Rebreather Training in Key Largo - Piers Boileau-Goad

Having arrived in Key Largo the day before, on the 23rd and checked into the bunkhouse, I wandered down to the dive shop below our accommodation at 09:00 to meet my cross over instructor – Dan Dawson. The rest of the day was used to go through how my new unit worked and having it fitted to me, with of course, a little room for a drysuit and my inevitable size increase. The afternoon was spent analysing gases, stacking up and going through the pre dive build checklist. With this all done, we bid each other adieu for the day and agreed to meet at 08:00 next morning to load the boat. 

No sooner had we parted than 08:00 the next day rolled up, as well as thunder storms and the inevitable rain. I don’t mind rain after the dive to wash kit off but before is annoying. 

Horizon Dive Boat

Dive 1 was just going to be a shallow bimble along the reef to get used to the unit. It did not disappoint as a very scenic wander along a shallow reef, in spite of being rather noisy with a few Discover Scuba groups and I believe a Scuba Review as well. I had expected a lot of flailing, gesticulation and dreadful buoyancy, somehow though, more by sheer good fortune, this did not seem to happen. I required no lead in my weight belt which was great. After a very peaceful 48 minutes we ascended for the first time, de finned and mounted the ladder back onboard. Like a number of people in this club age is taking its toll. I have to take the ladder slowly climbing with only one leg these days, sadly there was no lift. I feel like Victor Meldrew!

Dive 2 was commenced at 10:56 after a short surface interval, on nearby Horseshoe reef and lasted another 54 minutes. Pretty much the same as before, lots of pretty fish and DSD’s or Scuba Reviews. Once again it was very pleasant, although I did have too much weight..without actually having changed anything. Perhaps this was me getting used to the unit? Once back on the boat my rather large Kent tooling reel was removed from my kit inventory. 

Dives 3 and 4 continued with depth progressing from 10m to 30m with some skills thrown into the mix, high PPO2, boom drills, low PPO2, bailouts and changing set points etc so were interesting from a technical perspective.  One thing that did happen after finishing a boom drill on the open decks of Spiegel Grove was me forgetting to turn the O2 cylinder back on.

USS Spiegel Grove

Normally I would have seen this but I was having mask leak issues caused by a degree of unkempt laziness. Thus, when starting my ascent and venting the loop, PPO2 was low and going in the wrong direction. Had it not been for my instructor directing my attention to this important issue, PPO2 would have continued dropping until reaching the low set point, potentially lower still, due to having to vent the loop on ascent.  The incident chain was therefore only broken by Dan. If I had been alone as usual it could have ended rather awkwardly. 

Dive 5, on the 27th was a vessel called USCGC Duane  which interestingly enough, one of the chaps staying in the bunkhouse with me had sailed on back in the 70’s. How weird that must have been for him each time? We jumped in at 0954 and went to the bottom before winding our way up onto the deck and inside. This was an interesting dive because there was a lot of small rather brightly coloured fish, including those with a yellow stripe horizontally along their bodies. Most excitingly though on this one we had some Hawksbill turtles swimming with us around the bow which was tremendous. 

USS Duane on Active Duty

Dive 6 was back to the Spiegel Grove but this time I was buddying up with a girl called Jessica who was using a chest mount unit.  Once again the water was lovely and warm – it had not dropped below 28c all week which was brilliant. As we descended the shot we could see the wreck easily from mere metres below the surface, how easy this diving is! When we reached the bottom we went along the port hull and made our way to the stern ramp. I had however been having a few concerns with cell 2 so was watching this quite a lot. When PPO2 on cell 2 went up to 1.78 I was a tad concerned so did a quick diluent flush and it starting to make sense again. My buddy was miles ahead of me so couldn’t have helped if she had wanted to, in spite of my signalling light display. 

With my cell concerns sorted for now we found two nurse sharks under the stern by the props, hiding in the darkness. Sadly scared away by our presence. Perhaps the electronics in our CCR’s causes them some discomfort? Swimming idly along the stern ramp we kicked our way into the gargantuan well deck, devoid of anything except a lavatory, slap bang in the middle. Needless to say, my childish humour took over and I sat on it, making some grunts, much to the amusement of my buddy! With the giggles subsiding we finned over to the middle deck and were welcomed by the darkness, broken only through our two torches lighting the way ahead. Down alleyways, through machinery rooms and workshops we swam, along narrow passageways and through open watertight hatches. Some of the passageways were so narrow a proper fin kick was not possible, merely a wiggle of the toes, unless the inevitable was accepted and a grab and pull method was used for propulsion. A conventional up and down fin kick would have resulted in a silt out for our number three behind me, which would have been less than ideal for her!

As we were nearing the end of our penetration, heading down one corridor illuminated by light at the other end, and with hundreds of small fish flickering and shining in the sunshine from above, I was shocked to come literally face to face with an enormous Grouper in a hatchway that I was passing. They must have been the at least 3 feet long, if not bigger. Such a magnificent animal and yet I don’t know who was more startled, the fish or I! Having passed this magnificent creature and now being out in the light blue of the Florida Keys marine park we were approached by a reef shark, curiously passing by, enquiring as to why we were invading their domain.  Regrettably, with an hour on the wreck it was time to head back up and start our deco. 

Grouper

I have been happily using a Gradient Factor of 40/70, due to my O’Dive, for a while so I was told that I had a stop at 9m for a few minutes, but this had cleared before we even arrived so i simply carried on and went straight to 6m for 24 minutes while our tissues cleared. Manually elevating PPO2 to 1.5 just to speed things up a bit.

