Stoney Dove Trip report - 8th/9th January 2005
Well, Ian and I planned to make 4 dives over the weekend, with the emphasis being on getting used to the kit we have, rather than mucking about with it. That being said, I had a VR3 and jetfins to get wet for the first time, and Ian had some fancy gaiters from Aquatec, so it was a mix of drills and familiarisation.
We were both in Stoney Stanton by 9pm, staying at the Dive Inn round the corner from the Cove, our usual haunt. Friday evening was very pleasant, as we popped out for a Chinese from the local eatery, and then went back to the room to get the toolkit out and attach some WozStraps to my jetfins. That took about an hour for anyone who is considering, and as long as you follow the instructions from Woz's website, is a fairly simple process. We also took the time to set up the VR3 with the two gases I had with me, 30% in the twinset and 52% in the stage. We decided to get an early start, but managed to stay up watching some god awful horror flick on the telly until 1am. gah
Saturday.
We got up at 5am and were parked in the queue at Stoney by 0530. In the queue I bumped into NigelH, who proved himself to be a jolly pleasant chap as I suspected already, and also managed to meet up with a couple of the bods from UKRS who were there for their annual icebreakers gig.
We managed to get parked right by the water, and went for the traditional first visit to the shop, where I managed to purchase bugger all for a change, and Ian walked out with a travel bag.
Dive 1 - Depth 21M Time 55 Minutes.
We planned the first dive as a relatively shallow one, just to get us back in the water after the new year and make sure kit and humans were performing as predicated. I had not had the time the night before to check my kit (which I normally do religiously with checklists etc) so managed to forget my weight belt. Twenty five quid and another trip to the shop later we were good to go. We descended from the bus stop, and spent five minutes just hanging around, getting the trim and bouyancy dialled in, and allowing Ian to try his shutdowns. We did a bubble check and then proceeded to the Stangarth and bimbled around for a bit (quite a bit) before venturing inside and allowing Ian to stand in the bridge and salute divers as they went past.
After about 25 minutes into the dive, we proceeded to the bus and then Ian signalled he was going to put a blob up. first error of the day was me lauighing my head off whilst Ian attempted to fire his self inflator having filled the bottle from his missus's (empty) 12 ltr cylinder the night before. After a couple of minutes where I could literally hear the gears turning in his head, I filled the smb using my primary reg and sent it up.
At about 12M I switched to the richer mix in my stage, and then told the VR3 I had done so. Lesson learned is that the whole process took me about a minute, far too long in my opinion, so practice with the VR3 was necessary. Once up at the 7m shelf, with the pooters clear, I swapped repeatedly between my backgas and deco mix, purely for practice and to become more familiar with the process on the VR3. The other piece of new kit, the jetfins and WozStraps, were nice to put on, but I had immediate issues with trim, not being used to leaving the ankle weights in the car. This issue resolved itself over the next couple of dives.
Out of the water after 55 minutes and both of us were bloody freezing, our hands especially so. We had a debrief in the pub and let our hands warm for a couple of hours before continuing onto the second dive. Lessons learned from the Dive were.
1. Fire and Forget SMBS are lovely, but practice using a reg anyway cos you never know when it aint gonna work
2. Jetfins are lovely, but losing ankle weights does wierd things to your trim, and again this takes some relearning
3. 6 Degrees is perfectly do-able, but its cold after an hour!
4. 3MM gloves and 6 degree water - not good bedfellows.
Dive 2 Depth 35 Metres Time 45 Minutes
We kitted up again, nice and slowly, checking everything carefully, and jumped off the busstop witht he intention of heading down the road to the hydrobox. I had managed to take a duff bearing and would have missed the box had we not seen the lights of some other divers off to the right and guessed thats where they had come up from . At about 25 metres, I noticed a steady noise coming from behind my head. At 35M , where is was very quiet, the noise was deinifitely more pronounced. There was no visible effect on my air supply, but I guess something was up with my first stage or isolater, so decided to come shallower to diagnose it. We swam up to about 20 metres, the first stop demanded by the VR3 and then I shut down the right post, at which point the problem resolved itself. Time for the regs to be serviced then. I opened the right post and the problem did not reappear, so I decided to continue the dive, albeit at a shallower depth.
At this point, I made an error by coming up from the stop 15 seconds early, promptly bending the VR3. I didn't much worry about this as we had enough gas to make a flatulent cow feel inadaquate, so we continued the dive. We came up to the 7 m shelf and did a very, very long safety stop here, practicing the bouyancy control. The trim was getting better as I got used to the jetfins.
