My primary buddy, Sambolino44, and I had not done a skills dive in ages so yesterday afternoon we decided to do one. Originally Sambolino wanted to go to Keystone but after I checked the current predictions I refused to go there because I did not want to drift in a 4 kt current while messing with gear after being so out of practice!
We ended up splashing in the calm water of Langley Marina under the numerous eyes of crab enthusiasts who populated the dock anxious to lure inside their pots fat Dungeness crabs with whole turkey thighs. They hauled those crustaceans at brief intervals as if the supply was endless. Some were released because they were females or their size too small. Others were not so lucky and never crawled on the sandy bottom of the marina again.
We planned to perform six skills: deployment of surface marker buoy and control ascent, control ascent without the SMB, air share, mask off and on, BC off and on and weight belt off and on. Well, our plans turned out too ambitious…We spent two hours in the water and did only one: the deployment of the surface marker buoy!
Sambolino got it right at the first try while I was not satisfied with my first attempt. I did not put enough air inside the SMB and I struggled to keep myself neutrally buoyant at 15 ft. We went back down and I started all over again. At the end at my third attempt I was satisfied with my performance .It was worth it to persevere with the SMB skill even if part of me was getting fed up to handle a six foot inflatable sausage that stubbornly did not want to inflate! Eventually my buddy pointed out to me, while we were hovering a couple of feet above the bottom, that I was not holding the mouthpiece of my regulator in the right position. Darn!
It was also a great exercise to practice a controlled ascent in the water column several times (usually we follow the bottom back to shore). I also took the opportunity to pay more attention to my tendency of kicking too much unnecessarily and tried to reduce it as much as I could. It was actually a good feeling gradually ascending in green water with minimal body movements (well… after the buoyancy was under control!) and at the 15 ft safety stop standing still doing nothing but swinging slightly with the water like one of those weightless particles that were suspended all around us.
The most difficult thing while carrying out this skill was to keep my breathing under control. After the first attempt I used 1,000 PSI of air!
At the end of my third SMB practice we ended up the dive with a feeling of having accomplished something
and looked for a small crab pot that a woman had lost earlier on. After a short search in 5 ft visibility water I spotted it and dragged it to the surface covered with sea lettuce.
