Rebreather Week - Pirate's Cove

Pirate's Cove Rebreather Week
By Ron Micjan


Patti Meg Diver and I have just returned from Santo Domingo, Republica Dominica and the Pirates Cove Silent Seas Rebreather Week. I have to tell you, I can’t wait for next year’s event. Everyone who participated had a wonderful time and I heard no complaint at all. Which is pretty unusual for such a large diverse group of divers. What we all had in common was Rebreathers, of course. Our favourite way to get wet, go deep and stay long.


The reef right in front of the Dive Center was spectacular and far and away the most colorful reef I have seen in the Caribbean in my years of diving. With critters much larger and more alive than I am used to seeing, the reef had everyone talking between dives. I would have had more shots of the reef, but my strobe flooded on the second dive and the first dive I was set up for macro. I did get a couple nice shots in macro though. Spotted underwater were moray eels, lobster, huge schools of fish of many types, spider crabs, and even a sea horse. My favorite thing was the coral, huge fan corals, stag coral, funnel sponges large enough to stash a diver into, black coral and one coral bush that was the size of a VW bug.


There are several dive sites visible from the dive center and one could easily swim either to them or back from them after the dive. However with 3 dive boats and 3 RIB’s, there was never a need to swim at all, if you couldn’t find the up line to the boat, just come to the surface and flag down the RIB for a ride back to shore or to the dive boat. The Galleon Hunter is the largest boat at PCDC, at 38 feet long, it is a great dive boat with a wide beam providing plenty of deck space, seating and a nifty system for securing tanks or rebreathers. The Wreck Raider is the next size down boat, able to handle about 10 divers with ease. We passed another dive operations dive boat on the way to a distant dive site and they were in an open panga, under the blazing sun, it didn’t look like fun to me as I sat back sipping a coke under the amble protection of the hard top on Galleon Hunter. As I get older, I really enjoy the touches of comfort.


PCDC is owned by John Mattera and run efficiently by Uwe Rath. John is a long time NE wreck diver and knows what he wants of a well run dive center. Uwe makes it happen. They employ a group of locals, pay them well and treat them well. I must say I have never seen a more enthusiastic crew, from the maids and cleaning help, to the bartender, the boat captains and the guys who help you in and out of your gear, everyone had a contagious smile and a helping hand. I am not usually someone who allows anyone to touch my rebreather, preferring to take it in and out of the boat, do my rinsing and moving of my gear, but after the first day, when I saw the care these guys take with everyone else’s gear, I gave in and let them do what they do so well. They never move gear without first making sure there are no dangling canister lights, or handsets, they treat your stuff better than you do. Most of the crew only speak their own dialect of Spanish, but the supervisors, like Francisco, speak really good English, so you have no trouble getting your point across, whether you are ordering up gas for tomorrows dive, or need your rig put on the boat. The meals were created by Tommy, who spoke little English, but made up for it by cooking in at least 3 languages; the multi-cultural meals were appreciated by all.


PCDC is a new operation and what better way to promote your new dive center than plan an event like Rebreather Week, invite some of the industry’s top people, take them diving, set no limits and turn ‘em all loose to see what happens. Every evening after dinner, a Rebreather industry professional would do a short seminar on their specialty. Kim Smith talked about the Jetsam KISS units, Tom Mckenna told us how Extendaire canisters were made and some about the balance of Micropore’s CO2 absorbent products, Mike Fowler showed us how the Vision Electronics package in the Evolution rebreathers worked, I provided a presentation about ISC, the makers of the Megalodon rebreather, and its past, present and future, Jill Heinerth enchanted us with a stunning look at cave diving, the Wakulla 2 project, the making of “The Cave” and her take on rebreather safety, John Chatterton and Richie Kohler, The History Channel’s Deep Sea Detectives and subjects of the book Shadow Divers entertained us with their diving exploits and finally, Jeff Bozanic showed us his history of searching for the elusive Remedia in caves all over the world.


Multiple rebreathers were available to demo in the pool and I even tried out an Evolution. There were a couple classes going on during the week and Bill Oestreich certified a couple new Meg divers while we were there, also Carrie Kohler was working on her CCR Trimix course with Mike Fowler as the instructor. There was a drawing and lots of cool stuff was given away, including T shirts, hats, copies of Shadow Divers, DVD’s, lift bags and more.


Did I mention cave diving? The Dominican Republic is, geologically speaking, a perfect land mass for the formation of caves. They appear to be similar to the caves in the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico, I don’t have a lot of cave diving experience, but the formations, 3 D structure and coloring looked much like what I have seen in Mexico. I explored two separate lines in one cave over 3 dives, the one line was quite shallow and had three separate air domes along it with beautiful formations, the second line went to about 100 feet of depth and ran through a halocline on the way to that depth with a couple minor restrictions. Curt Bowen, the editor and publisher of Advanced Diver Magazine and Jill Heinerth spent a bit of time in the caves during the event, doing what they do best, exploring underground and underwater. I did these dives on OC as I have not done my CCR cave course, coming up next January. Patti even left her Mini/COPI meg and went to a really cute pair of double 46cf cylinders for the cavern diving.