One thing we had noticed is that there were several times I turned around looking for Ian and couldnt find him. We I looked the other way he was right next to me. Some discussion abotu this was made later in the pub where we agreed that we would always say who was to be in front, and who to be behind, and what side they were to be on. We also agreed that the person behind would carry a lit torch and would shine it regularly directly ahead of them so that that beam would be blatently obvious to the person in front. This worked a treat, so thanks to Mark Powell for that one (skill learned on deco course).
We didnt hang about when we got out of the water as we were very cold again, so we dekitted and packed up for the day after putting the twins in for a fill.
during the day we bumped into Frogman and a couple of other DIR bods, who all turned out to be nice chaps.
Sunday
Sunday morning we had a lie in until 0530, wooohoo, and were waiting in the queue at 6. I guess there were thirty cars in front of us even at this point. the wind had died but it still felt very cold, so we decided to invest in some coffee and a bacon cob before we went in. we kitted up slowly and hit the water at about 9am
Dive 1. Depth 35 Metres, Time 65 Minutes
we agreed to revisit the box and then head over to the wreck. We also agreed to put into practice our plan about one diver staying in front, and the rear diver staying behind and slightly below and to the left. Due to the problem we experienced the day before with my first stage, we also agreed that we would keep a close eye on each others manifolds, and then the dive would be called should anything manifest itself. Ian led the dive and I followed. We went straight down to the box, and swam around for a bit. The VR3 was still in a huff, but as advertised it hadn't locked me out, so I decided to simplhy add a large safety margin to anything it told me.
there was an instant, literally an instant at the hydrobox, where the trim just came together, the floaty feet went away and everything fell into place. The rest of the dive was lovely for me. Ian took a bearing for the Stangarth and off we went. We had planned to do simulated deco stops at 20 metres, 12Metres and 6 metres, so we went up to 20 and then stopped there for 3 minutes. We then proceeded at 20 metres to the Stangarth. Welll, that's not quite right. Old Chris Columbus managed to miss the Stangarth completely and we ended up at the cliff face directly opposite the pub. We decided to put a blob up, and then head up to 6m and swim back across the quarry. Ian was having real bother with his spool, as his hands were so cold he had real issues simply gripping up. He dropped it and it lodged in the cliff face about 4 metresa below him. I retrieved it and held it for him whilst he put the blob up and then handed it back.
We then ascended to 6M, stopping at 12 for the simulated stop for 2 mins. Once at 6M, we swam directly back across the lake. We swam over the Stangarth, which was a bizarre sight I had not seen before, as you could see the whole wreck buzzing with divers. We continued to the 7 m shelf near the pub and swam around the nautilus. By now we had racked up about an hours time, so I swapped to my rich mix and we did a final 5 minute stop at 6M before climbing out of the water.
Ian and I were both very cold indeed at this point, so much so that we dumped all the kit in the car asap and headed straight to the pub for some warm food and coffee. After an hours defrosting, we discussed a second dive. Ian Decided to call the second dive as he was still feeling cold, and I made the traditional response. For those that do not know the traiditional response it is easy, you follow these instructions.
1. Stand up straight, then bend knees so that you things are now about 45 degrees from the ground.
2. Bend your elbows so that your upper and lower arms are at 90 degrees to each other
3. Now, continuing to keep your knees and arms bent, pivot both shoulders simultaneously so that your elbows move away from your body repeatedly
4. Cotinue to keep your knees bent whilst walking in a circle around the person that called the dive
5. Finally, repeat the age-old mantra "buck, buck, buck, buck, bbuuuuuuuuuck"
Anyway, we binned it and went home. A very enjoyable if chilly weekend was had by all and we managed to bump into a load of folk we havent met before.
Garf
Garf prepared for a nice, gentle bimble
Ian with YD beanie, Oh How I hoped he was going to forget to take it off
Weekend's Lessons.
1. The VR3 is the sexiest bit of Dive Kit I have ever seen. Gas switching is nice and easy, but takes practice to avoid there being a big gap between you breathing a different mix, and the computer knowing.
2. Team skills are well worth practicing, and make a hell of a difference to the dive.
3. Navy people can't navigate for shit. Explains why there are so many wrecks I guess.
4. Steel Straps, whilst looking the dogs, making taking fins off very easy indeed.
5. there is a lot of value in picking a kit configuration, whatever it may be, and simpyl sticking with it, rather than changing things on every dive.
toodle pip