Ooops!

**Freef** · 31st May 2007, 20:07

Friday the 2nd of December and Russ has emailed me. Do I want to go lake diving on Sunday? Well, as I only have 19h 59 min on the rebreather it would be rude not to I suppose, so plans are made to meet at the Guildy café at 0900 on Sunday.

I was toying with the idea of going open circuit, but opted for semiclosed in the end. Kit prep on Saturday afternoon saw me doing all the usual checks, scrubber packing and watching a high pressure gauge fail. I had turned the valve on to check the contents in my 3L pony that is used for bailout and buoyancy when the hose started to swell around the gauge connection. I looked at it for a moment and then frantically shut the valve while purging the reg, thinking “please don’t go bang, please don’t go bang, please don’t go bang”. Luckily it didn’t, and equally luckily it decided to fail while I was upchecking kit, rather than at 20m. There is a pic of the offending article somewhere on the ‘Free Dates’ website.

Off to the site to meet Russ and I did the final checks in the car park while waiting for him. A sausage sarnie later [there’s a surprise] and we hit the water. Briefly. My overpressure valve was continually dumping loop gas, and I had to get out to check the flow rate, which was very high for the 60% jet. I swapped the feed onto the 50% jet and checked the bypass wasn’t operating [it wasn’t] so I decided to dive on the 50% jet and look at the 60% jet later. The flow on the 50% looked right so we got back in and, after giving Russ a couple of extra pounds of lead, went down to the bus where I signalled to Russ to see if he wanted to swim through the lower deck. He replied with an OK and tried to enter the passenger area via the engine compartment. I was shouting for him to stop and use a bigger entry, but he couldn’t hear me until I banged on the side of the bus. He decided that he should look where I was pointing and swam through the deck as I stayed on the outside and met up with him at the front. We then followed the line to the lorry and Provost, then onto the boat and coach. The water temperature throughout the dive was down to 9 Celsius, so winter must be nearly here. Visibility was a remarkable 10+m, despite the rain, and you could see the coach from the boat.
Unfortunately the same couldn’t be said for the vis within the coach itself, which had been stirred up by another couple of divers, but made the swimthrough seem more like the usual vis. From the coach we followed the line South to the training area, lifting the monotony by eyeing the scrap metal on the way, where I found a halloween mask in the form of a skull, which I told Russ was my last buddy.

We surfaced at the ramp where we jumped out and went for a hot choc, chemical handwarmer and chat. Russ is looking at doing his nitrox ticket sometime soon, so we had a chat about that and then I had a look at my 60% jet again. While doing this I found a small grey sponge, that is the filter element from the jet. I had managed to drop it into the shell before dive one and it was still there at the end of dive two, which was very lucky for me. The jet seemed to be fine this time, so I swapped the hose back and we had our second dive to the sunken trees. These lie to the east side of the lake and are quite shallow and are usually not too busy. We were wandering through the trees when I stopped and indicated to Russ that there was a pike in front of me. A BIG pike in front of me. It was about 4 feet long, and the second largest I have seen, the largest being the five footer at Stoney. We admired the ‘freshwater shark’ from a safe distance [meaning I was hiding behind Russ], and swam on a little further. At 15 min I turned the dive and we re passed the pike, which was still big and menacing looking and we jumped out at the ramp again.

Time for some food and a catch up with events in Kent where I used to teach, and Russ was on his way home, hopefully without a speeding ticket. I re checked the flow rate at home, and it was still on the 60% flow mark, so I’ll have a check of the bypass valve later and if all goes well put it down to a one off. I’ve gone over 20 hours on the Dolphin now, and I’m still enjoying it.

Dive data.

Dive 1

20.7m

36 min

SI 1h 29 min

Dive 2

10.6m

27 min

**Freef** · 31st May 2007, 20:07

Caroline is still adjusting her twin 10’s for all round comfort, so we were off to good old Stoney again to catch hypothermia in luxurious surroundings. The usual dire warnings about freeflows were issued on the way in, and I waited the arrival of Caroline, Serena and Ken in the C-Life battlewagon. While waiting I saw Graham of “most expensive dive I have ever made” fame who was up there pootling with his BSAC buddies. Tales of woe of the day we went to Cheppy were retold, and with the usual piss taking completed I kitted up the Dolphin for action.

The plan was for Caroline and I to drop to the pit while Serena, Ken and Matt did their own thing on twinsets and singles. As Serena was waiting for a fill and Ken was kit molesting, Caroline and I bounded down to the bus stop to take the waters. A chap accosted Caroline on the way in and asked her to take his computer down a few metres to see if it was working. Caroline was in first and had a quick bounce to 4m while I finished putting my gloves on and joined her. The computer was OK and we began our descent.

