So, I sez to Howard, "Where'd it go?". And Howard sez back...

mempilot · 5th December 2007, 02:16

So, I sez to Howard, "Where'd it go?". And Howard sez back, "Where'd what go?"

Here's the trip report for today:

Conditions Topside: Perfect, cool temp, sunny, calm seas
Conditions Below: Crappy, strong current, low viz

The Planned Dives: Jupiter Star wreck (off Haulover Inlet, 155fsw, Miami); something shallow for the second dive

The divers: Eric (mempilot/Meg); Howard (scubadadmiami/Optima); Tom Mount (Optima); Two of Tom's tech students (Doubles/OC)

The Crew: Captain Mike Beach (Da Man); DM Georgia (hottie!)

Howie and myself planned to splash 10 minutes prior to Tom and his OC tech students to allow us a longer runtime for the dive. Due to the strong current and the way the wreck lies on the bottom, hot dropping on CCR wasn't going to be a viable option. The low viz would make it tough for 5 divers to guarrentee a hit. Mike decided to grapnel the wreck, and after a few passes, the hook caught (we'd find out later what!).

H-man and myself splashed, and in the long pull to the bottom, I partially flooded my left arm. My latex seal is too big for the weight loss in my wrists, so the strong current let the water in during the fight. Like I said, the viz was crap. When I hit 130, I should have seen the wreck. I didn't see the wreck, the bottom, or anything remotely close to what we were looking for. We were not in the right depth of water. With the scope of the down line and the strong current, the boat was over the dropoff, but the line had dragged deeper than the wreck.

I signaled to Howardski that I was going to the hook to see what we were hooked to. Turns out, that we snagged a heavy underwater cable (possibly comm) at over 170 fsw, and the hook was well lodged underneath it. I wrote to Higidy Higidy Higidy on my wetnotes that he should start back up the line and inform the OC guys to bag the dive while I tried to get the hook off the cable. There was no way we were going wreck hunting in this current and viz at 174 fsw with two fresh tech students (recipe for disaster). Howard gave me the OK, and I tried to unlodge the hook.

I gave up and decided the only way to salvage the situation was to decouple the long chain and hook from the anchorline. I was racking up deco obligation, and the only other diver not in deco qualified to come back down and try this later was Tom. Since he had students on board, it seemed logical for me to finish the job. When the line was decoupled, H-dude went with it to start his deco and inform the crew what was going on. I hooked up my lift bag and got the anchor neutral. Then I started my free ascent.

At 70 fsw, I clipped in my finger spool and let the bag continue to the surface to mark my position. My slow ascent from 170 to 70 had left my VR3 showing only minor stops starting at 40 fsw. I was ascending on my upline hoping that the boat had seen the bag. It is a 6 foot Halcyon CC SMB with OPRV. With the anchor acting as heavy ballast, the sausage was standing straight up about 3 feet out above the surface. When I surfaced, the boat was a couple hundred yards away waiting for HO2ward to finish his shallow stop. After about 20 minutes of floating, the boat came and picked me up.

Captain Mike was happy to see that I had rescued his anchor. I sat out the next dive because I had worked pretty hard on that dive and was running my VR3 on zero conservatism. I tricked it a bit by changing the setpoint on the VR3 to .7 at 30 feet to give myself longer shallow stops since I was actually maintaining 1.1. I also went off the loop and onto OC O2 at 20 fsw and remained on OC O2 during the surface float.

If I had to do it over, I'd have had Howard stay with me and let the OC guys call their dive based on the fact the line was loose. Howard the Hitman Packer and I could have done a safer buddy ascent with the heavy stainless by utilizing one bag for the anchor and line and another for signaling the boat with our intentions. Hindsight is 20/20 and assumption is the mother of all FUBARS.

A 172 fsw sand dive turned out to be a working salvage dive and a good learning experience. I'm glad Mike got his expensive SS back, and I'm glad I got to get wet. Howard is a good buddy, but I sent him solo, which was stupid on my part. Sorry H-guy, won't happen next time.

They had a decent second dive, while I bullshitted with Mike and hottie Georgia.

Keeping the ratio of descents/ascents 1:1

,

Eric

***ScubaDadMiami*** · 5th December 2007, 04:01

I agree in all respects. Just to add, the visibility was crap all the way to the bottom, probably 20 feet at best. So, even if we were right next to the wreck, we did not see it. Given the current, we were not going to try tying off a reel and trying to make our way to find it.

