Just a quick note as I'm at work and should actually be working
A bunch of us had an "interesting" day out of Brighton yesterday, I'm told we dived the Fortuna but to be honest it could have been any lump of metal, at 10 metres someone turned the lights out and with 3 of us pouring out maybe 50w of light within 3 feet of each other Vis at the bottom was about 1/2 a metre. Edward, Spacehopper and I dived as a 3, bumping into each other and maintaining very close contact for nearly 30 minutes. Despite the truly crap Vis it was a great dive, I was very relaxed and pleased with my air consumption, it was my first sea dive with my twins (indys) and I loved the way I still had 230 bar between the 2 cylinders by the time we were borderline deco and had to leave. This is when things went slightly wrong, Spacehopper and I had agreed that I would send up the blob for us, and Edward would come up under his own blob. So I faffed about about getting mine set, rising a little out of Edwards sight. Just as I had mine set there was a whoosh in front of me as Edwards blob shot up out of the gloom, snagged on my torch and lifetd me far faster than intended. With one hand I was desperately dumping air whilst with the other I was trying to untangle the blob I was caught on. I could hear my ears popping as I rose far too fast but managed to slow things down and untangle myself by about 7 metres and finally managed to stop myself at 4. Having left Spacehopper and Edward some way below me. After an easy pickup from Paul (nice deep lift and very efficient) I informed Paul that I'd had a fairly fast ascent and as my nose had started to bleed slightly I went onto O2 for the next 30 or 40 minutes. I didn't have any other symptoms and had no further issues that afternoon/evening but my thanks to everyone who attended to me, asked every 5 minutes if I could feel my legs, did all the 5 minute neuro tests etc and also carried my kit off the boat and into my car.
In truth I had a really great day, 1 chilled dive in crap vis but it was spent with a great bunch of people on a nice boat, that was well driven. I wasn't the only fast ascent either (someone elses story) Thanks to MJH for her sympathetic "huh, 2 fast ascents and neither of you bent
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, Thanks to Scubee, MJH, Uwila (thanks for trusting me with your torch), Jo, Spacehopper, Edward and everyone else on the boat for a great day.