A twisted sense of fun: Wreck workshop class report

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TSandM

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Twisted, knotted, tangled, and loose . . . and FUN. Yeah, that was this morning.

Peter and Kirk and I are taking a wreck workshop this weekend. Last night was the opening lecture, which included wreck-specific things to think about, starting with "How do you find it?" which is more of an issue with wrecks than reefs, as the latter tend to be more massive, shallower, and harder to miss. Reefs don't percolate or silt out, either.

After the orientation, we ran line around the dive shop. This was amusing, as one of the most available places to tie off was on random tanks, which weren't willing to stay upright if any tension was put on the line. This meant our "lights out" blind line following exercise was punctuated by sudden, loud "clangs" which were accompanied by an immediate huge slack in the line we were trying to follow in the dark. Very entertaining, at least for the people watching us.

This morning, we tried to transfer some of the skill we had ostensibly acquired the night before to the underwater environment. I have been known to say before that merely submerging my head in water reduces my IQ by 50 points; doing so while attached to the malignant life form known as a reel reduces it by 50 PERCENT. I lost my buddy and my buoyancy control, and discovered that even a hand put on the bottom can liberate a ferocious amount of silt. Even the things we did right, like our beautifully controlled, accurate ascent done in constant eye contact and with perfect positioning, was done off the upline and was therefore unacceptable. I was clearly a "newby" in this environment!

After our debrief, and the obligatory lengthy, complicated and tedious process involved in a pit stop, we got back in the water and tried again. This time, Kirk was the reel-wrangler, and I got the relatively easy job of keeping myself where I could be seen (diving to stay found, as HBDiveGirl would put it), right up to the point where both of us had light failures simultaneously. We had been briefed that if this happened, we were to close our eyes. I immediately made a potentially lethal error, by heading for Kirk instead of the line. Kirk was trying to tie the reel off, and our instructor eventually batted it away from him and made him understand that we should just drop it and get the you-know-what out of Dodge. Then we spent the longest ten minutes I've spent underwater, trying to follow the line we had inexpertly laid back to our starting point. I was amazed to discover that I wasn't frightened or disoriented, although our buoyancy control lacked a certain something. We made it back, including successfully negotiating the place where our line had crossed the other team's, and then I got in an argument with the instructor and Kirk -- underwater -- because the instructor told us to surface, and I didn't want to do it until we were at the upline, because I had been scolded once and didn't want to get scolded again :)

But I have to say, this was really a thoroughly enjoyable way to spend a morning. It was challenging and interesting (and we were diving throughout in about 6 to 8 feet of viz), but the guys who were teaching us kept it so positive were so enthusiastic that I can't wait to get in the water tomorrow and do it all over again.

Great fun!
 
Yup, big fat clumsy drygloves. And a light with a Goodman handle. And the autonomous and not necessarily cooperative reel . . .
 
great going TS!!

i leave that type of the diving to the more dedicated......have a great day tomorrow and looking forward to hearing more

cheers
 
Well, today we got some real-life education about diving wrecks, and learned that it can be an expensive proposition.

We were supposed to go out on a charter to dive a couple of wrecked barges in the 100 foot range. Two of my classmates even had helium mixes to do this (and had paid for them). Weather this morning was crummy and the forecast was for worse, but after conferring with the instructor, we went ahead and rendezvoused with the boat to see what the captain thought. He, and the instructors, thought it would be challenging but doable, so we loaded gear and headed out, munching doughnuts as we went. By the time we got to the dive site, the chop had gotten significantly worse, and the water was chocolate-colored. After a fair amount of discussion, it was decided to scrub the dive and head back in.

$70 for helium, $80 for the boat ride . . . Those were expensive doughnuts!

So lesson number one was, sometimes you don't find the wreck; sometimes you don't have good conditions to dive it -- wreck diving, being goal-oriented, can be frustrating and expensive, but it's important to keep good judgment about the risks you are willing to take and not get too wound up in having to get the dive done.

Anyway, we repaired to good, old, calm Cove 2, and did another training dive. Only three of us stayed for this, so we dove as a team, and learned that adding another person compounds the complexity much more than half again as much. We had difficulties keeping the team tight and in communication, even when we could see. Kirk did a splendid job of running line (he must have been out in his back yard practicing last night, too) and finding tie-offs, and right at turn time, one light after another went out. Our inbound time was 18 minutes.

We started to do a touch contact exit, and quickly ran into about every problem you could imagine. I had my right hand on the line and couldn't clip my lighthead off with my left, so I had this lighthead getting in the way of everything I wanted to do. I had trouble hanging onto Peter's arm and kept slipping off, and Kirk kept trying to tell me things with his fingers that I just wasn't understanding at all. We spent a lot of time just waiting for somebody to give the signal to move on. I got entangled (apparently more than I knew, because the instructors fixed it a couple of times) and at the end, we apparently managed to pull a tie loose and ended up with a huge amount of slack, which Kirk and I somehow swam all around Peter, lassooing his valve and causing the instructors to cut the drill

Our outbound time was 32 minutes. An object lesson in how diving "thirds" may not be conservative AT ALL.

This was a great workshop, and the two guys who taught it were patient and positive, even though they made sure we knew where we had not performed optimally. Both instructors said that they would be more than happy to go out with us on another day to do the barges, and I'm sure we'll do that, once we've had a little time to practice.

Working on these new things will definitely make me hone my situational awareness and my buoyancy and positioning skills. Plus, this class was just plain fun!
 
Looks like you are doing some serious learning good on ya! Did your primary dive light fail twice in a 24 hour period? Not trying to be critical, but struck me as odd...was it flooded or bad batteries?
 
I'm pretty sure the light failures were simulated :)

Thanks for the report Lynne -- did you do the class in the 85s?
 
sounds a whole lot like cavern / intro! you'll be sooo ready for that.
 
Sounds like a good Class TandSM
 
No, the 85s were getting filled yesterday, and today I chickened out with the weather conditions and went to a single tank setup. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to get back on the boat, even in the 72s!
 

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