DIR Diving Blog

Managed to fit in one last dive in 2007 with a dive on the Moldavia a 9,500 tonne P&O liner. The ship was torpedo in 1918 and lies in 48m of water. Unfortunately the alarm was set for 4.30am in order for us to make the 7am ropes off time. The weather was also not looking good on friday and saturday so I was expecting a rough trip out and to struggle with sea-sickness. In the end there were four of the usual DIR crowd on the boat with Clare, Mal, Bob and I.
The weather had calmed down somewhat but there was still some swell which had a couple of people vomitting over the side. The sail out took around 2 hours and we were due to hit the water at 9.30am.

The wreck lies on its side and offers a good depth profile as you can spend time both near the seabed and as shallow as 37m on the top rail. The vis was unfortunately only 2-3m and that made it much harder to pick out the main features. It also added to the risk that you might venture into the wreck without realising it.

We picked our way around the wreck carefully and made it to the bow. We then worked our way back along the wreck. There were numerous fishing nets and pieces of line caught over the wreck so we had to be careful to avoid entanglement.

After 33 minutes on the bottom we started up for an easy deco. As it happened the weather had been steadily dropping and with the sun out and shining it made for a pleasant trip back to the harbour.

The alarm went off at 5am which for an early ropes off out of Brighton.

Courtsey of Channel Diving

We were diving with Channel Diving out of Brighton and were due to dive the Aristos. The Aristos was a Greek cargo vessel which was built in 1937 and floundered after a collision with the Linde and sank 16 miles off Beachy Head in 1967 in 60 metres of water. She was carrying general cargo and was some 5189 tons. She sits bolt upright and very ship shape.

Courtsey of South West Mafia

The ride out was a bit bumpy with a few holes in the sea which made the kit bounce, no matter how well it was tied off. At one stage the boat came to a halt when Steve had a problem with one of the engines. Opinion on board was that it was probably a rope round the prop, luckily it was easily sorted and we were on our way.

We got to the site after steaming for only a little more than an hour and started to kit up. Soon enough, Steve called that he was ready for people to get in and I made for the left hand gate. Unfortunately, whilst hanging on to the gate, the boat hit another hole and my buddy Clare fell over backwards. Luckily two strong guys dragged Clare up and she shouted to Steve that she was OK to go.

We went down to 6, were Clare switched off her 21 meter bottle as her mix was very light on 02 and we then set off down the shot.

It seemed no time at all before we could see the lights of two other divers on the wreck. Far from the poor 1 metre or so of viz we had been warned about, we had 3 to 5 metres – and a cracking good wreck lay out in front of us.

We were dropped in roughly two thirds of the way back along the ship, towards the stern and set off – dropping over at first to admire the intact hull standing a relatively impressive 15 metres proud – then back to the deck for a poke around. Swimming back towards the bow we swam by some intact promenades, calling out for swim throughs but as the way out was unclear we stayed firmly outside.

We carried on, passing the break in the wreck which was inflicted during the collision, and up to the bow. I love hanging off bows of intact wrecks, and this one was impressive with a large Admiralty anchor still hanging in situ.

We had discussed keeping the bottom time short due to cold water and the prospect of getting cold on deco. However, the depth was a little less than we thought it would be so the deco limits we agreed were reached after 33 minutes on the wreck – a small bonus.

Clare thumbed the dive and we set off for uneventful deco. Coming up to find Steve waiting patiently by our bag was rather nice and getting out was a damn sight easier than getting in.

A little more drama occurred when one of the other teams got out. One of the guys had sustained a head injury when CCR met scalp but went diving anyway. Upon getting out it was apparent he was still bleeding. Everyone rallied round to help dress the wound, and tend to the diver when he got a little faint.

Overall an excellent day out!

As one of the recent attendees of the GUE conference in Budapest I figured I’d post my view of the event. Hope this is interesting to people.

Friday night and people start meeting up for the meal out. A lot of people are wandering about and I manage to meet a load of DIR-X members and a good number of GUE instructors. We all hop into taxi’s and shoot off for dinner in Budapest and manage to takeover the entire non-smoking section in the restaurant! I introduce myself to the guy sat next to me and meet Simon Mitchell a diver and Doctor who is famous for his work into decompression. I’ve actually read quite a bit of Simon’s posting on the internet as he’s often talked about interesting topics and his posts on PFO’s had particular interest for me. After explaining this and that I’d had a PFO fixed I don’t know who was more pleased – me for being able to pick his brains or him for chatting to someone who’d been through the whole bend, PFO diagnosis and fix process. Simon is an incredibly knowledgeable guy and an excellent speaker as his presentation later at the conference
showed.

Saturday and we end up on the boat which was acting as the floating conference centre. Jarrod opens the conference and after welcoming everyone he and George kick off a session about the history of DIR diving. Looking at the history session it was interesting to hear how the early days had resulted in a lot of trials of different ideas. They were both pointing out that the early standards were very much trial and error over 1000’s of dives and working out what worked.

