the diluent side of white liquid, which looks like a rather rude stain on my wings bladder as it comes out. I also empty a black liquid, which I assume was soot from a short circuit mixed with water in the O2 side.

One of the flooded sender units (O2 side)
Stain
  • Redbare CCR with bailout of 32%.
  • Run time: 34 minutes.
  • Weather: 1m seas from south west, 15 knots wind from south west. Current setting to north east.
  • Boat: Stormforce diving from Littlehampton Yacht Club – an incredible experience with Stormforce Diving! Scuba diving charter in Littlehampton, West Sussex, UK.

It looks like my Newquay trip is on hold for now, but I’m excited to see what the fix will bring!