Am on 1st dive deeper than 160 feet ( had done hundreds of 130 to 155's before, never deeper)....year is 1994.
New buddy George Irvine has lent me double 80's and poodle jacket BC holding them ( he does not use this anymore). I am invited on this dive because he liked the way I handled a spearfishing dive George and Bill Mee saw me on the week previous, to 155 feet or so, in a single 100.
This dive is to a wreck at 260, on air, with pure O2 for deco in a 30 cu ft pony clipped to left side( stage style).
There is a big current, so we are weighted heavy to fall FAST. At 180 feet, I am falling like a Sky Diver, and put my feet below me, preparing to add air to BC...Fins are flopping in the breeze of this rapid descent. By 220 feet I am getting the BC filled up with air to arrest this 300 foot per minute descent, and see the deck coming up fast. I "hit" the deck feet first, and have to actually absorb the impact with my legs like I jumped off something high up.
I am standing on the deck, holding my big double barrel 56 inch Ultimate Speargun( custom made by Pat Frain), and seeing thousands of big amberjacks surrounding us...but really I am only dimly aware of anything beyond the enormous head rush I am suddenly feeling, as the narc has exploded in my head--almost like I just snorted a line of coke 3 feet long....As I contemplate the wonders of the universe, and time has no meaning....George suddenly blasts up to me and smacks the back of my head, and points to a huge black grouper over 60 pounds...and looks at me like, "Get this!!!"....then he and Bill move on.....
So now I have a "mission"....and that is all there is. I want to go after the monster fish, and recall that none of the tech divers have EVER spearfished on this deep stuff before....and there is quite some excitement over this. While I want to start swimming after this fish, I don't remember how to swim....I am standing on the deck, lean forward, and just kind of almost fall forward....this did not work, I try again, like a "drunk" trying to get up "steam" to climb a flight of stairs....Suddenly I remember how to kick, and I am off and following the big fish, which is still in view and in no hurry to leave.
In a next few moments, the narc seems to pass....I remember to look at the pressure guage for the tank I am breathing out of ( I am using double independants)..then I look at my Us Divers Monitor II computer to see how long I have been down--I remember at 25 minutes we must all form up at the line George tied off the buoy to...and I see the fish and pick a vector to reach him with....these are three "thoughts" that I can juggle in my depth addled brain.....and I keep thinking of one, then the other, then the other.....this will work, until I add a fourth--because at this depth my IQ will only handle three thoughts, not 4..one is going to get lost....
The big fish takes off...not sure why, but now I am surrounded by about 30 big grey groupers, and they are "wagon training" me....I put on a 9 mm powerhead, and pop the first one...80 feet away about 5 other tech divers are suddenly reaching all over their 1st stages, trying to figure out if the explosion they just heard was one of their regs
As I try to put the first 25 pound grouper on my stringer, the coordination to do this seems like threading a needle, and nearly impossible....it takes me what feels like forever, and all the while, it is killing me that I am still getting wagon trained by the groupers, and if anything they are closer now, in a tight circle around me...Somehow I remember to look at my pressure guage, and then switch to the other tank, still full....then back to more shooting..I have to hurry, and shoot as many as possible..... I end up getting one more, I have no idea how long this took...and just as I am getting it strung, I feel a sudden big grab on my shoulder...there is George-- and now eye to eye with me--and he is pointing at his computer and at mine....now showing 25 minutes...and he signals "what was I thinking" with a smack to his own head....and a grin I think.
So clearly I lost a few of the important thoughts I was juggling. Fortunately George and Bill were just sight seeing, and were not task loaded.
We all assemble....we are all there and ready....and as previously discussed, we all do a 100% inflation of our BC's, and I begin to rocket upward at an insane speed....The overpressure relief on my BC is screaming so loud that it hurts my ears....and there is this huge monster made of a wall of bubbles chasing us from below....all of us are blasting upward in a group together, chased by this monster....and we watch our computers for the depth to show close to 100 feet--where we will dump the BC....As we approach this, I do a complete dump, and the world becomes quiet again, and the rocketlike ascent is instantly over....the bubbles engulf us, and then we are in about 100 foot of vis, in calm water, nothing to see in any direction but us. I am still very high from the narc, but not task loaded at all, so everything is quite easy.
We hang at 100 for about 2 minutes, and then begin a slow swimming ascent to the first stop at 50 feet.
At the 50 foot stop, some of the other tech divers in our group --guys that before the dive were talking about the long boring deco that would be an hour of doing nothing--and where they had brought some books to read underwater.....these guys now were not pulling the books out...they were instead staring at me and my big fish on the stringer, and the blood...and they were spinning 360 degrees pretty much non-stop..And they did not look too bored to me
The narc wears off by the 30 foot stop....and at the 20 foot stop, we each switch to our 100% O2.
When mine is empty, I go back to 2nd tank I had been breathing, and do the ascent to the surface.
I felt like a kid at the Junior Prom, every thing was Rainbows and intensity.....And I knew I would need to be doing this every week for a very long time!!!
