Ooooh your a hard man to please young PaulC.. Ok since you mentioned both incidents I feel it my duty to write a wee story about them... lol...
(Oh No!! came the unified cry) Too late....
cracks knuckles and hunches over keyboard
When Paul arrived at Abbs he realised he didn't have a mask with him and so bought a shiney new one from Scoutscroft, the only problem with new ones, as you all know is that they need a good scrubbing with something mildly abrasive like toothpaste or they fog up like crazy, well unfortunately Paul didn't get the chance to do that before we were dragging him by the scruff of his latex neck seal down the harbour wall and onto the boat.
Unfortunately this lack of scrubbing helped to make Pauls first dive a bit of a misty one and may have contributed to the events that would follow.
The first dive, as decribed by Gav was on the Skelly's, an awesome dive full of life and natural beauty, with gullys a plenty to explore, we had a spring tide running and so we were enjoying a nice drift mainly along the bottom of the cliff, we were lucky enough to see and play with a couple of nice sized octopus, I had one frantically spurting clouds of ink at me because I kept stopping its escape by putting my hand just above its head, not touching it.. just blocking its escape route... When Octopi decide to swim they can only go in one direction.. (head first) so by keeping my hand where it was I was able to keep Ollie in place for a while so we could "Oooh" and "Aaaah" a little longer, plus Marco was doing his underwater David Bailey impression with his digi camera....
"Move that leg a little darlin.. no, the other leg... no, the other leg... not that leg, the other one.... oh never mind.."
Not long after our time with the octopi the wall to our right just hooked right back on its self and we followed it round to be presented with what at first appeared to be a huge overhang with a pitch black area beneath it, but as I ventured further into it my UK400's light couldn't even reach the back, so I slowly swam further and further in eventually realising that this was no overhang but a bloody great cave which was funneling in on all sides the further in I went.
I finally could see quite a few large fish meandering in the gloom at the neck but still couldn't see the end of it. I had to turn and look back out at this point as I was getting the Eeby Jeebies in a big way and wasn't sure just how far I'd gone in... but it was ok, I could see Marco and Paul further back peering in, so feeling slightly braver now and also having to be macho I ventured further until finally I could see it narrowed right down to a tunnel that an adventurous cave diver 'might' just have tackled, it was just about diver size, but my torch light showed that it meandered off into the depths of rock and there was no way I was going further, I peered into it for a good while trying to work out if it was a swim through that I didn't know about or not.
Unfortunately it was at this point, while I was shining into the narrow tunnel that I lost a bit of bouyancy control and had to put my hand down, which then sank into a thick bed of powdery silt which must collect in the neck of this funnel and was engulfed in a zero viz environment, cursing myself for destroying the viz for my two buddies I tried to back out without creating more of a mess but it was too late, a cloud just moved backwards out of the cave and basically hung there.... sorry guys
Anyway... <ahem> moving quickly on, I'd noticed during the progress of this dive that Paul was not only nearly blinded with a mist that permeated all but an a penny sized circle of his mask, but was also struggling badly with bouyancy, I regularly turned to find Marco taking a picture of something or other and there would be Paul upside down and finning straight towards the seabed, but every time I enquired, Paul would stare at me through his misted up mask and come back with an OK signal (bless him) although I'd now come to the conclusion that he must be having a miserable time of it.
We later found that Paul had decided to use his suit more for bouyancy rather than his BC and it appears he may have been overweighted thereby requiring more air than was acceptable in a drysuit.. This large body of air was yet to cause Paul even more grief
A little further into the dive and drifting along nicely I turned into the current to look back at my buddy's and could see Marco had found a beastie that looked photogenic and Paul appeared to be up high on the wall peering at something, but was he? something didn't look quite right, he was too close, he wasn't swimming but was holding on... So I held station for a momenty finning slowly into the tide but watching Paul...
"What was he doing?" There was no movement, he was definitely holding on, so I swam back and up to him and as soon as he saw me he signalled the 'Im not happy' signal and pointed at his autodump.
Figuring he was too bouyant and couldn't get the air out of his dump I started purging air from his suit for him, now I'm not sure if this was making matters worse at his feet end or not... Let me explain.. after a while of trying to purge all of the air from his suit Paul started pointing to his fins, so I moved down while still holding on cos I didn't want him going anywhere and started to look at the problem with his fins.
Thinking initially that a fin strapped had popped off with too much air I went to pull it back over the heel of his boot, only to realise that there was no foot in the boot and that Paul's foot was actually a way up the leg, and to make matters worse the boot was vacuumed shut and there was no way we were getting it back in.
Marco was on the job now and so I removed the fin altogether and passed it to Marco, but no matter how hard we tried there was not a chance that Paul was gonna get his foot back in, then to add to the complications I felt the other foot and realised that the same thing had happened with that... a vacuumed boot and no foot... Hmmmmm
It became obvious that the only thing we could do now was to get air back into his boots to remove the vacuum effect...
So... with Paul being excellent and not being perturbed in anyway, he allowed me to dump all of his air from his BC and we dragged him off the wall and down to the seabed. He was safe enough because both Marco and myself were hanging onto him for dear life and he wasn't going anywhere.
Fortunately we were blessed with great viz, a shell covered bottom that didn't stir up and a good team effort from all three, so without any drama's at all we were able to hold Paul down, squirt air into the drysuit, hold his legs slightly aloft and violá his feet slipped deftly back into place, we then reattached the fins, gave big grins and ok's all round and set about completing the dive.
A great team effort, an excellent learning experience and a top quality dive. :thumb:
I'll write about the second dive after I've done some work..... ;)