We survived to learn and dive another day. Neither of us was in any kind of trouble. Still, let's just say that we would not have done things the same way if we had to do it over again.

I elected to make the second dive (at our next spot, the Tortuga wreck) to have fun and watch Tom working with his students, who are slated to take delivery of a Meg and Optima in the near future. They can't wait to ditch those doubles!

Oh, and by the way, Tom was on an Optima (not his Meg). Seems to be his CCR of choice these days.

netmage · 5th December 2007, 12:48

Glad to hear everything went alright...

robinfante · 5th December 2007, 14:03

Nice write-up. I agree with your assessment of things to do next time, as I was reading about swimming a lift bag up 100' I was thinking "that takes some brass...". Doable sure, and I nearly had to do the same thing this summer from 100' deeper, but definitely not ideal.

I'll share a situation I had once too. I had found a porthole, and gone down with a bag of tools to free it. Sadly it was steel, so I decided to raise up a weight belt I had found just for practice. I was using an smb, as the previous year I had had a hell of a time with a lift bag dumping in current. First it spilled from 200 feet, then from 130', so finally at 100' I pulled out an smb and gave up on liftbags for good. I swam the tools and weight belt over to the line, then began my ascent. Partway up the line I dumped some gas from the smb, oops a little too much so I went to add a touch more with my bailout reg. Nothing doing, it was pretty much impossible, as the weight of the stuff was pulling the lips of the bag tightly closed. After struggling with it I finally decided to just haul it up a bit, so that what gas was in there could expand and take over. I wound up lugging that pig all the way to 20', and still it was negative. I finally ditched the belt, saved the tools (good thing as they were the captains), but not before giving myself a hell of a CO2 headache.

So, a simple lesson learned the hard way: smbs for signalling, lift bags for lifting.

mempilot · 5th December 2007, 16:15

Quote: (Originally Posted by robinfante)

Nice write-up. I agree with your assessment of things to do next time, as I was reading about swimming a lift bag up 100' I was thinking "that takes some brass...". Doable sure, and I nearly had to do the same thing this summer from 100' deeper, but definitely not ideal.

I agree. It was difficult to manage and not ideal, but the outcome gave me confidence that it can be done. I hear a lot of people talk about using a LB/SMB as backup bouyancy to get them off the bottom with a loss of other means. It is a skill that should be practiced if that is the case. The fact that I was doing it in open water without an upline actually made it simpler in that I could use both hands. Will I try it again soon? NOPE!

JonnyB · 5th December 2007, 17:18

I had to bailout on my KISS once due to flooding, was at around 68m/220ft and due to the locations topography i chose to do a free ascent up to my first deco instead of swimming all the way back to land.
It was no game, being down there solo as well did not make me feel any better.

/Jonny

mempilot · 5th December 2007, 18:20

Quote: (Originally Posted by JonnyB)

...being down there solo as well did not make me feel any better.

/Jonny

Jonny,

That was the biggest part of my, "I won't do that again." Being solo at 170+ struggling with free ascending some heavy hardware was not the brightest thing I've done. Sometimes I joke a little about the dumb things I've managed to bring off, but I'm pretty serious about it all. I sometimes try to use a little humor around it all to bring it back into perspective.

I'm not sure why I did what I did...sending Howard back up the line...and leaving myself to the solo task of wrestling the anchor. I can't blame narcosis, because I was on 21/35 DIL with a 1.2 setpoint. It was a learning experience and gets jotted in the things not to do column of the tally sheet.

debersole · 5th December 2007, 18:25

Eric:

Thanks for your post. It's always very informative to hear about other people's experiences and dissect them from the comfort of your computer before actually having to deal with a similar experience yourself. Congrats on your excellent skills to pull it off.

BTW, sounds like we had a better dive together on Friday, even with the poor viz!

Doug

**jepuskar** · 5th December 2007, 19:34

"Just to add, the visibility was crap all the way to the bottom, probably 20 feet at best."

You FL guys are soo spoiled!!!

**Dsix36** · 6th December 2007, 01:07

Quote: (Originally Posted by jepuskar)

"Just to add, the visibility was crap all the way to the bottom, probably 20 feet at best."

