pdoege
Contributor
Hey guys -
KBeck invited the Ginnie folks to dive with her on Sunday. I tried, but the boat was full. Man, she is really popular.
I am not deterred by such things and grabbed JKolb (the world's best dive buddy TM) for a day of diving.
We went with the Starfish (www.idivestarfish.com). This is a really good boat out of Lantana.
The normal capt., Capt Craig, is in Bonaire. So they had a replacement.
On the way out of the inlet a very large wave knocked someone off of the bridge and he landed on some poor guy. Ouch! That wasn't good. I was surprised that the capt. let anyone stay on the bridge in the inlet. In my experience, the capt. always orders everyone to the back for the inlet passage. A note of caution here.
Dive 1: Capt. Tony, wreck, 55 minutes, max 88ft.
This is a really nice wreck. I've been on her before. There are some very strong currents here at times. No current today.
The crew put the first, more experienced group in first. They tied the floatball off and everyone else hopped in.
The crew asked me to plan on coming up last and releasing the ball. No problem. I had a LP120 with a hot fill and a nice rich EAN. My buddy and I planned a 45 minute bottom time with some leeway in case other divers stayed down longer.
Two divers had no experience on the Tony and seemed to be pretty new. I told them the depth, the layout of the ship, how to avoid the current, and the siltiness of the forwards holds and engine room.
The dive went well. We hit the turn time and scanned the wreck for other divers.
The two newer divers were still down. Pretty deep too. They were not diving EAN, and I remember thinking, "Wow, that must be a really lenient computer..., and they must have a really good SAC..."
Well, they didn't have either. So they turned when they looked at their gauges and noticed that they had maybe 300PSI. Ooops. I had followed them around, staying above them, close enough to donate, waiting for an OOA.
They went up and I pulled the float. I kept an eye out in case the other two divers needed air.
My buddy did a great job with the ascent rate and we had a trouble free ascent. We did a 1 minute stop at 40 feet and a 5 minute stop at 20.
The crew was concerned about the long dive of the 2 divers. They seemed healthy enough to me.
Dive 2: Boynton Ledges, Reef, 55 min, max 65 feet
This was a great site!
The crew asked me to lead a group of my buddy and the 2 newer divers. I was concerned by their lack of skills earlier and agreed. I would rather watch them then have them dive alone.
No problem. I started gearing up and then realised that I needed to know their bottom time. Turns out they were not using computers and didn't have their tables out. Hmm. I asked for the tables. I only know how to read SSI and IANTD deco tables, so I didn't have much faith in my ability to read the table.
Turns out that they are SSI divers. Yay. They don't know how to run the tables. Sigh. Let's see, I was down to 90' for 55 minutes, so they are.... way off the tables. Ok, so what was their down time? No clue. Hmmm.
They probably were off the tables. They wanted to dive anyway. Who am I to argue?
Well, if they go down, it'll give the N2 bubbles a chance to re-compress. I decided to give them 15minutes of bottom time and told them to make a slow ascent and a long safety stop.
We hopped in. One of guys in the other pair promptly started to swim up current. Sigh.
He wasn't looking back either, so I couldn't give him the "turn around" message.
So I hugged bottom to get out of the current and followed.
My camera was useless. Between the ball, the bottom, and watching the other team like a hawk I didn't have enough task loading to deal with it. I passed it off to my buddy.
After an uneventful 15 minutes I sent the other team up. I sent them up my line so they would have something to judge their ascent rates.
With two divers hanging on, I was pretty much at the mercy of the current. There was a pretty big separation between me and my buddy.
The other team released the ball and boarded the boat. Finally! Now I can dive!
About 3 minutes later, as I was doing my routine left, right, up check I noticed a largish shark to the right. Just a shark. Wait, the fin is wrong. A hammerhead! Cool! My buddy and I had just done our typical air and status check, so he wasn't paying too much attention.
If he missed a photo of that shark while holding my camera I was going to kill him.
I charged up to him and yelled his name into the reg. He spun around and looked at me. What? I was frantically pointing at the shark. He looked, nonchalantly. Just a shark.... Wait! A hammerhead!
He aimed in a flurry of activity and started shooting. Gave me an OK sign! Cool! Evidence!
I was high on that encounter for the rest of the dive.
Neat.
We ascended slowly and boarded the boat. Lots of talking as I described the encounter. Cool! The other team was fine. They were disappointed at missing the shark. I reminded them that they missed the shark because they had screwed up their earlier dive.
On the way back to the pier, my buddy reported not feeling 100% and we called the rest of the dives. He had gotten a lot of sun the previous few days and was looking red. No problem. We called the rest of the dives.
The crew managed to lock me in the shower back on the pier. No way out, and no response to repeated calls and knocking.
What is an large, aggressive male to do? The door frame broke easily and that was the end of that.
So it was a great day. Marred somewhat by various incidents, but it all worked out in the end.
Man, that was a long post. Thanks for reading.
Peter
PS. I'll upload the shark pic after I install my editing software tonight.
