Yesterday marked my return to technical and wreck diving until around August. (I chase lobsters for the most part during the rest of the year)
And it felt great to be back in the "technical saddle" after chasing lobsters for the last six or so months. I greatly enjoy the team work and precision technical diving requires.
We had just four divers on the Avid Diver today and as we cleared Hillsboro Inlet for the seven nautical mile ride up to Boca Raton where the Hydro Atlantic lies, we had 2-4' seas pretty much on the beam and an east wind at about 15 knots.
On the wreck site, we had about a knot of northbound surface current and the Captain Oliver asked the group if we wanted him to drop the grapnel hook and float balls or just "hot drop" on the wreck from up current. It was unanimous on the hot drop. We had a team of three (David, Henry, myself) doing a 30 minute BT and 50% for deco gas and Shane who chose to dive solo with 25 minute BT carrying both 50% and O2.
The key to successful hot drops is for all the divers to be ready to submerge as soon as they hit the water. Based on the overall runtimes, Oliver staggered the drops with Shane going first and our team of three about ten minutes behind him. What this meant was that we'd see Shane on the wreck and Shane would be surfacing about the time out team's lift bags would hit the surface.
Shane dropped and immediately resurfaced without his mask. Gone.... I think I saw a jewfish wearing it on the wreck. I grabbed my spare mask from my box as we quickly circled and Oliver tossed it to Shane and he descended, never missing a beat.
Right on schedule, our team dropped and made for the wreck. The one knot current was running all the way to the bottom and Oliver's drop was perfect as we descended right onto the bow of the 325' ship.
My Oceanic computer runs about two degrees warmer than everyone else's computers so we had 78 degrees on the surface and 72 on the bottom.
We did some minor penetration today, down into the big sand hold of the dredge (very open area) and also into the pump room (where it's fairly open but there are also large overhangs). After about twenty minutes in these areas, we went to the wheelhouse to look around until we hit the 28 minute mark and I swam outside the wreck to let the current carry us back off the wreck to shoot the lift bag (aka delayed surface marker buoy). Our team of three had an agreed upon deco plan so I shot the bag from the stern of the wreck at 120' and handed the spool to Henry at and then I ran team's deco schedule to the surface. 30 minute BT / 67 minutes total runtime, max depth 163', viz 100' (the east wind pushes in the clean blue water from the Gulf Stream).
And it felt great to be back in the "technical saddle" after chasing lobsters for the last six or so months. I greatly enjoy the team work and precision technical diving requires.
We had just four divers on the Avid Diver today and as we cleared Hillsboro Inlet for the seven nautical mile ride up to Boca Raton where the Hydro Atlantic lies, we had 2-4' seas pretty much on the beam and an east wind at about 15 knots.
On the wreck site, we had about a knot of northbound surface current and the Captain Oliver asked the group if we wanted him to drop the grapnel hook and float balls or just "hot drop" on the wreck from up current. It was unanimous on the hot drop. We had a team of three (David, Henry, myself) doing a 30 minute BT and 50% for deco gas and Shane who chose to dive solo with 25 minute BT carrying both 50% and O2.
The key to successful hot drops is for all the divers to be ready to submerge as soon as they hit the water. Based on the overall runtimes, Oliver staggered the drops with Shane going first and our team of three about ten minutes behind him. What this meant was that we'd see Shane on the wreck and Shane would be surfacing about the time out team's lift bags would hit the surface.
Shane dropped and immediately resurfaced without his mask. Gone.... I think I saw a jewfish wearing it on the wreck. I grabbed my spare mask from my box as we quickly circled and Oliver tossed it to Shane and he descended, never missing a beat.
Right on schedule, our team dropped and made for the wreck. The one knot current was running all the way to the bottom and Oliver's drop was perfect as we descended right onto the bow of the 325' ship.
My Oceanic computer runs about two degrees warmer than everyone else's computers so we had 78 degrees on the surface and 72 on the bottom.
We did some minor penetration today, down into the big sand hold of the dredge (very open area) and also into the pump room (where it's fairly open but there are also large overhangs). After about twenty minutes in these areas, we went to the wheelhouse to look around until we hit the 28 minute mark and I swam outside the wreck to let the current carry us back off the wreck to shoot the lift bag (aka delayed surface marker buoy). Our team of three had an agreed upon deco plan so I shot the bag from the stern of the wreck at 120' and handed the spool to Henry at and then I ran team's deco schedule to the surface. 30 minute BT / 67 minutes total runtime, max depth 163', viz 100' (the east wind pushes in the clean blue water from the Gulf Stream).