You FL guys are soo spoiled!!!

yep, and we like it that way!!!!!!

5th December 2007, 02:16	#1 (permalink)
mempilot What is this..terrafirma? Current Rebreather/s: Megalodon Other Rebreather/s: Megalodon Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: Ft. Lauderdale Posts: 1,269	So, I sez to Howard, "Where'd it go?". And Howard sez back... So, I sez to Howard, "Where'd it go?". And Howard sez back, "Where'd what go?" Here's the trip report for today: Conditions Topside: Perfect, cool temp, sunny, calm seas Conditions Below: Crappy, strong current, low viz The Planned Dives: Jupiter Star wreck (off Haulover Inlet, 155fsw, Miami); something shallow for the second dive The divers: Eric (mempilot/Meg); Howard (scubadadmiami/Optima); Tom Mount (Optima); Two of Tom's tech students (Doubles/OC) The Crew: Captain Mike Beach (Da Man); DM Georgia (hottie!) Howie and myself planned to splash 10 minutes prior to Tom and his OC tech students to allow us a longer runtime for the dive. Due to the strong current and the way the wreck lies on the bottom, hot dropping on CCR wasn't going to be a viable option. The low viz would make it tough for 5 divers to guarrentee a hit. Mike decided to grapnel the wreck, and after a few passes, the hook caught (we'd find out later what!). H-man and myself splashed, and in the long pull to the bottom, I partially flooded my left arm. My latex seal is too big for the weight loss in my wrists, so the strong current let the water in during the fight. Like I said, the viz was crap. When I hit 130, I should have seen the wreck. I didn't see the wreck, the bottom, or anything remotely close to what we were looking for. We were not in the right depth of water. With the scope of the down line and the strong current, the boat was over the dropoff, but the line had dragged deeper than the wreck. I signaled to Howardski that I was going to the hook to see what we were hooked to. Turns out, that we snagged a heavy underwater cable (possibly comm) at over 170 fsw, and the hook was well lodged underneath it. I wrote to Higidy Higidy Higidy on my wetnotes that he should start back up the line and inform the OC guys to bag the dive while I tried to get the hook off the cable. There was no way we were going wreck hunting in this current and viz at 174 fsw with two fresh tech students (recipe for disaster). Howard gave me the OK, and I tried to unlodge the hook. I gave up and decided the only way to salvage the situation was to decouple the long chain and hook from the anchorline. I was racking up deco obligation, and the only other diver not in deco qualified to come back down and try this later was Tom. Since he had students on board, it seemed logical for me to finish the job. When the line was decoupled, H-dude went with it to start his deco and inform the crew what was going on. I hooked up my lift bag and got the anchor neutral. Then I started my free ascent. At 70 fsw, I clipped in my finger spool and let the bag continue to the surface to mark my position. My slow ascent from 170 to 70 had left my VR3 showing only minor stops starting at 40 fsw. I was ascending on my upline hoping that the boat had seen the bag. It is a 6 foot Halcyon CC SMB with OPRV. With the anchor acting as heavy ballast, the sausage was standing straight up about 3 feet out above the surface. When I surfaced, the boat was a couple hundred yards away waiting for HO2ward to finish his shallow stop. After about 20 minutes of floating, the boat came and picked me up. Captain Mike was happy to see that I had rescued his anchor. I sat out the next dive because I had worked pretty hard on that dive and was running my VR3 on zero conservatism. I tricked it a bit by changing the setpoint on the VR3 to .7 at 30 feet to give myself longer shallow stops since I was actually maintaining 1.1. I also went off the loop and onto OC O2 at 20 fsw and remained on OC O2 during the surface float. If I had to do it over, I'd have had Howard stay with me and let the OC guys call their dive based on the fact the line was loose. Howard the Hitman Packer and I could have done a safer buddy ascent with the heavy stainless by utilizing one bag for the anchor and line and another for signaling the boat with our intentions. Hindsight is 20/20 and assumption is the mother of all FUBARS. A 172 fsw sand dive turned out to be a working salvage dive and a good learning experience. I'm glad Mike got his expensive SS back, and I'm glad I got to get wet. Howard is a good buddy, but I sent him solo, which was stupid on my part. Sorry H-guy, won't happen next time. They had a decent second dive, while I bullshitted with Mike and hottie Georgia. Keeping the ratio of descents/ascents 1:1 , Eric __________________ MEM "Da Pilot" Black holes are where God divided by zero. "If at first you don't succeed, don't dive silent." "Would you mind not shooting at the thermo-nuclear weapons." ~ Vic Deakins "Donkey's kill more people annually than plane crashes." Last edited by mempilot : 5th December 2007 at 04:15.