The next session was from Todd Kincaid and he opened by following on from the previous session and asking who wants to go diving. Big show of hands and he then explains that is what its all about. He then comes out with a classic line around standardisation “I’ll clip it wherever you like – can we just go diving?” Todd’s talk itself is around the impact that the cave diving has had on being able to prove groundwater flow and show that poor waste water management has been altering the water quality at Wakulla Springs. Todd’s clearly passionate about the topic and very enthusiastic about diving being able to make a real difference.

After a coffee break we then had a session from Dr Pierre Lafere around PFO’s. Interesting talk, nothing massively new from what I’ve already read, but then I’ve done some reading on the topic. The fascinating section was the Q&A session at the end where Simon Mitchell and David Doolette asked some excellent questions and even provided further info to people’s questions. Overall I took away the view that mandatory testing for PFO isn’t necessary but that following ceberal, spinal or skin bends that a PFO check would be sensible. Dr Lafere also explained about the large study that DAN is currently conducting into PFO’s and that may provided a better understanding of the risks of diving with a PFO.

Next up was Casey McKinlay with a presentation around the diving the WKPP has been doing over the last 2 years including the dive where they linked the systems together. It was great fun and had some nice pictures teasing a few people. There is loads of info on the GUE website which covers a lot of the detail so I won’t re-hash it now.

After lunch we had a session presented by Kevin Gurr on CCR design and how he felt that the majority of RB accidents are down to bad design and not diver error. His explanation was that clever design can eliminate issues like failing to turn the gas on, failing to turn on the RB; wet contacts can force the RB to start, pre-dive checks can force you to turn the gas on etc. Very interesting topic and Kevin clearly has some real desire to produce a much safer CCR.

This neatly led into the panel discussion; we had Simon Mitchell, Kevin Gurr, Phil Short, Rick Stanton, George Irvine and Casey sat at the front with Jarrod chairing and also answering some questions. Key topics that came up were; bailout and are RB divers not carrying enough, incorrect use of RB’s where their use isn’t necessary (sub 40m/less then 10mins deco), lack of standardisation, lack of team diving and bailout oh and bailout

Fascinating discussion as you might expect with some very interesting commentary from the panel. All of the panel seemed to agree that RB’s were a tool suitable for certain diving but that staying current seemed to force people to use them all the time even if they may not be the appropriate tool.

We then had a few hours gap before the dinner Saturday night. As Clare and I arrived we chatted to Corey for a spell before finding a table. As we looked round we found Rick Stanton, Kevin Gurr and Phil Short on a table all by themselves so as they looked lonely we decided we should join them as they were the guests. Simon Mitchell and David Doolette then wandered past and decided to join us as well. This proved to be a really good choice of table as the discussion was varied and pretty broad. Kevin had a good try at convincing us that a CCR was simply a joy to dive. I also spent some time chatting to Phil who I’ve not really talked to before and we talked about some excellent cave dives. His description of reaching the end of the line in Ginnie was great and certainly got me interested in trying that one day. Jarrod joined our table for a spell and the evening ended all too quickly.

Sunday dawns and the first lecture is from David Doolette around how efficient bubble model decompression strategies are compared to traditional Haldane models. This presentation is inline with changes last year that GUE made about not overdoing the deep stops. The results of David’s study were quite surprising and suggested that long deep stops were increasing people’s risk of DCS. I’m hopeful the presentations might be available online or that the all the film that was shot is turned into a DVD as this is one slot I’d love to go through again.

Next up is a session on Aquifer control and environmental protection. I was suffering from a cold so ducked at this point so I didn’t drown out the speaker coughing and spluttering. After a short break Rich Walker and John Kendall do their section on the Unknown Sailing Ship project I dived on in August. To open they kicked off the YouTube video and blast out the “Ace of Spades” – certainly got a few chuckles. The guys kept the talk factual but funny and did a nice job.

Up next were Danny and Chris from DIR-Mexico. Lots of interesting info on some of the cave exploration they’ve been up to and some really nice photos. Both are really committed to trying to preserve the caves and from what they said there was some promising steps in the right direction by the local authorities.

After lunch Rick Stanton presents about some of his cave diving exploits in Italy and the UK. A very good presentation – when he provided commentary for a video it actually did include describing his buddy as undergoing a “cluster****” it got some real laughs from the audience. Rick’s achievements are considerable and while not exactly GUE protocol were very interesting. He posted up some great pictures of the CDG in Wookey Hole and definitely entertained the audience.

Next up was Elena presenting on pollution on marine environments continuing a bit of a theme of environmental protection.

The final talk I saw was Simon Mitchell’s. This covered some interesting thoughts on DCS prevention that completely stayed away from deco profiles but talked about the physiological effects that can alter deco. One major thing to take away was that exercise between 2-20 hours before diving seemed to have a huge impact in reducing DCS risk in rats. Simon threw in a lot of humour and was very entertaining.

I actually then had to leave to catch a flight. Overall I felt it was definitely worth going and considering how much was included in the ticket price (food, drinks, etc) that it was good value. It was great to meet lots of people I’ve chatted to online and also to catch up with various instructors who I’ve trained with. It was nice that Chris, Danny, Richard Lundgren and Jarrod were all keen to say hi and ask me if I was doing some fun diving.

Given GUE’s 10 year anniversary is next year I suspect the conference will be Florida so I’m planning to go and to try and fit in some cave diving around it and catch up again with all the people I met.