[Freeflow]

Off to Stoney again for Dolphin diving with Steve, I’d rather have been trimix at Cheppy, but you can’t have everything. For this dive I was on a 42% mix through the 60 jet to lean the loop up in case we were off to the pit. With this combination the loop mix should be between 22 & 30%, just about enough for the pit. We decided instead to do a dive to the Cessna ledge, and I was to show Steve the wooden boat, which he had never seen. We were also to do the dive out at 20m, and return at the same depth, so Steve had his four tanks on, and I had the Dolph and a 7L sidemounted deco tank. The dive was also planned for deco, so the trusty Vytec was set on 21% for the Dolph and 50% for the deco. I usually dive with the computer set on 21%, but now I am homing in better on my vO2, and consequently getting more accurate loop calculations I will [hopefully] soon be able to start using a loop gas figure on the comp.

We swam down the road to 20m, headed to the BOP and over the pit keeping the wall to our right. By staying at 20m we were pretty much certain to find the 20m ledge. I’ve missed it before by staying too deep at this point, and as Steve was having to push four tanks through the water, the last thing he needed was for me to miss the stop. The vis on the ledge was pretty good at 10-12m. I found a small crayfish to annoy, which pleased me enormously. For the last couple of years the number of crayfish seems to have dropped off at Stoney, which is one of the only places the British crayfish is still found. The American Signal crayfish has taken over many of the White Clawed Crayfish habitats now, I just hope Stoney won’t be losing its population.

We hit the Cessna, and I navigated over to the barge and van, before heading back along the drop into the pit. As we neared the narrowing of the ledge there was a large cloud of silt. Steve and I felt out way through it as it looked like it might have been caused by a diver hitting the bottom, and although we [fortunately] didn’t find anything, or any body, the boat was out a few seconds later.

We made our way back around the pit, and ascended as I swapped onto my 50% deco mix and Steve used his 65% mix.

Suitably refreshed by the food hatch, and insulted by the girls in the shop again, we kitted up for dive 2. For this one I gave Steve a series of bearings to follow after we hit the Stanegarth, following a navigation exercise I planned years ago. The full course goes blockhouse-coach-Stanegarth-mini-chassis on rocks-helicopter, and takes about 40 min to complete. We found the anchor chain to the Stanegarth and pulled ourselves along it. Steve then set off on the course and made a good show of it, missing the mini by a couple of metres, the chassis by the same and the heli by about 6.

Dive 3 saw Steve on the Dolphin. Dropping in at the bus stop we went to the new APC, and down to 10m, along the wall and up to the Nautalis. Steve’s buoyancy was pretty good when he got going, the git, and we had half an hour in the water. I was diving a single 12 open circuit, much more relaxing than all that tech diving paraphanalia.

Dive data:

Dive 1:

61 min
23.8m

Depth 15.7 18.0 21.4 20.1 20.0 18.9
pO2 0.92 0.94 1.01 1.00 1.00 1.02
Loop % 35.8 33.6 32.2 32.2 33.3 35.3
vO2 0.56 0.74 0.84 0.76 0.75 0.60

SI 1h 59 min

21.6m
35 min

Depth 20.4
pO2 0.97
loop % 31.9
vO2 0.86

SI 1H 26 min

32 min
11.6 m