As I was diving on 45% in the tank and on the 60% jet I was concerned that the pO2 might be a bit high at depth, so we went down the road to the 22m area where the BOP is found [unless the vis is bad]. I was leaking a bit of water into my mask from the skirt being caught over the hood after I had flooded and cleared at 6m to acclimatise to the cold. I took a glove off to sort the problem while Caroline looked at me like I was mad. Checking the pO2 at 22.5m it was reading 1.30, which didn’t bode well for the pit. Following the line down, it wasn’t long before my oxygauge started to complain, and at the top of the box [31.5m] it was reading 1.59 and getting loud. I signalled to Caroline to turn the dive and head back to 20m, which we did, and Caroline had a quick play at shutting down before we ascended to 6m for my turn to play.

I needed to get some figures for working the Dolphin hard, so I started trying to push the APC along the ledge for a couple of minutes, noting the pO2 after one and two minutes compared with the starting reading. At 5.2m I was reading 0.51 bar, after 1 minute 0.50 bar and after a second minute had passed 0.43 bar. I’ll have to repeat the exercise with my usual 40% mix to make sure I don’t go too low, but it seems OK from these figures. We jumped out at the bus stop where we saw two divers on the stage underneath juggling with a breeze block.

We waited on the surface while Serena and co had their dive. Caroline went to the ladies changing rooms to warm up while I stayed on the cold with a hot choc and the inevitable soss roll. Minor mickey taking was indulged in as Caroline is too well bred to sink to my usual level of silliness. Matt, who had dropped his torch near the step, provided some ‘tween dive entertainment. He went in to retrieve it in his drysuit and mask. As he walked down the hill with Caroline I asked Serena and Ken if one of us should have mentioned that he wouldn’t sink without a weightbelt. We looked at other with slightly guilty expressions then decided that he would need to find that out for himself. 5 minutes later he admits defeat so I strap on my weights, flat mount a 7L and drop in to retrieve his torch.

Dive two was to be a “Caroline on 4, me on a world of my own” dive. Ken and Matt helped lug the kit down and kit us up and we dropped in to nice, warm, 7 degrees of water to defrost the kit from the nice, cold minus two air. Dropping onto the heli I laughed my socks off at the sight of a toast rack, cup and saucer and dinner plate cover laid out inside. The frivolity continued by introducing Caroline to the joys of see saw on the helicopter. A diver came up while we were doing this and wrote on his pad ‘ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO BUBBLE’ I nodded and wrote ‘SEMI CLOSED’, to which he replied ‘HALF BUST THEN’. Piss taking bastard. I got my own back by not letting him play on the see saw.

We followed a bunch of divers who looked like they were heading to the Stanegarth, only to find they had decided to miss it instead, so we made our own way there. While deciding whether we would bother to penetrate, Caroline found a weight pouch with 8kg of lead in it. We split the lead between us, and I had to lug a lead filled handbag around for the rest of the dive. From the Stanegarth we hit the coach and then went to the North to jump out and defrost.

We took the weights into the shop to hand them in and then dekitted. I bumped into John Routley [the mad inventor] who had fitted his prototype KISS plate to a unit, and very nice it looked too. John was diving his Dolphin CCR home brew and saying open circuit is only good for bail out which Caroline took offence to.

We hung around with a hot choc waiting for Serena and co to reappear and we were talking about the weights a bloke from Wittering Divers heard us and described the pouch and where it was lost, so we told him it was in the shop. He then said the bloke who lost it was searching the wreck for the weights. We looked out over the lake and saw Serena and the others surface pretty much at the back wall. Caroline and I joked about lack of navigation abilities and I asked why a dive rabble from the coast were at an inland dive site, apparently the vis in the channel is pants. Which made Caroline’s day as she is off to Brighton for a dive soon.

After throwing a few snowballs at Serena they got out with Serena muttering about a nav course for Ken and Matt, and Ken saying the excessive vis confused him. As we were feeling generous we fetched them a hot choc each before we disappeared into the pub.

Dive data:

Dive 1

31.7m

28 min

Exercising vO2 [rest] 0.95 [1 min] 1.05 [2 min] 1.35

SI: 1H 59min

Dive 2

20.7m

35 min

Av vO2 0.97

**Freef** · 31st May 2007, 20:08

That little lot brings us up to the end of 2005, I'll put up '06 later...

