There are a plenty of divers on this board with lots of time on wrecks all over the world. What have you learned beyond silt-outs, gas planning, and using a reel to make wreck diving safer and more interesting?
What advice would you give someone to be better prepared for a wreck class, or to become a better wreck diver?
The Truk Lagoon Wrecks planning dilemma:
Especially for the GUE Cave and UTD Wreck-trained Divers as to overhead protocol: you will either be with a dive guide who will lead your team on traverses through the shipwrecks' cargo holds, superstructures & engine rooms etc. --all without running line-- or choose to run a reel-line & egress out on reel-line without using a leading dive guide.
The advantage of running a reel-line is of course safety & standard operating overhead procedure as trained; the disadvantage is that you won't have as much bottom time to fully explore the wreck than if you did a through-and-through traverse. In other words, the dilemma will be whether to do "
Trust-Me" dives with a Dive Guide or not. . .
The Trust-Me Dive goes both ways in Truk --the Guide is vetting you on the initial easy checkout dives, making sure of your general trim & kicking technique as well as your aptitude & temperament for wreck diving. He's gotta be sure that you won't panic when the rust & silt starts "percolating" all around you. . .
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There will be times where you will be in a tight engine or crew space in a near silt-out; or momentarily lose sight of the Guide around a corner corridor or up through a vertical gangway;
or going thru 'Black Hole' caverns -burned out blackened ship spaces that totally suck-out the illumination from your canister light (and where the worst of all zero-viz conditions can occur -"Black Ash Silt-outs"). You have to trust that the Guide knows where you are at all times as well as all wreck egress pathways, and the Guide has to know that you won't make a potential emergency contingency worse by freaking out. . .
A compromise best solution is to have a "Pathfinder Team" --that is a team laying line with a Dive Guide in front leading a traverse through the wreck; and then having other teams come in later following that line to video/take pictures/sight see etc. --and then finally later a "Clean-Up Team" to reel-in the guideline, while traversing back in the opposite direction and winding-up reel-line. . .
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Modified Thirds,Turn-Around Pressure and Learning How to Do Lost Buddy Search Gas Availability Calculations. . .
Suppose you originally planned a wreck penetration starting with 200 bar at the entrance, with an openwater Rock Bottom of 50 bar. 200 minus 50 bar equals 150 bar usable for the penetration --Modified Thirds of this value is 50 bar (one-third of 150 equals 50), so you would turn-around for egress when you consume 50 bar of gas with an actual SPG reading of 150 bar. If you needed to do a gas-sharing emergency egress with your buddy at this point, you would both need a total shared 100 bar to get out of the wreck, plus another shared 50 bar Rock Bottom remaining to get both of you to the surface (or your Oxygen deco bottle stop of 6m).
Lets say you used up 30 bar already getting to the entrance of the wreck for a total of 170 bar pressure available --can you quickly recalculate Modified-Thirds?
No problem with bar pressure metrics: 170 bar minus 50 bar Rock Bottom yields 120 bar usable for the penentration; One-Third of 120 bar is 40 bar which is your new Modified Thirds turn pressure value. Therefore you would turn the dive when you consume 40 bar for an actual turn pressure SPG reading of 130 bar (170 bar minus 40 bar equals the actual turn pressure SPG reading of 130 bar).
What if you lose your buddy at this instance, at the farthest distance inside the overhead your Modified Thirds value allows? How do you calculate the amount of gas to do a Lost Buddy Search?
Easy! At your turn around pressure reading of 130 bar on the SPG, simply add your Rock Bottom value to your Modified Thirds value (50 bar Rock Bottom plus 40 bar Modified Thirds equals 90 bar); Put a line-arrow pointing the way out on your mainline that you've laid, and take reference note of where you are inside the overhead at that exact point as well. Now go and search for your buddy with the understanding that you must be back at this line-arrow marker by the time your SPG reads this actual value (90 bar). So you would have from 130 bar down to 90 bar reading on your SPG, or 40 bar delta of gas to search for your buddy --if you were to do a straight line search down a long corridor inside the wreck for example, tactically you should use 20 bar out and 20 bar back to your line-arrow marker for a delta of 40 bar, and an actual end of search SPG reading of 90 bar-- you must start your egress whether you found your buddy or not when you use up this 40 bar delta of gas, at the line arrow marker, with the actual 90 bar final reading on your SPG.
At any point before your Modified Thirds turn pressure, for a lost buddy search, the final egress pressure is figured just by adding your Rock Bottom value to the amount of gas you've consumed on the penetration up to that point --for example you start with 170 bar on your SPG and you lose your buddy with 140 bar SPG reading for a delta consumption of 30 bar. 50 bar Rock Bottom plus delta consumption of 30 bar equals 80 bar. Drop a line arrow, and now you've got from 140 bar down to 80 bar (a tactical delta search pressure of 60 bar) to look for your buddy, and be back to your line arrow to egress smartly when your SPG reads 80 bar.
At any point after your Modified Thirds turn pressure, all you need to do to figure out a final egress pressure for a lost buddy search is to subtract your Modified Thirds value from your actual pressure reading, and place a line-arrow pointing out at this point on your mainline. For example, if you're egressing and you lose your buddy with 120 bar actual reading on your SPG: Subtract the Modified Thirds value of 40 bar from 120 bar -which equals 80 bar- and it is this actual reading that you must have on your SPG when you get back to your line arrow to successfully exit the wreck with all your Rock Bottom still available to reach the surface. Another way of looking at this, at your nominal turn-around point & afterward on egress, the amount of gas tactically available for a lost buddy search is always just your Modified Thirds value --in this case 40 bar.
Remember that on a lost buddy search, you will deliberately encroach and use up the Modified Thirds Reserve Value needed for an emergency gas-sharing egress contingency (and possibly use up some amount of Rock Bottom as well) --in other words, if you do find your lost buddy and worst of all worst scenarios he happens to be out-of-gas in a silt-out . . .well
dea ex machina. I hope you're in a 3-person Team, somehow make it out and run into other divers on the outside who can donate gas & assist. . .
[Note: the above gas plan is taken from wreck penetration dives on the HMCS Yukon (San Diego); USS New York (Subic Bay Philippines); HMAS Perth/USS Houston (Sunda Strait Indonesia); and various wrecks in Truk Lagoon. Depth 30m using twin 11L/bar tanks (double AL80's) and Oxygen deco.]