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5th December 2007, 04:01	#2 (permalink)
*ScubaDadMiami* Moderator Current Rebreather/s: Optima Other Rebreather/s: Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Florida, USA Posts: 2,076	Re: So, I sez to Howard, "Where'd it go?". And Howard sez back... I agree in all respects. Just to add, the visibility was crap all the way to the bottom, probably 20 feet at best. So, even if we were right next to the wreck, we did not see it. Given the current, we were not going to try tying off a reel and trying to make our way to find it. We survived to learn and dive another day. Neither of us was in any kind of trouble. Still, let's just say that we would not have done things the same way if we had to do it over again. I elected to make the second dive (at our next spot, the Tortuga wreck) to have fun and watch Tom working with his students, who are slated to take delivery of a Meg and Optima in the near future. They can't wait to ditch those doubles! Oh, and by the way, Tom was on an Optima (not his Meg). Seems to be his CCR of choice these days. __________________ Howard Packer IANTD CCR Instructor Miami Beach, Florida CCRDiveTraining.com
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5th December 2007, 12:48	#3 (permalink)
netmage Hello Kitty...... Current Rebreather/s: Megalodon Other Rebreather/s: Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Coconut Creek, FL Posts: 441	Re: So, I sez to Howard, "Where'd it go?". And Howard sez back... Glad to hear everything went alright...
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5th December 2007, 14:03	#4 (permalink)
robinfante I have a smoking gun Current Rebreather/s: Megalodon Prism Topaz MK 15.X Other Rebreather/s: Sport Kiss Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: mountain lakes nj Posts: 141	Re: So, I sez to Howard, "Where'd it go?". And Howard sez back... Nice write-up. I agree with your assessment of things to do next time, as I was reading about swimming a lift bag up 100' I was thinking "that takes some brass...". Doable sure, and I nearly had to do the same thing this summer from 100' deeper, but definitely not ideal. I'll share a situation I had once too. I had found a porthole, and gone down with a bag of tools to free it. Sadly it was steel, so I decided to raise up a weight belt I had found just for practice. I was using an smb, as the previous year I had had a hell of a time with a lift bag dumping in current. First it spilled from 200 feet, then from 130', so finally at 100' I pulled out an smb and gave up on liftbags for good. I swam the tools and weight belt over to the line, then began my ascent. Partway up the line I dumped some gas from the smb, oops a little too much so I went to add a touch more with my bailout reg. Nothing doing, it was pretty much impossible, as the weight of the stuff was pulling the lips of the bag tightly closed. After struggling with it I finally decided to just haul it up a bit, so that what gas was in there could expand and take over. I wound up lugging that pig all the way to 20', and still it was negative. I finally ditched the belt, saved the tools (good thing as they were the captains), but not before giving myself a hell of a CO2 headache. So, a simple lesson learned the hard way: smbs for signalling, lift bags for lifting. __________________ Homer to Bart: “When a woman says nothing’s wrong, everything is wrong. And when a woman says everything’s wrong, EVERYTHING is wrong. And when a woman says something’s not funny, you better not laugh your ass off!” Check out www.robinfante.blogspot.com for trip reports and pics.
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5th December 2007, 16:15	#5 (permalink)
mempilot What is this..terrafirma? Current Rebreather/s: Megalodon Other Rebreather/s: Megalodon Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: Ft. Lauderdale Posts: 1,269	Re: So, I sez to Howard, "Where'd it go?". And Howard sez back... Quote: (Originally Posted by robinfante) Nice write-up. I agree with your assessment of things to do next time, as I was reading about swimming a lift bag up 100' I was thinking "that takes some brass...". Doable sure, and I nearly had to do the same thing this summer from 100' deeper, but definitely not ideal. I agree. It was difficult to manage and not ideal, but the outcome gave me confidence that it can be done. I hear a lot of people talk about using a LB/SMB as backup bouyancy to get them off the bottom with a loss of other means. It is a skill that should be practiced if that is the case. The fact that I was doing it in open water without an upline actually made it simpler in that I could use both hands. Will I try it again soon? NOPE! __________________ MEM "Da Pilot" Black holes are where God divided by zero. "If at first you don't succeed, don't dive silent." "Would you mind not shooting at the thermo-nuclear weapons." ~ Vic Deakins "Donkey's kill more people annually than plane crashes."