One of the rather more curious differences between the JJ and my old Redbare is the ease of manual flight on the Redbare. It seemed much easier to manually maintain a specific PPO2 on the Redbare and harder on the JJ. Had I simply not been venting enough I wonder? Could it be that the volume of gas injected into the loop manually on the JJ is simply less? One hour and 27 minutes after leaving the surface we popped our heads back into the golden rays of sunlight and headed over to the boat, de finned and clambered back onboard. 

JJ Rebreather

Dive 7. Having dried out my head and the cells attached to it, I no longer had a high PPO2 on cell two. It pays to dry them out properly as I guess the humidity was playing havoc.  The water temperature was 31 degrees Celsius on the surface!  How brutal this was in my drysuit so I was very happy to start our descent. Down we went, 23m in less than 2 minutes and onto the upper decks. All signalling ok to each other, we wandered off the deck and down the hull to the stern, up the ramp and back into the well deck. This time though we did not go all the way forward but stopped and ascended onto the upper decks and then dropped into what would have been either a skylight or ladder.  Here I made a boo boo! 

 I dropped the back up torch I was using as a primary while entering the hole. Dropping a torch isn’t so bad, especially if you have another one on you, but when it drops onto a layer of nice fine silt in a confined ish space it’s a pain because you do not want to silt the place out. Grabbing everything vaguely solid to control my self and gently spin myself around I located my torch and moved out of the way and into the next compartment, trying to avoid kicking up too much silt. I won’t say it was a graceful operation because it was not, but I did not silt out the compartment. 

The next compartment was of course rather narrow, think of a space barely a metre wide and then add racks on one side for laying out cables or hoses, definitely some sort of storage alleyway.  Progressing in the darkness with only our torches to guide us the visibility inside was amazing. Had it been one single compartment it would have given us at least 30m of visibility. We skulked along from one side of the well deck all the way forward and then aft on the other side to a position as far aft as possible. At one stage I was tasked with leading, but of course I hit a dead end immediately so had to turn around. I think it was an AC room as I went under a duct and then tried to get behind the AC units. I should have realised it was either a set up or dead end having seen this kind of room a million times before onboard other ships. 

With this dead end found we all turned around and headed 50m back along the corridor and turned right to be greeted with a light blue, so beautiful that even now, it is stuck in my mind. I called it a sapphire blue but others on the boat likened it more to cobalt. Either way it was truly stunning and made even more beautiful by the schools of little fish dancing and glistening in those heaven sent rays.  One hour into our dive we again left the bottom and started our ascent to the first stop, 9m which lasted all of one minute, followed by another stop at 6m for 25 minutes.  During our ascent we were met with groups of recreational divers descending for their second dive, one of whom was simply in a swimsuit under their BCD. 

Deco passed rapidly enough and we made our final ascent of the week to be met by a bit more of a washing machine that we had left. De finning became a little more interesting and not something I have yet mastered in the water without allowing water through my neck seal.  Back on the boat we de-kitted, I hydrated, and kicked back to relax.

Conclusions

What had I expected from the week? A disastrous crossover course that would force me to relearn everything I had built as muscle memory on my Redbare. What did I get? Essentially a week of diving in the Florida keys marine park on a unit that feels easy to dive, quiet, and comfortable. The flailing around and calamity did not happen, the ugliest it got was when i was trying to reattach bailouts which had a bolt snap slightly too small for the cage on my unit so would not fit securely, leading to me finning like a dead wasp with a twitch on an open deck while running my fingers over the bolt snap and cage trying to work out what the exact problem was while attaching and reattaching the bolt snap.

 Horizon divers in Key Largo have a smooth and efficient operation with multiple boats doing two sites in the morning and afternoon.  The onboard crew are really helpful, friendly and involved helping you with putting stuff on, getting your water bottles refilled and so many other things.  The weather was a steady 30 degrees all week with high humidity, 85 or so constantly.  Hydration is a must. I think I was drinking at least 5 litres of water per day, perhaps more, I forget, as well as using a product called “Liquid IV” (a rehydration powder) to assist with keeping myself hydrated.  Total time on the unit thus far: 7 hours 31 minutes.

Dive Sites

USS Spiegel Grove

USS Spiegel Grove Details

Date Sunk: June 10, 2002 (Hurricane Dennis turned ship upright in July 2005)

Location: 25° 04.00′ N; 80° 18.65′ W (6 Miles off Key Largo)

Maximum Depth: 130 feet

Minimum Depth: 45 feet (approximately)

Ship Length: 510 feet

Ship Height: 84 feet

Tonnage: 6,880

Ship Type: U.S. Navy Landing Ship Dock

Date Commissioned: 1956

Date Decommissioned: 1989

Named For: Ohio estate of US President Rutherford B. Hayes

USCGC Duane

On April 17, 1943, Duane and its sister ship, the Spencer, sank the German U-boat U-77. During its career, Duane participated in four rescues at sea, picking up a total of 346 survivors. In 1980, Duane escorted vessels carrying thousands of Cuban refugees crossing from that island to the United States. Duane‘s last assignments included search and rescue work and drug enforcement.

Commissioned 1 Aug 36 as the USCG cutter WILLIAM J. DUANE
Displacement (tons): 2,350 trial, 2,750 fl
Dimensions (feet): 327.0′ oa, 308.0′ wl x 41.2′ e x 15.0′ max
Speed (kts): 19.5

Accommodation