31st May 2007, 20:07	#11 (permalink)
Freef Custom Title Disallowed! Current Rebreather/s: Dolphin Other Rebreather/s: Dolphin Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Land of the Freef, UK. Posts: 1,427	4th December “Please don’t go bang” [Dolphin dives 28& 29] Friday the 2nd of December and Russ has emailed me. Do I want to go lake diving on Sunday? Well, as I only have 19h 59 min on the rebreather it would be rude not to I suppose, so plans are made to meet at the Guildy café at 0900 on Sunday. I was toying with the idea of going open circuit, but opted for semiclosed in the end. Kit prep on Saturday afternoon saw me doing all the usual checks, scrubber packing and watching a high pressure gauge fail. I had turned the valve on to check the contents in my 3L pony that is used for bailout and buoyancy when the hose started to swell around the gauge connection. I looked at it for a moment and then frantically shut the valve while purging the reg, thinking “please don’t go bang, please don’t go bang, please don’t go bang”. Luckily it didn’t, and equally luckily it decided to fail while I was upchecking kit, rather than at 20m. There is a pic of the offending article somewhere on the ‘Free Dates’ website. Off to the site to meet Russ and I did the final checks in the car park while waiting for him. A sausage sarnie later [there’s a surprise] and we hit the water. Briefly. My overpressure valve was continually dumping loop gas, and I had to get out to check the flow rate, which was very high for the 60% jet. I swapped the feed onto the 50% jet and checked the bypass wasn’t operating [it wasn’t] so I decided to dive on the 50% jet and look at the 60% jet later. The flow on the 50% looked right so we got back in and, after giving Russ a couple of extra pounds of lead, went down to the bus where I signalled to Russ to see if he wanted to swim through the lower deck. He replied with an OK and tried to enter the passenger area via the engine compartment. I was shouting for him to stop and use a bigger entry, but he couldn’t hear me until I banged on the side of the bus. He decided that he should look where I was pointing and swam through the deck as I stayed on the outside and met up with him at the front. We then followed the line to the lorry and Provost, then onto the boat and coach. The water temperature throughout the dive was down to 9 Celsius, so winter must be nearly here. Visibility was a remarkable 10+m, despite the rain, and you could see the coach from the boat. Unfortunately the same couldn’t be said for the vis within the coach itself, which had been stirred up by another couple of divers, but made the swimthrough seem more like the usual vis. From the coach we followed the line South to the training area, lifting the monotony by eyeing the scrap metal on the way, where I found a halloween mask in the form of a skull, which I told Russ was my last buddy. We surfaced at the ramp where we jumped out and went for a hot choc, chemical handwarmer and chat. Russ is looking at doing his nitrox ticket sometime soon, so we had a chat about that and then I had a look at my 60% jet again. While doing this I found a small grey sponge, that is the filter element from the jet. I had managed to drop it into the shell before dive one and it was still there at the end of dive two, which was very lucky for me. The jet seemed to be fine this time, so I swapped the hose back and we had our second dive to the sunken trees. These lie to the east side of the lake and are quite shallow and are usually not too busy. We were wandering through the trees when I stopped and indicated to Russ that there was a pike in front of me. A BIG pike in front of me. It was about 4 feet long, and the second largest I have seen, the largest being the five footer at Stoney. We admired the ‘freshwater shark’ from a safe distance [meaning I was hiding behind Russ], and swam on a little further. At 15 min I turned the dive and we re passed the pike, which was still big and menacing looking and we jumped out at the ramp again. Time for some food and a catch up with events in Kent where I used to teach, and Russ was on his way home, hopefully without a speeding ticket. I re checked the flow rate at home, and it was still on the 60% flow mark, so I’ll have a check of the bypass valve later and if all goes well put it down to a one off. I’ve gone over 20 hours on the Dolphin now, and I’m still enjoying it. Dive data. Dive 1 20.7m 36 min SI 1h 29 min Dive 2 10.6m 27 min __________________ David. Diving the mahogany rebreather.
(Offline)