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5th December 2007, 17:18	#6 (permalink)
JonnyB Johnny The Hatch Current Rebreather/s: MK 15.X Titan Other CCR Other SCR Home Build Other Rebreather/s: Not Bought Yet Inspiration Classic Megalodon Sport Kiss Classic Kiss Other CCR Other SCR Home Build Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Sweden (Stockholm)/Cyprus(Ayia Napa) Posts: 962	Re: So, I sez to Howard, "Where'd it go?". And Howard sez back... I had to bailout on my KISS once due to flooding, was at around 68m/220ft and due to the locations topography i chose to do a free ascent up to my first deco instead of swimming all the way back to land. It was no game, being down there solo as well did not make me feel any better. /Jonny __________________ A quote from Crazyduck - In remembering our own Rob Davies. "Outbound flight 777 heavy you are cleared for flight Due west into that warm red Texas sunset You have angels on your wings and divers memories on your six." Rest In Peace http://www.divetekcyprus.com http://www.diveccr.com
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5th December 2007, 18:20	#7 (permalink)
mempilot What is this..terrafirma? Current Rebreather/s: Megalodon Other Rebreather/s: Megalodon Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: Ft. Lauderdale Posts: 1,269	Re: So, I sez to Howard, "Where'd it go?". And Howard sez back... Quote: (Originally Posted by JonnyB) ...being down there solo as well did not make me feel any better. /Jonny Jonny, That was the biggest part of my, "I won't do that again." Being solo at 170+ struggling with free ascending some heavy hardware was not the brightest thing I've done. Sometimes I joke a little about the dumb things I've managed to bring off, but I'm pretty serious about it all. I sometimes try to use a little humor around it all to bring it back into perspective. I'm not sure why I did what I did...sending Howard back up the line...and leaving myself to the solo task of wrestling the anchor. I can't blame narcosis, because I was on 21/35 DIL with a 1.2 setpoint. It was a learning experience and gets jotted in the things not to do column of the tally sheet. __________________ MEM "Da Pilot" Black holes are where God divided by zero. "If at first you don't succeed, don't dive silent." "Would you mind not shooting at the thermo-nuclear weapons." ~ Vic Deakins "Donkey's kill more people annually than plane crashes."
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5th December 2007, 18:25	#8 (permalink)
debersole Custom Title Allowed! Current Rebreather/s: Sport Kiss Dolphin Azimuth Other Rebreather/s: Sport Kiss Classic Kiss Dolphin Azimuth Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Lakeland, Florida Posts: 211	Re: So, I sez to Howard, "Where'd it go?". And Howard sez back... Eric: Thanks for your post. It's always very informative to hear about other people's experiences and dissect them from the comfort of your computer before actually having to deal with a similar experience yourself. Congrats on your excellent skills to pull it off. BTW, sounds like we had a better dive together on Friday, even with the poor viz! Doug __________________ www.debersole.com
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5th December 2007, 19:34	#9 (permalink)
jepuskar NA Current Rebreather/s: Not Bought Yet Other Rebreather/s: Not Bought Yet Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: Chicago, IL Posts: 397	Re: So, I sez to Howard, "Where'd it go?". And Howard sez back... "Just to add, the visibility was crap all the way to the bottom, probably 20 feet at best." You FL guys are soo spoiled!!!
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6th December 2007, 01:07	#10 (permalink)
Dsix36 Going Down? Current Rebreather/s: Optima Other Rebreather/s: Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Deerfield Beach, Florida Posts: 976	Re: So, I sez to Howard, "Where'd it go?". And Howard sez back... Quote: (Originally Posted by jepuskar) "Just to add, the visibility was crap all the way to the bottom, probably 20 feet at best." You FL guys are soo spoiled!!! yep, and we like it that way!!!!!! __________________ THE MORE THAT I LEARN, THE MORE THAT I STILL NEED TO LEARN!!!!!!
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