Decompression dives

[Slym]

Just this past weekend my buddies and I did some lake Erie charters. Fantastic lake to dive, haven't dove it enought.

We did two wrecks that morning first at 130' and the second at about 120-125', both roughly 10-15 minutes of decompression on 28% EAN. I haven't really done many decompression dives and none that long before, when I got back to the campsite I was staying at, I think I napped a solid 4 hours.

Do most of you find yourselves that tired after similar dives? I keep a very high level of physical fitness and it just blew me away how destroyed I was after those dives.

 

[doctormike]

Decompression stress can definitely take many forms, and not all cases of DCS have classic joint pain, etc... We all bubble when we ascend, and the arbitrary line between just feeling beat up and getting a diagnosis is kind of blurry.

How aggressive a profile were you running? GF? VPM?

 

[rjack321]

Can you add O2? Decoing on backgas sucks

 

[lermontov]

Just this past weekend my buddies and I did some lake Erie charters. Fantastic lake to dive, haven't dove it enought.

We did two wrecks that morning first at 130' and the second at about 120-125', both roughly 10-15 minutes of decompression on 28% EAN. I haven't really done many decompression dives and none that long before, when I got back to the campsite I was staying at, I think I napped a solid 4 hours.

Do most of you find yourselves that tired after similar dives? I keep a very high level of physical fitness and it just blew me away how destroyed I was after those dives.

its not unusual - I quite enjoy a sleep after a dive !

 

[KenGordon]

Can you add O2? Decoing on backgas sucks

Deco on backgas is under rated in my opinion.

For simple dives that are not terrible deep or terribly long it makes life much easier logistically, on the boat and in the water. It eliminates the risk of breathing the wrong regulator or switching too deep. The penalty is longer deco but if you are only looking at 15 minutes anyway is it worth all that extra hassle just to get out a bit sooner?

Obviously it depends on the conditions, profile etc but a deco dive doesn’t always have to be like doing 30 minutes at 50m.

As for being tired. I don’t find a correlation between doing no stop dives vs deco dives and being tired. The rest of the early morning, travel, kit moving and general messing about makes me tired much more that the profile. Typically on a UK liveaboard the dives early in the week are shallower than later in the week but having driven the length of the country to get there I will be in more need of a nap on day one than day four.

 

[kensuf]

What were the dive profiles? You said "10-15 minutes of deco" -- ok, but what was the bottom time and average depths before deco?

Also, isn't Lake Erie cold? I know sometimes I get tired after a couple of long cold hours in the water.

 

[tbone1004]

for 10-15 mins of backgas deco, O2 will probably only cut that time in half. To me that isn't worth bringing the extra bottle.

That said, spending an hour on each dive in 40f water would knock me out regardless of any deco stress. It takes a LOT of calories to keep you warm, and cold water sucks the energy right out of you

 

[rjack321]

for 10-15 mins of backgas deco, O2 will probably only cut that time in half. To me that isn't worth bringing the extra bottle.

That said, spending an hour on each dive in 40f water would knock me out regardless of any deco stress. It takes a LOT of calories to keep you warm, and cold water sucks the energy right out of you

Sure it would "cut it in half" but you don't have to do 5 or 7 mins.
But the water isn't warm and there's probably a bunch of huffing around in drysuits on the boat sweating on the other end. And they were repetitive deco dives with an unknown SI. If it were me, I'd ditch some of the N2, dive 25/25 and bring an al30 to do the 10 mins of deco on O2.

 

[KentB]

Im always wrecked after a couple no deco dives! lol