Under Pressure

A mid afternoon dive arranged via YD private messages, I picked up Stevie (Hickdive) & we travelled up together where we met Gareth (gwilson) at the Pit Stop. After I had a great wee roll with scrambled egg & cheese and a mug of tea we headed over to Conger Alley.

We parked up beside the cottage, kitted up and headed over the road, the tide was in but the rain stayed away.

After a quick check and me struggling to get the stage cylinder attached for the first time we agreed I would lead the dive.

Dive 125: Time: 16:05 Max Depth: 8 Metres AIR in: 211 Bar AIR out: 192 Bar Duration: 6 Minutes.

We submerged into very blurry water with the cold water run off mixing with the sea water. I checked both Stevie and Gareth where behind me and down the slope we started to go, with no noticeable impact on trim I was happy with the stage cylinder clipped on my right side from belt to chest D rings.

I shone my torch between my legs and behind me to allow Gareth and Stevie to follow easily.

At around 6 Metres and two minutes in to the dive, I stopped and levelled off with only Stevie in sight, I gave the separated buddy signal and we stayed put for a minute to give Gareth a chance to find us. We shone our torches around in a circular pattern facing the depth and shallows, I then signalled to Stevie that we should abort the dive and he agreed. We slowly surfaced, got to the shore, de-kitted and looked around the surface for signs of Gareth.

After a few anxious minutes of my tummy turning knots, Stevie spotted divers exhaust bubbles and we sat patiently on the shore waiting, should we call help or should we wait?

We decided to wait while we could see bubbles and after only ten minutes Gareth came back up safely, saying he lost us in the shallows due to the poor visibility but as we knew the site he made the call to keep going to the reef, it was only when he got to the reef and nobody was around he decided to start making his way up, quickly but safely.

What would you have done? I’d only dived with Gareth a couple of times before, only dived with Stevie once before and thought best practice was to follow my training and that meant a search for one minute then surface. Had I been diving with a different buddy that I knew better, might have led me to stay in the water a few minutes longer and possibly have found them to continue the dive….. No Harm, everybody safe and sound and another learning experience.

Profile:

Dive 126 Time: 16:40 Depth: 26.6 Metres Duration: 41 minutes Air in: 185 Bar Deco Gas: 200 Bar on EAN50 Air out: 122 Bar Deco Gas Out: 150 Bar Water Temp: 8oC

I plan as usual to not do any decompression diving (all dives are deco dives..) however I wanted to practice gas switching and using a stage cylinder and have been sorting out equipment to let me do this.

My dive computer is a Suunto with gas switching capability.

I primed the stage prior to the dive making sure it was full, the gas had been switched on to pressurise and then turned off again. with the mix of EAN in the stage checked and my computer set for two mixes, 21% (mix1) with Max PPO2 of 1.4 BAR and EAN50 (mix2) set for Max PPO2 of 1.6 BAR.
The stage clipped off to my right hand side belt clip and harness D rings.

In Stevie & I went, with me leading……very poor visibility, plenty of Halocline caused by the cold water run off, when this cleared it was dark even at a relatively shallow 12 metres and continuing down, the water was clearer but dark, at 15 Metres depth it felt as dark as Loch Long normally is at 30 Metres.

We came across the reef, with the first thing we seen was a pretty large ling or cod, I can never remember what these fish are, all I know is it has barbs from its lower lip area. Plenty of crabs where on the reef with mackerel and blennys of various sizes.

We kept each other in sight whilst we looked under and around the various rocks on the reef, slowly making our way up the slope, all of a sudden Stevie starting flashing his torch, I finned over to him and he pointed out a pipe fish swimming in his torch beam, we hovered and just watched this for a magical thirty seconds before it swam away!

I hadnt even brought the camera in the water, it was lying in the back of my car on the shore! I didn’t want to overload myself with tasks and due to bringing in the side slung Cylinder with the EAN50 I had made the call to leave the camera behind, this was the first id seen one of these lovely creatures in UK waters and I will remember it, hopefully next time I will have my camera!

As we made our way up the reef I made my first training gas switch at 17 Metres I opened the valve on the side slung, checked the regulator and pulled the reg hose clear of the bungee cord, I breathed the mix and selected mix2 on my computer, after a few minutes I changed back to the AIR on my back at 15.5 Metres, after selecting mix1 on my computer.

I stayed on Air as my breathing gas till we reached a depth of 7.5 Metres at 30 minute run time at this point I reopened the side slung valve and started breathing on it for the duration of the dive, I also selected the appropriate mix on my computer.

Profile:

You can see the gas switching on the dive profile.

When we surfaced we had a chat, discussed the pipe fish and headed home.

Another nice days diving with a lesson hammered home about proper buddy checks, basically I relearned that buddy checks should not just cover equipment but they should also cover dive protocol including but not limited to separation, hand signals and emergency procedure.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 12th, 2007 at 10:53 pm and is filed under Dive Reports, Scuba Diving. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.