Month: January 2017

Well if you fall off your bike the best thing to do is get back on it and try again.

Even though my final dive was fine the events of last week left me feeling a little ‘cautious’  uneasy to say the least. I knew I needed to get back on the horse. In this case a sea-horse.

Paul and Cissy were determined to see that I got my scuba wings and said the Kittiwake was the perfect first dive. Paul is an advanced diver and Cissy is qualified as a rescue diver so good buddies to go with. Along for the ride came Philip a no nonsense Texan with a wealth of dive experience and two other mutual friends both very experienced hands. A good bunch to keep an eye on me and calm my nerves.

We met at the dive centre, kitted up and headed for the boat.

20 minutes of bouncing over choppy water brought us to the dive site. Our guide talked us through the dive plan, safety talk and a map of the wreck of the USS Kittiwake.

The Kittiwake is a retired submarine rescue ship who five years ago was scuttled just of West Bay to create an artificial reef and dive site. She sits in a marine park and diving on her is strictly controlled. She is, quite rightly it turns out, considered to be a world class dive destination.

She lays on the sea bed her bottom at 19 meters and her bridge is 14 meters off the sea floor so relatively shallow. Her main deck is 10 meters down.

We stepped off the back of our boat and emptied our BCDs and began sinking. Unlike a shore dive where you descend down a slope to depth on this dive we just fell gently down to about 15 / 16 meters hovering just above the sandy bottom.

The sea was a little rough so visibility was down to about 25 meters. Rising up out of the sand was an enormous chain, it disappeared into the blue.

Just at the edge of our range of vision we could see large coral mounds on either side of us but no ship. Only the chain rising up from the bottom at about 25 degrees hinted at the presence of the Kittiwake out there somewhere.

We followed the chain.

Slowly a shape began to resolve itself and suddenly there above us looming out of the blue was the ship’s prow.

Staying at depth we swam around to the port side of the ship. We were close enough now to really start getting a sense of her size. Along her hull were three rough round holes. The signs of her scuttling, three matching gashes on each side that had opened her up and let the sea into her, allowing her to fill with water and sink.

We passed the first gash glancing inside at the dim interior something very ghostly about it. Scenes from movies flashed through my head and I half expected to see a shark or drowned seaman lurking inside but despite my imaginations best efforts to fill the void the ship remained silent and empty.

At the second gash our guide signalled we would be going inside.

She swam through the ragged rip into the gloom and after a second’s hesitation I followed, the rest of the group in tow.

Inside it was not dark but it took a couple of seconds for my eyes to adjust. We were inside the belly of the ship a large compartment divided into sections running the length of the hull. Below sections of the engine lay rusting, furring up with new coral growth and darting in and out fish.

We swam along the inside of the wreck making our way through the hold towards the stern. Floating over holes leading down to the very bottom of the ship, passing the rents in her side which let in light and under her smoke stack which afforded amazing glimpses of the surface above.

I must say at first it feels quite spooky but then the shear wonder of swimming through her catches up with you and you forget the fear and start drinking her in marvelling at how nature is claiming her, softening her hard edges with organic growth and breathing new life into her.

All too soon we came to the back of the ship and swam up through an open cargo hatch into the bright sun light and onto her deck.

We swam over the rear of the ship and hung floating half way between the sea bed and the surface. We turned back to see her stern and there her name in foot high letters ‘Kittiwake’.

We made our way along the port side and back inside gliding through the rooms that once bustled with life on the surface which once again teemed with living things as the sea claimed her. Remaking her.

We floated through the galley…

…through the decompression chamber, now open to the sea, passed through the ‘head’…

…where smashed mirrors still hung on the wall and gave us strange fractured glimpses of ourselves. Once so prosaic now transformed into a moment of awe as we glided past alien in this once familiar place.

We threaded through the rooms on the main deck until once again we reached the bow. Turning this time to see her at this new angle floating just above her prow seeing her as her namesake must once have done while on the wing.

Here, with our guide, Paul and I left the group leaving the more experienced divers to carry on for a while longer while we swam back following her anchor chain once more towards our dive boat.

As we headed back the Kittiwake had one more treat for us. Gliding bellow us passed an eagle ray. More angular than sting rays, black backed, spotted with white dots, a long tail and a beak they are stunning to watch in their almost Art Nuevo design! Flying effortlessly through the water the epitome of elegance! A breath-taking end to a breath taking dive. This time in a good way…

We floated five meters below our dive boat for our three minute safety stop and then surfaced elated and babbling excitedly about what we had seen.

38 minutes bottom time and safely back at the surface after a safety stop with 600psi in the tank! Visiting that submerged ghost ship had helped me to rest my own ghost from the week before.

Pictures and videos ** by Paul! I am in blue.

Day two was a little more eventful than I thought it was going to be.

We (my training buddy Natasha and I ) started off by swimming two hundred meters in the pool and then floating for 10 minutes to show we could.

Then it was time to suit up. Gear up and make our way once more to the sea pool. Trailing like two ungainly ducklings behind our instructor.

