Apologies for all the grammar and spelling mistakes but I've just had a well deserved Large Strong Gin.
Well I'll skip the usual preable an move straight on to the dive, except to say that Our W (
www.dive125.com) and Dave and Sylvia are top class and I would recommend them.
Anyway, on with the dive.
Dan and I were diving the Carlisle Castle, which is 40m to 45m to the seabed and 35m to the top. Our plan was therefore based around 5 mins at 45m, and a further 25min at 40min.
We descended the shot with no problems. The current was running a little, but we got down ok and sorted ourselves out. Initially I thought the shot was dragging, but then I found some metal and knew we were ok. We were the last pair in (or perhaps the second to last) and swimming about a foot from the shot we encountered another pairs slit, and so I decided to head off in another direction. The depth was around 43m, and I signalled to Dan that I was narked, but ok. Although the viz was ok (a couple of metres - the same as the City of Waterford on Friday) it was very, very dark. All you could see was that lit up by our torches.
Anyway, we slowly made our way around the wreck. I wasn't feeling particularly happy about the dive, but was ok. We moved a few metres along, ascending slowly, passing some fishing net along the way. A few metres past, I came to a dead end, and realised we were inside the wreck.
Still narked, I signalled to Dan to turn around and we did. Dan was having really shitty mask problems and it was constantly flooding, but we passed the net and came to what seemed like the side of the wreck. One side had dead man's fingers on it, and the other didn't so I was quite pleased because I thought that the fingers meant we were outside. Dan thumbed the dive and I was glad becuase I was about 30 secs away from thumbing it myslef.
I beckoned to Dan to move to the finger side of the wreck (he later told me he though I was suggesting a return to the shot) and then deployed his DSMB. We ascended slowly, but I was a bit flustered so it took us a little time to get up to around 30m where I saw Dan's DSMB on the ceiling of the wreck and metal all around us.
Shit.
At this point I lost it briefly. My breathing went through the roof and I honestly thought we were going to die there. It was not a nice experience. Then I remembered a few things. I remembered not to give up, and how Dr. Mike had found his way out of a much worse situation. I also remembered what Mark Powell (Thanks Mark!) taught me. I assessed the situation. I had gas. My bouuancy was ok. I could see. I signalled to Dan (still with mask problems) that we should descend. I made sure that he was letting out the line and we went down.
At the bottom there was a handy lump of metal so I made a tie-off. At this point we'd been down for just 10mins, so we had another 20mins of planned bottom time, and more if we went to back out. Plenty of time to find away out.
As luck would have it we managed to find our way out almost immediately. Dan cut the line, while I put up a blob and we went up. I was still shitting bricks until we got to 25m when I knew we were safe. Then we completed out stops as planned.
So I'm a lot wiser diver now. In the past I always used to say that I would reel off if the viz was bad. Because of the narks it didn't occur to me to reel off. Indeed no-one on the boat reeled off. I'm not sure why.
I think in the future my default plan is going to be to always reel off. Ie I will unless I make a concious decision not to. Again I'm stumped as to why I didn't, but then the viz was no worse then my dive on Friday (although there the difference was that we could see the green glow from the surface).
Still. Goes to show that 40m is still A Big Dive.
Janos
PS - I've attached a profile. The first peak (before the traingle) is where I realised we were inside for the first time. The pause thereafter (yellow triangle) is where Dan puts up his DSMB. Then we realise we're trapped before exiting and ascending.
The yellow triangle is where I went into deco, the blue diamonds are ascents that are a bit fast (this happens on every dive when I raise my arm to dump, but in this case was a bit fast as I was anxious to get up quickly). The green triangle is when I swapped to 80%.