31st May 2007, 20:07	#12 (permalink)
Freef Custom Title Disallowed! Current Rebreather/s: Dolphin Other Rebreather/s: Dolphin Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Land of the Freef, UK. Posts: 1,427	29th December “If you live on the coast, why do you come here to dive?” [Dolphin Dive Caroline is still adjusting her twin 10’s for all round comfort, so we were off to good old Stoney again to catch hypothermia in luxurious surroundings. The usual dire warnings about freeflows were issued on the way in, and I waited the arrival of Caroline, Serena and Ken in the C-Life battlewagon. While waiting I saw Graham of “most expensive dive I have ever made” fame who was up there pootling with his BSAC buddies. Tales of woe of the day we went to Cheppy were retold, and with the usual piss taking completed I kitted up the Dolphin for action. The plan was for Caroline and I to drop to the pit while Serena, Ken and Matt did their own thing on twinsets and singles. As Serena was waiting for a fill and Ken was kit molesting, Caroline and I bounded down to the bus stop to take the waters. A chap accosted Caroline on the way in and asked her to take his computer down a few metres to see if it was working. Caroline was in first and had a quick bounce to 4m while I finished putting my gloves on and joined her. The computer was OK and we began our descent. As I was diving on 45% in the tank and on the 60% jet I was concerned that the pO2 might be a bit high at depth, so we went down the road to the 22m area where the BOP is found [unless the vis is bad]. I was leaking a bit of water into my mask from the skirt being caught over the hood after I had flooded and cleared at 6m to acclimatise to the cold. I took a glove off to sort the problem while Caroline looked at me like I was mad. Checking the pO2 at 22.5m it was reading 1.30, which didn’t bode well for the pit. Following the line down, it wasn’t long before my oxygauge started to complain, and at the top of the box [31.5m] it was reading 1.59 and getting loud. I signalled to Caroline to turn the dive and head back to 20m, which we did, and Caroline had a quick play at shutting down before we ascended to 6m for my turn to play. I needed to get some figures for working the Dolphin hard, so I started trying to push the APC along the ledge for a couple of minutes, noting the pO2 after one and two minutes compared with the starting reading. At 5.2m I was reading 0.51 bar, after 1 minute 0.50 bar and after a second minute had passed 0.43 bar. I’ll have to repeat the exercise with my usual 40% mix to make sure I don’t go too low, but it seems OK from these figures. We jumped out at the bus stop where we saw two divers on the stage underneath juggling with a breeze block. We waited on the surface while Serena and co had their dive. Caroline went to the ladies changing rooms to warm up while I stayed on the cold with a hot choc and the inevitable soss roll. Minor mickey taking was indulged in as Caroline is too well bred to sink to my usual level of silliness. Matt, who had dropped his torch near the step, provided some ‘tween dive entertainment. He went in to retrieve it in his drysuit and mask. As he walked down the hill with Caroline I asked Serena and Ken if one of us should have mentioned that he wouldn’t sink without a weightbelt. We looked at other with slightly guilty expressions then decided that he would need to find that out for himself. 5 minutes later he admits defeat so I strap on my weights, flat mount a 7L and drop in to retrieve his torch. Dive two was to be a “Caroline on 4, me on a world of my own” dive. Ken and Matt helped lug the kit down and kit us up and we dropped in to nice, warm, 7 degrees of water to defrost the kit from the nice, cold minus two air. Dropping onto the heli I laughed my socks off at the sight of a toast rack, cup and saucer and dinner plate cover laid out inside. The frivolity continued by introducing Caroline to the joys of see saw on the helicopter. A diver came up while we were doing this and wrote on his pad ‘ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO BUBBLE’ I nodded and wrote ‘SEMI CLOSED’, to which he replied ‘HALF BUST THEN’. Piss taking bastard. I got my own back by not letting him play on the see saw. We followed a bunch of divers who looked like they were heading to the Stanegarth, only to find they had decided to miss it instead, so we made our own way there. While deciding whether we would bother to penetrate, Caroline found a weight pouch with 8kg of lead in it. We split the lead between us, and I had to lug a lead filled handbag around for the rest of the dive. From the Stanegarth we hit the coach and then went to the North to jump out and defrost. We took the weights into the shop to hand them in and then dekitted. I bumped into John Routley [the mad inventor] who had fitted his prototype KISS plate to a unit, and very nice it looked too. John was diving his Dolphin CCR home brew and saying open circuit is only good for bail out which Caroline took offence to. We hung around with a hot choc waiting for Serena and co to reappear and we were talking about the weights a bloke from Wittering Divers heard us and described the pouch and where it was lost, so we told him it was in the shop. He then said the bloke who lost it was searching the wreck for the weights. We looked out over the lake and saw Serena and the others surface pretty much at the back wall. Caroline and I joked about lack of navigation abilities and I asked why a dive rabble from the coast were at an inland dive site, apparently the vis in the channel is pants. Which made Caroline’s day as she is off to Brighton for a dive soon. After throwing a few snowballs at Serena they got out with Serena muttering about a nav course for Ken and Matt, and Ken saying the excessive vis confused him. As we were feeling generous we fetched them a hot choc each before we disappeared into the pub. Dive data: Dive 1 31.7m 28 min Exercising vO2 [rest] 0.95 [1 min] 1.05 [2 min] 1.35 SI: 1H 59min Dive 2 20.7m 35 min Av vO2 0.97 __________________ David. Diving the mahogany rebreather.
(Offline)

31st May 2007, 20:08	#13 (permalink)
Freef Custom Title Disallowed! Current Rebreather/s: Dolphin Other Rebreather/s: Dolphin Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Land of the Freef, UK. Posts: 1,427	That's not all folks. That little lot brings us up to the end of 2005, I'll put up '06 later... __________________ David. Diving the mahogany rebreather.
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