KBeck invited the Ginnie folks to dive with her on Sunday. I tried, but the boat was full. Man, she is really popular.
I am not deterred by such things and grabbed JKolb (the world's best dive buddy TM) for a day of diving.
We went with the Starfish (www.idivestarfish.com). This is a really good boat out of Lantana.
The normal capt., Capt Craig, is in Bonaire. So they had a replacement.
On the way out of the inlet a very large wave knocked someone off of the bridge and he landed on some poor guy. Ouch! That wasn't good. I was surprised that the capt. let anyone stay on the bridge in the inlet. In my experience, the capt. always orders everyone to the back for the inlet passage. A note of caution here.
Dive 1: Capt. Tony, wreck, 55 minutes, max 88ft.
This is a really nice wreck. I've been on her before. There are some very strong currents here at times. No current today.
The crew put the first, more experienced group in first. They tied the floatball off and everyone else hopped in.
The crew asked me to plan on coming up last and releasing the ball. No problem. I had a LP120 with a hot fill and a nice rich EAN. My buddy and I planned a 45 minute bottom time with some leeway in case other divers stayed down longer.
Two divers had no experience on the Tony and seemed to be pretty new. I told them the depth, the layout of the ship, how to avoid the current, and the siltiness of the forwards holds and engine room.
The dive went well. We hit the turn time and scanned the wreck for other divers.
The two newer divers were still down. Pretty deep too. They were not diving EAN, and I remember thinking, "Wow, that must be a really lenient computer..., and they must have a really good SAC..."
Well, they didn't have either. So they turned when they looked at their gauges and noticed that they had maybe 300PSI. Ooops. I had followed them around, staying above them, close enough to donate, waiting for an OOA.
They went up and I pulled the float. I kept an eye out in case the other two divers needed air.
My buddy did a great job with the ascent rate and we had a trouble free ascent. We did a 1 minute stop at 40 feet and a 5 minute stop at 20.
The crew was concerned about the long dive of the 2 divers. They seemed healthy enough to me.
Dive 2: Boynton Ledges, Reef, 55 min, max 65 feet
This was a great site!
The crew asked me to lead a group of my buddy and the 2 newer divers. I was concerned by their lack of skills earlier and agreed. I would rather watch them then have them dive alone.
No problem. I started gearing up and then realised that I needed to know their bottom time. Turns out they were not using computers and didn't have their tables out. Hmm. I asked for the tables. I only know how to read SSI and IANTD deco tables, so I didn't have much faith in my ability to read the table.
Turns out that they are SSI divers. Yay. They don't know how to run the tables. Sigh. Let's see, I was down to 90' for 55 minutes, so they are.... way off the tables. Ok, so what was their down time? No clue. Hmmm.
They probably were off the tables. They wanted to dive anyway. Who am I to argue?
Well, if they go down, it'll give the N2 bubbles a chance to re-compress. I decided to give them 15minutes of bottom time and told them to make a slow ascent and a long safety stop.
We hopped in. One of guys in the other pair promptly started to swim up current. Sigh.
He wasn't looking back either, so I couldn't give him the "turn around" message.
So I hugged bottom to get out of the current and followed.
My camera was useless. Between the ball, the bottom, and watching the other team like a hawk I didn't have enough task loading to deal with it. I passed it off to my buddy.
After an uneventful 15 minutes I sent the other team up. I sent them up my line so they would have something to judge their ascent rates.
With two divers hanging on, I was pretty much at the mercy of the current. There was a pretty big separation between me and my buddy.
The other team released the ball and boarded the boat. Finally! Now I can dive!
About 3 minutes later, as I was doing my routine left, right, up check I noticed a largish shark to the right. Just a shark. Wait, the fin is wrong. A hammerhead! Cool! My buddy and I had just done our typical air and status check, so he wasn't paying too much attention.
If he missed a photo of that shark while holding my camera I was going to kill him.
I charged up to him and yelled his name into the reg. He spun around and looked at me. What? I was frantically pointing at the shark. He looked, nonchalantly. Just a shark.... Wait! A hammerhead!
He aimed in a flurry of activity and started shooting. Gave me an OK sign! Cool! Evidence!
I was high on that encounter for the rest of the dive.
Neat.
We ascended slowly and boarded the boat. Lots of talking as I described the encounter. Cool! The other team was fine. They were disappointed at missing the shark. I reminded them that they missed the shark because they had screwed up their earlier dive.
On the way back to the pier, my buddy reported not feeling 100% and we called the rest of the dives. He had gotten a lot of sun the previous few days and was looking red. No problem. We called the rest of the dives.
The crew managed to lock me in the shower back on the pier. No way out, and no response to repeated calls and knocking.
What is an large, aggressive male to do? The door frame broke easily and that was the end of that.
So it was a great day. Marred somewhat by various incidents, but it all worked out in the end.
Man, that was a long post. Thanks for reading.
Peter
PS. I'll upload the shark pic after I install my editing software tonight.
