By Piers Boileau-Goad
27th September 2024
Today however we were on the big boat which was great for space but bad because this meant that we would have less space due to more people. Imagine a ‘bigger’ boat with 7 tech divers on planning on 100m+ dives (so three bailouts each) plus three scooters and kit bags, plus five recreational divers – one of whom had two stage cylinders for some reason (wouldn’t you just use twins?).
Anyway, when everyone had chucked their kit on the boat and I had done my pre dive checklist – put he unit together, checked positive and negative pressures, gasses on etc etc we settled in for a short trip to the Meta Link dive site that we had done the day before. The weather was better today mercifully so it was actually flat calm with a gentle (less than 3-4 knots) of wind and no wind waves yet a low swell which had continued from the day before.
We dumped the two recreational divers with the stage cylinders first. I think they were doing 50-60m which seemed madness to me if they were on single cylinders but oh well. Not my problem. With them gone it gave us more space!
It was now our turn to kit up and prepare ourselves, so we did our pre dive checks between ourselves, pointing to where our spare masks were, spare SMB’s etc.
Having agreed the turn time we got ready for the signal to lean back and become one with the water.
Boop went the ‘ships’ horn followed by cries of ‘allez’ and ‘vas y’ and in we splashed in at 09:19. What a wonderful feeling this is, holding your mask, DSV and then hearing bubbles around you, feeling them caressing your whole body and then seeing only blue around you.
As I headed to the stern to see if my buddy was in the water safely, we thumbed down and away we went. Nothing but blue all around. Here I had my first alarm. As you descend the counter lung reduces in volume as everyone knows. My dilluent was 7/78 so massively hypoxic at the surface but breathable at about 12 metres, so swim down as fast as possible while PO2 increases.
Having to continuously equalise due to my cold having still not left I went from moments of euphoria to moments when my head felt like it was about to explode. Would today be the day when I have a reverse block at depth I wonder?
Anyway, we ‘hit the sand’ at 35m, signalled ‘ok’ to each other and then headed down further, trying to find the canyon at 55m so that we could find the ledge at 103m. Passing the usual flora and fauna I still take care around it so I don’t damage it yet always see it blow in the breeze whenever another diver passes.
Not finding the ledge at 103m we found instead a nice little ‘viewing point’ at 104m which had a slope down the western side through which you could go deeper. It was so inviting but we were at our planned max depth so perhaps next time. Deco is now racking up jolly fast, I recall seeing 81 minutes of deco time to surface at this stage, only 12 minutes into the dive!
Two observations from this point:
- Suit gas. Use a big bottle! I had been issued a 1 litre by the dive centre which i was squirting madly into my suit. As you can imagine this emptied a little rapidly – 200 bar x 1 litre = 200 litres. Consider this at 11 atmospheres.
- Diluent. I started the dive with 196 bar diluent. At departure from the bottom I had 93 bar. Total time – 11 minutes. 2 litres x 200 bar = 400 litres, again, consider this at 11 atmospheres of pressure…my Surface RMV is about 17 litres per minute. Multiply this by 11 atmospheres and you end up breathing 187 litres at 100m. It is something to consider as you don’t use diluent on the ascent, only the descent – to inflate the counter lung. Does it therefore actually matter?
My buddy decided to head east towards the wall which still remains impressive. It is obviously a solid wall, but it looks more like a cobbled street has been stuck on its side having been used instead of a solid piece of granite. Its pretty impressive when there isn’t much ambient light.
We were ascending now anyway so the light was increasing, above 70m the speed at which our TTS increased slowed so that now we had something like 90 minutes TTS. Continuing up the wall we found a little gully which looked interesting so followed this over the top of the wall at about 50m, where I had my first deco stop for one minute, with much more ambient light now we saw so much more, vis was easily around 25-30m so we saw plenty of sand, rocks, fish by their thousand. We left in a hurry so that we could keep up with the deco schedule and headed up again across the sand to our next stop at 47m, continuing these stops until we arrived at 6m where the fun began.
I found out quite early in the dive that my Pee valve was squashed between either my underwear or my J2 base layer so now I had to double up to pee. Very classy for a supposed techie although I will maintain it was to stretch my back! We had 30 minutes to kill at 6m which left plenty of time either getting bored or looking for stuff in the sand, and rocks etc.
There were lots of Annular seabream around the place bimbling around in groups and individually, bream were also floating about rather happily but most excitingly for me i saw a hole with two eyes sticking out. A nice little octopus was in his hole with just his eyes and his mouth protruding. The blue from his breathing tube (sorry Tom/Mandy I have no idea what the technical name for this is!) was incredibly vibrant when he was camouflaging himself to blend in with the yellow/beige of the adjacent rocks and sand. I motioned for my buddy to have a look but he could not see him until he got really close, a testament to his camouflage skills!
We had some OC guys around the 6m stop site which created noise but it was quite nice as there was a Brit among them – an EasyJet pilot of all things who lives in Nice which was cool – so i stuck my fingers in my ears and tried to grin without making my mask leak too much. I had made a potential dive buddy as he is interested in tech which is good!
Moving on, we found a nice little cuttlefish literally out in the open which was quite exciting, again my buddy couldn’t see him until he was right on him. Those eyes were really impressive, like looking into the soul of that little guy.
I’m not a fish diver by any stretch but this was cool. I seem to be becoming a fish chap perhaps, or is this just to fill the void of rusting metal?
With our deco now done we start ascending to the surface, slowly. This is our second 100m dive in two days so there is no rush. My PPO2 was still 1.5-1.55 and had been since our stops at about 30m so I knew I was in good shape. On the surface the scooters had arrived ahead of us and created a bit of a mess, kit everywhere – of course! I even saw a scooter that I thought was going to roll off the boat which could have been a little awkward.
Anyway, whats the rush, the weather was good, the sea was relatively calm so why worry? I pushed up my PPO2 to 1 bar and started breathing 100% O2 while I waited for the transom to clear, bobbing along in the deep blue sea.
Once clear, woop, bailouts off and up the ladder we go. In front of me..what a mes! Kit everywhere – worse than I expected and no space for me in the place I had kitted up in. Don’t you hate it when people pinch your space?
Anyway, onwards and upwards. Tomorrow we use scooters i hear which is great as we can get to our desired depth sooner and spend more time there perhaps, but they can cause more problems if things go wrong with them or your buoyancy.
Below I have my graphic from the unit.
The orange line in the main graph represents the deco line/ceiling. The small orange line in the top graph represents set point – 1.3 bar. The Green line represents my manually done PPO2. You can see its a bit wobbly on occasion until we get a steady depth. The little blue line in the top box represents CO2 content.
- Max depth: 104.6m
- Run time: 92 mins.
- O’Dive Score: 63 – room for improvement.
- Diluent: 7/78.
- Diluent consumed: 102 bar
- O2 Consumed: 70 bar