As this was open water dive 3 (my fourth dive) I knew the dive plan fairly well.

Swim out descending slowly to 60 feet / 18meters swim about look at the reef, carry out a couple of drills swim back, carry out our safety stop at 5meters swim the remaining 2-3 hundred meters under water into the sea pool. Surface with 500psi in our tanks. About 40 minutes all told.

I had done the same drill three times before so I was quietly confident.

We carried out our final kit checks. A giant step into the sea. Emptied our BCDs and sank 2m to the sea floor and set off.

We slowly descended following the bottom between to coral banks, so we we were swimming in a valley. Deeper and deeper  until we reached 60feet / 18meters. At this depth the colour shifts, less red and everything is bluer or greyer. But none the less stunning for it. We saw large barracuda, lobster, jacks, corals of a hundred different varieties and fish and fish and fish. We saw sting rays and chub and angle fish. We floated in a strange blue alien world. Looking up you could see the bright surface glittering far above.

Now one of the things you do when diving is check your tank pressure gauge regularly.  You learn to estimate what you think you have in your tank first, then check. You very quickly get a sense for how fast you use air and can fairly accurately estimate what you expect to see. I had been near spot on with my estimates every time. You are really highly motivated to learn how to do this. I mean basically you have a tank of pressurised gas strapped to your back and it is fairly crucial to the main objective of the sport,’not drowning’.

There we were deep down and I looked at my gauge and was very surprised to see it was showing just under 1000psi, a third of a tank. I had been expecting to see 1500psi. 950pdi was not enough to swim back the half a mile and do our safety stop as planned, and certainly not enough to surface with 500psi in my tank.

I caught my instructors attention and using hand signals I told her how much air I had left, she checked my gauge herself and shot off like a bullet. The normally sedate pace gone.

I watched her go and thought, ‘that’s not going to help’.

My buddy and I followed, Natasha blissfully unaware there was an issue.

Swimming fast at depth uses up air really quickly and would have made a bad situation worse.

So trying my hardest to stay calm I headed back at a slower pace. Forcing myself to breathe slowly and calmly. It was not easy but I fought the rising panic and settled on really a bit stressed.

My instructor ahead of me slowed down, calmed down, I think, and waited until I caught up.

We carried on, more slowly, until we reached our planned safety stop point. A line up to a buoy about 200m from the shore.

I signalled to my instructor I had under 500psi. Her eyes behind her mask went wide and she pulled out her ‘octopus’ the second regulator attached to her tank and passed it to me. I ditched my own.

Now I was breathing on her air.

Then she signals, ‘take off your mask’.

I signalled back ‘what?’.

‘Take off your mask’ she signals again.

So I did, I put it back on emptied of water and she nods.

I knew we were going to do this drill at some point on day two but while I was on her tank I thought ‘odd choice’.

She signalled up and we headed for the surface. I manually inflated by BCD and we floated there.

Natasha surfaced a few seconds behind us.

‘Where did all your air go?’ Came the question from the rather stunned instructor.

‘Dunno’, says I, ‘but I knew we had a problem, when I fist signalled you. I knew I did not have enough air to swim back under the surface’.

At this point Natasha twigged what had happened and just floated there rather surprised and a bit shocked.

By swimming up the slopping bottom to the 5m mark we had been decompressing so at the line we could make it more or less safely to the surface but the fact that the final ascent had been a buddy ascent on her tank meant we had been close to the limit!

There are two risks to balance ascend too fast and you are in danger of getting the bends, decompression sickness. Ascend too slowly you drown…

‘Well’, says the instructor, ‘you stayed calm and did not panic, good!’

We rolled onto our backs and paddled back to the sea pool and our planned exit point chatting as we went. All a little shaken.

We had been down for 43 minutes when we surfaced. Now this is interesting because my previous dives had been 42 minutes, 45 minutes and 43 minutes and I surfaced each time at the shore exit point with about 500psi left in my tank.

So while the dive was about the same Time I was about 1/4 tank shorter on air than the earlier dives…

Well it may have been a slow leak.
It may have been the fact we were down at sixty feet, the deeper you are the denser the air and the quicker you use it.

I may have been working harder than I thought, probably a sign I had not quiet got my buoyancy right.

It may have been the bottle was not really full at the surface a warm bottle (one left in the sun) can give you a false reading on your gauge.

It may have been all of the above.

One thing is certain our instructor had ‘turned the dive’ headed home later than on previous dives and this was one contributing factor. By staying out longer and at depth longer I had used more air.

But it was certainly was not helped by the fact that when I realised that I had an issue I tensed up and when you do that you breathe more air and use your tank quicker!

Either way it was a wake up call.

Dive four went exactly according to plan, the same profile as dive three, same route but this time after 42 minutes we surfaced at the shore with 500psi in my tank.

Our instructor congratulated us both we had passed!

She was happy to sign us off as certified open water divers!

And thanks to the events of the day I had my first real dive adventure story to tell already!