Andrea Doria Discussion

[AhoyFed]

Great advice and thank you for providing the article Rich. This article is very in depth and has all the information I’m interested in. He goes over eCCR and mCCR both in fine detail.

AhoyFed

 

[happy-diver]

If anything's collapsed it's the Doria of climbing

 

[AhoyFed]

Good one! Gave me a laugh. Everest sure has taken a beating from climbers since Hillary’s first summit.

AhoyFed

 

[ginti]

I would spend the next 3 or 4 years working towards AN/DP+rec trimix (or whatever they call it), NAUI T1, GUE T1, or one of the other entry level, ~160ft, normoxic OC trimix courses. When you have 75-100 dives in the 130-170ft range on OC mix with deco then you'll be in a better position to decide what's next. That would be a reasonable point to switch to CCR if you still aspire to 200+ft dives.

This!

For what it's worth the advice of a newbie like me, frankly speaking, 50 dives and an average of 10 dives/year is too early to seriously thinking about the Andrea Doria.

I don't mean that you shouldn't dream or think about it, that's perfectly fine. Motivation is a huge factor, and I want to encourage you to think, inform and train to achieve your goals - in this case, the Andrea Doria. But I believe it is too early for you to make a realistic plan.

Consider these two points:
1 - with 10 dives a year, you will need more than 20 years to build sufficient experience for that kind of deep wreck
2 - with only 50 dives under your belt, you don't know yet what you like about diving

It is probably too early to start thinking about tec diving with only 50 dives of experience, but if you already know you want to try that realm, focus on your skills and find a way to dive more. A reasonable plan would be something like:
A) find tec buddies; these people usually do a decent amount of dives each year
B) ask for honest feedback on your skills
C) if you discover that your skills are not good enough, consider extra training with a tec instructor or a rec instructor with tec training; otherwise, just dive a lot (I believe you should aim at a minimum of 30/40 dives per year)
D) try different equipment configurations and different environments
E) be curious, talk and discover new things; the especially important point is to understand the differences between agencies and how to spot good instructors... to find a good instructor can be really hard

My two-cent

EDIT: clearly, if you are so fascinated by wrecks, you should focus more on than on other kinds of dives... but I believe that trying other kinds of dives will help you in building a stronger experience. So, if I were you, I wouldn't dive only wrecks

 

[jadairiii]

Never did dive that wreck, its was always on the "wish list" but we did do some mental planning for it. First off, if you really want to do it, get used to diving in cold and current. Make some tech trips to South Florida and the keys to learn to deal with smoking current on wrecks and sometimes really poor visibility. 3+ knot currents are pretty standard down here and in the keys deep. And mid summer tech diving in Florida you can hit bottom temperatures low 60's and even 50's routinely (of course surface temps are in the high 80's!).

Second, if were really serious about punching that ticket, I would look for a private charter, a big "go fast" like a Midnight Express or a Freeman cat (or the like) that could run me to the wreck and back as a day trip from Nantucket or Rhode Island. Heck, with a Freeman cat you could leave early, be on the wreck in 2 hours or less, do a couple of drops and be eating a Lobster Roll and a cold one as the sun sets at the bar. Plan a week of diving, bring scooters and a torpedo float and hot drop the wreck, dive it, then drift off of it as we deco. And I am not an RB guy, but that is a wreck made for RB's (or RB80) just for the ease of logistics, 15/55 trimix and then all you need to do is fill deco bottles. This aint 1990, we have the technology!

Pricy, yes, but tech diving is not cheap. And cheap is not always safe.

 

[O-ring]

I can't believe this is still up after all these years. If you like the Doria this should keep you busy over the holidays.

Christina's Scuba Page

 

[Rick Brant]

Wrecks like this one would be much better if divers were not obsessed with looting. Just leave the stuff where it lies, that is part of the exploration. It's one thing if it is a chest of gold bars but the guys picking up booze bottles, curio shop gifts and soap dishes should just leave the wreck alone. All of this junk ends up on some idiot's shelf where nobody ever looks at it and after 20 years it gets thrown out.

The same thing applies to meg teeth -- they should be left where they are so future divers can appreciate them. Look at them, handle them if they are accessible, but there is no reason any diver needs to own meg teeth. Selling them for profit is even worse. Diving is about a generation behind the rest of outdoor sporting where "Leave no Trace" has been the mantra for a long time. LNT includes disturbing artifacts.

 

[coldwaterglutton]

If you have effectively unlimited money, hire your own charter and get two really good technical instructors to take you down and accompany you. It's how rich people climb Everest. The Real Story of Sandy Hill Pittman, Everest’s Socialite Climber

 

[Akimbo]

Wrecks like this one would be much better if divers were not obsessed with looting.

I can't agree. So few divers get to visit the Doria, she is big, it is deteriorating very fast, bottom times are short, and everything is sinking in the mud. The "goodies" that divers remove is nothing compared to what is already lost forever.

 

[Celt]

All of this junk ends up on some idiot's shelf where nobody ever looks at it and after 20 years it gets thrown out.

It doesn’t get thrown out and it’s not junk to the person that finds it. It’s a memento of a great dive and a wonderful day out. I’d love to find a Meg tooth, I’d make a little base for it and treasure it. The items you’re talking about will not be there for others to see but will be buried in tons of rotting steel, If there’s anything of value in a wreck the commercial operators move in and make a giant scrap yard of it,