While at this event, I reacquainted myself with a couple old friends and made a couple new ones. On one day Uwe told us about a spot near the SDQ airport, that a large blip was noted on the sonar system aboard the Galleon Hunter, it was reported to be an uplift from the bottom of at least 60 feet and the bottom was near 300, a possible ship wreck! Curt Bowen, myself, Paul Blanchette, and Richie Kohler planned a deep dive to investigate the possible discovery. We brought along a few more divers who were going to dive another wreck that was close to the “blip”. We spent a bit of time trying to find the blip on sonar but were unsuccessful and Curt decided to bag the dive, not wanting to waste a 300 foot dive on a possible nothing. Well the other 3 of us were not going to come all the way out here and not dive, so we geared up and took the plunge, as close to the guesstimated spot as possible. We fell through 240 feet of water and the visibility opened up to at least 200 feet and we saw this very large, egg shaped rock standing straight up out of the slope of the wall that defines the shallow water from the deep. Laughter was the point of the dive as we descended upon what we now call “Ship Rock”; I pantomimed planting a flag on the top of it and declared my claim. We swam around it near its base of 360FSW and worked our way back to the shallows up a huge sand funnel and over two distinct coral ridges that ran parallel between the wall and shore. The coral and sea life were magnificent and it looked like no other diver had ever been to this spot before. We completed our deco with a run time of 120 minutes total and climbed back on the Galleon Hunter satisfied with our exploration and wanting to do it again. And do it again we did… Richie told his partner John Chatterton about the dive and they decided to do another dive, this time to a planned depth of 400fsw and film the dive for the extreme segment of their new DVD dive magazine “Dive Portal”. Paul and I were invited along as safety divers, with the promise we would try to stay out of the camera shots. Evan, their cameraman, was to come along and document the dive.

Significant preparations were made for this dive, everyone spent considerable time setting up their CCR’s, Bailout Stages, and other equipment to make as certain as possible, the dive would go off as planned. Richie, John and Evan, all dived 10/90 heliox and Paul and I dived on trimix, 10/60, we all had stages of bottom mix and spread air cylinders, 50/50 and 100% O2 between the team, so as to have plenty of bailout gas for anyone who had to come off the loop and go open circuit. The only problem on the dive was my cylinder of deep mix began to free flow and I had to turn the valve off to preserve the contents. I was already near the deepest point of the dive so it was not a cause to end the dive, if I needed to, I could have modulated the valve to breathe off the cylinder. Entering the water, Evan, Paul and I dropped down first to about 180 and Evan filmed John and Richie dropping past us into the depths. They held up then and we went ahead to position ourselves near the rock to film John and Richie’s descent to and past the rock to 400fsw, then we followed. Spending a few minutes at depth, Paul and I heard squeaky, helium altered voices discussing the shots and then calling time to ascend, our first deco stop was at 318 fsw for two minutes and then the long slow swim back up the reef to the shallows, finding fish and examining the huge coral that inhabited this reef. Our total run time was 172 minutes with a max depth of between 396 fsw and 403, not all computers agreed, and Richie insisted that he accidentally dropped his VR3 the extra 3 feet past the planned depth, he just wanted to beat me, I dropped mine in 402 feet. : ) Paul and I became fast friends and I was surprised to find that Richie was such a likable guy, after reading Shadow Divers, I never thought I would get along with a guy like that seemed to be so loud. His enthusiasm for the sport of diving is quite contagious however; we found we have a lot in common, especially our “Stench” of humor.


Part of the Dive Portal DVD magazine was the quest for caves and an interview with Jill Heinerth. The segment involved Jill taking Richie cave diving and to film the segment, much light was needed in the cave. Mike Fowler and I were pressed into service as swimming light holders for this segment. Hanging out with an entertainment crew is actually a lot of hurry up and wait, we spent quite a bit of time at the dive site waiting for the interview to finish before we could do what we really wanted to do, which is dive, of course. Personally I don’t care if I’m holding a light, or wrestling an alligator, as long as I get to be in the water and the dive seemed over much too quickly, luckily Curt Bowen was on hand and I asked if he would shoot some pics of me in the cave, so we got another 20 min of bottom time doing that. Now I'm stoked even more about my CCR cave course next January in Mexico with Dave Tomblin (wedivebc).

Well that about wraps up Rebreather Week in DR. I had the time of my life and Patti is sporting a great tan too, she said it was some of the best diving she has ever done and is excited about coming back again next year. Pirates Cove is also planning to do a wreck diving week, as well as a cave diving week, so stay tuned and check out the website at Pirate's Cove Dive Centre


Ron Micjan
Cinco de mayo, 2006

www.tmishop.com


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