Sometimes you have bad days, sometimes you have good days.

[Keith Whittaker]

A group of us went for dive yesterday morning at the Jerrat st wrecks in the Swan River, East Fremantle. A C19 Chinese junk and a few metres away a WWII Landing craft. Frequently a nice little bimble about, often good for photo ops with lots of fishlife and often some nice big cuttlefish.
Entry to this site is a stride entry from a small wooden jetty next to the Seascouts building.
As I stood on the jetty, fitting my fins and generally having a pre-dive zen moment, a small rubber ducky motored up and the driver looked up at us and asked "Are you guys going diving then?"
Much as I wanted to reply " No mate, we are trialling a new weightloss program by standing here and sweating our tits off!", I smiled and confirmed that Yes, diving was our aim.
" Great! Any chance that one of you could come over and me a hand afterwards, I've fouled the prop on my boat with a painter and can't move!", He said, indicating a cabin cruiser swinging from a mooring buoy 50m out.
"No worries!" say I, " Tell you what, I'll jump in and you tow me over there and i'll have look at your prop and then go for my dive afterwards"
Telling the others that i'd meet them on the wrecks, I did my giant stride entry and swam round to the front of his dinghy, reached up, grabbed hold of his bow and off we went.
Halfway across, as I looked up at the bow of the dinghy, something started to niggle at me.
"Hold on a minute, where has my dive computer gone?".
Sure enough, my nice shiny, nearly new, Oceanic Geo dive watch/computer was conspicuous by its absence from its usual place on my right wrist.
A quick look at the fouled prop, popped up and said to the boatowner, "can you cut the painter ?"
Snip!
Painter untwists itself, a sharp pull on one of the free ends and TaaDaa! all sorted.
"Magic, can you tow me back to the jetty please, i've got to go and search for my dive computer" I said, keen to get on with the really important things.
Back at the jetty, "OK, I entered here, so assuming that i lost it somewhere between here and midway to the mooring where i noticed it was missing. Start here, work outwards"
Down I descend.
Recent rain has turned the Swan river into the colour and visibility of stewed tea with a turbid halocline in the first 4m and a faie old current pushing me downstream towards the indian Ocean and ultimately Madagascar. On the bottom, Viz opens out to a couple of metres but orientation is difficult, Not all of the pilings on the jetty reach the bottom for some reason and , like a complete numpty, i forgot to take any sort of compass bearing so I am basically swimming around at random amongst the broken chairs, bottles, boots and general detritus that litters the bottom. Eventually I run short of air, i know the depth is relatively shallow but have no real idea of my run time so come up to find my buddies, Looking down on me wondering what on earth I am doing.
As i clamber up the ladder I explain my predicament and Jarred, who still has 100 bar left, kits up and jumps in to carry on the search.
From the vantage point of the jetty I can follow his progress and immediately notice that the current is pushing him downstream and away from the jetty.
All too soon, Jarred surfaces shaking his head and it appears that I must resign myself to the probable loss of a 600 buck computer.
Next day and I find myself in the lucky position of having the afternoon off work so I rush home, load my kit, get a fill and head back to the jetty.
It's a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky, 28 degrees with a gentle northerly breeze. One problem though, a Maritime training school is using the jetty and assorted 'tinnies' are buzzing around all over the shop, running 'bump and goes' against the jetty. No diving at the moment then. Okay then, this time i'll get my compass and wetnotes, sit on the jetty and write myself a proper search plan. Immediately a new problem shows up. My SK7 appears to be buggered, the card is stuck at an angle and attempting to take a bearing on one of the buoys give me a number of figures with a 90 degree variance!
Mrs W. turns up and I persuade her that what I would like as a belated birthday pressie is a new compass, so its off to the LDS and i'm soon the owner of a brand new SK6, ta very much.
Back to the Jetty, and by know the training school has shut up shop for the day. Quickly, i am kitted, have all the relevent bearings, a couple of reels, a plan and a sense of humour. Into the water I go!
This time the Viz is even worse and decending to the bottom in order to tie a line off to one of the pilings I am soon in a total 'green out', even at 5m it is dark and the only thing I can see, as i near the bottom is a bright and shiny sardine can sitting alone on the bottom amidst the murk. Using the can as a reference, I stop just above the bottom and turn on my torch.
There, a foot in front of me, all on its own, sits my computer. I can barely believe it! I must have scared every fish in the river with my joyous yell of "You little beauty!". None the worse for its day and a half immersion although it seems to have logged 3 seperate dives each at varying depths, ( the variance does not match the tide heights on this part of the river ?).

So what did I learn ?
1. Checking and rechecking the attatchment of ALL of your kit is a really good idea!
2. If you are going to search for something, take the time to make a plan that takes into consideration all the environmental variables.
3. It is always worth having a look!


My only question now is should I log the 3 minute dive or the 30 hour dive recorded on the computer ?

[Scubee]

Lucky you!
Was it bent?

[Keith Whittaker]

Originally Posted by Scubee

Lucky you!
Was it bent?

Apparently not. As far as I can tell it has a maximum dive duration of 9hrs 59mins which i think accounts for the multiple dives. I would still have expected it to be showing some sort of error condition after 30+hrs even at a depth of 5m, (approx where i found it), but nothing! I am going to have to sit down with the manual and see if i can figure out why not.

[MAKING BUBBLES]

know where your coming from with the computer doing a vanashing act.

mine happened mid water in dosthill quarry....my computer was saying 15m last time i looked knowing it was 20 to 22m below me....next time i looked no computer!!!

My buddy was close behind and actually saw it just slip of my wrist. Promptly he stopped me and informed of what had happened...with a few cant belive its not butter expressions i wrote on my slate to my buddy to catch kev up (our leader) in this 3 man dive.

He is the most experienced out of the 3 so he went on the search and recovery mission....while my other buddy and i stayed hovering at 15-16m with him giving me plenty of ok signals to comfort me of my lost child ....i mean computer waiting for kev to rise from the murk with it.......and by jo! he found it!!. Now any one who has dived dosthill knows the viz is a tad shite....on a good day!..so top man to my buddy leader.

after this i promptly made myself a lanyard...the sucker aint got away to date.

[Keith Whittaker]

Used to have a lanyard on my Gekko for this very reason but the Geo has a completely different strap arrangement with nowhere to attach one.
BTW, if anybody buys one of these computers I would recommend getting a different strap retrofitted 'cos the the supplied one is a piece of absolute crap. I'm off down to the watchmakers shop now to see what I can get.

[Captain Deco]

can you not put it in some sort of tech boot that allows you to attach it with bungee to your wrist?

I did this with my sunnto and it works a treat. I got mine from Nik-Naks on this forum.