Afric and Silver Laurel with SWM

[Digger]

Well this weekend saw me off to join the divers from South West Mafia, some friends from here, others who drop in from time to time.

Friday night I arrived at Mr C's place for a quick beer and to talk bollocks for a bit. Both completed successfully, we hit the sack to get a decent night's sleep before the dives to come.

The Afric is a White Star Liner, and a nice one at that. Divernet has articles on the wreck which can give you a rundown on the history and the shape of it much better than I could. The shrouded liner, Afric - DIVERNET from Diver Magazine

I was diving with young Padowan, Simon Powell, who I had buddied up with as a known quantity on these dives. They were deep dives and I wanted to know I could trust my buddy. I could, and he did a sterling job of keeping me alive throughout.

Now the skipper laid down something of a challenge when he told us on day one that the fastest he'd had the shot tied in to the wreck and the bag sent up was 5 minutes from leaving the surface. We looked at each other and knew we could beat it. We dropped as fast as we could, hit the bottom of the shot, but it was a few metres away from the wreck. Simon was first down and had hit it first, and was presently dragging the shot back to the wreck site. I hit the bottom and started looking for something to tie off to, but there was nothing! We seemed to be up against a flat side of the wreck with nothing to tie on to or even snag the shot on! Eventually I found a small hole which I could thread the waster through and tie in. I tied on to the shot while Simon sent up the bag to let the surface know to unleash the fury of the rest of the team. We hit 7 minutes. Bugger. Well, we had another chance the next day, so at least after all that faffing we were only 2 mins behind the pace!

We drifted off, no need to line off in this viz, it must have been 10m and still very light. We spend the majority of the dive at around 70-75m, after having retrieved the shot from slightly deeper! There are a lot of nets on the Afric, and I was very cautious about getting caught up. Most are draped across the top, and it has obscured many of the features of the wreck. No great worry, I was just happy to be down here enjoying a relaxing dive with low END and seeing my mates do the same.

We returned to the shotline easily enough (well, easily enough for Simon, it as further away than I remembered, but ho hum, he knew what he was doing!) and started our ascent. We had been down just short of 30 minutes, and we had a long time to the surface. I was expecting a 2 and a bit hour dive, which was fine in these temperatures. Balmy and clear. Coming off the wreck I ascended slowly, following the profile from the VR3, but also adding in some more time in the deeper section of the curve. Unfortunately the VR3 didn't like this, nor was it being very nice about the large amounts of helium in the mix. The time to surface wasn't coming down as fast as it should, and when I hit the shallower stops it was clear I was going to be in the water fo a while. I knew I was clear, but the VR3 wanted me to stay in. Had it been cold or difficult, or had we been in an area of significant traffic I'd have come up and just bent the VR3, but as it was we had all the time in the world. And we had to dive the next day and I didn't want to get penalised for missing stops.

We all bagged off at 6m to let the skipper know we were there, John was filming and I understand saw the moment of amusement when I cracked the bottle on the buddy bag only to find it empty. I sent it up with my bailout reg, but it's never pretty when everyone's watching! Ho hum, it went up, I didn't. That's a successful bag fire in my opinion, and I'm probably a bit self-critical as always!

I surfaced after 170 minutes, 10 minutes short of the big 3 hours. It had been a great dive, and I saw no reason not to stay and clear the computer. Simon's first test on the pee valve failed, much to my amusement, so he had got out, and Chris stayed with me through an extra half an hour of stops he didn't need to do. Nice guy, and amused me greatly by falling asleep on deco. Seriously, he fell asleep. Someone later said they wished they were relaxed enough to fall asleep, he obviously was. He woke up pretty sharply when he dropped down a bit!!!

Unfortunately I got back on the boat to be told one of our divers wasn't in great shape. I came back on board to see him looking a little the worse for wear in the wheelhouse, on O2 and being dealt with by the other divers on board. Having seen the response, I'm far more comfortable that if anything ever happened to me, I'd be in good hands. In came the helicopter, off he went, and we all relaxed a lot knowing he was in the best hands he could be at the DDRC. We later were told he had improved massively, and would be ok. A big relief.

A nice evening and a barbecue was only spoilt by knowing one of our number wasn't there, but we got through with the usual sense of humour.

Next morning it was raining, and there had been some discussion on the boat, as we had been due to go to the Flying Enterprise. As it was it would have been a very long day, the weather wasn't perfect, and we had plans to hit another local wreck, as we had news on some new toys that might be still on her.

This time we dropped fast, as before, and I got down to find Simon starting to tie in. I came down and told him to fire tha bag while I finished the job, which I did. The bag went up, we were smug. We knew it was fast. Apparently, but I reckon it was faster, the bag hit the surface at 4 minutes 50s. We were fastest, but the bag left the bottom at 3 minutes, if not before. Stewards enquiry later on revealed no-one really cared.

We swam off and realised we were on a great wreck. Everything was there, it was several metres proud, and it was spectacular. We swam round the back end, the propellor I'd joked about lifting was clearly not going to get lifted by us, or by anyone else going on the size of that thing. Each blade was the length of my car I reckon, and the whole thing was very well secured!

We came around, and I saw Simon drop into a hole. He seemed to be fighting with something, I thought it was a lobster, but trying to light the area for him I relaised it was a porthole, complete, and that it was heavy. I also had a moment of "I hope that's not structural" when he pulled it, but he soon had it free and it was off to the surface to be picked up. So the tally was now 2 for the weekend, and we still had a fair bit of time to run within the plan. The wreck was slightly shallower, and there was plenty to explore in the superstructure. We agreed another 2 minutes and we'd get going, we'd seen enough for today. We were pootling along, and there it was. It looked loose, it was, so I pushed it. Porthole number three moved, then dropped. I had a hold of it, but realised I couldn't get it back through the hole it had coem out of, so it had to drop. Without being able to do much but fling it in the rough direction of an exit, I let it go. Simon wasn't far from where it fell, and soon saw me drop down to collect. This one was massively more heavy than the last, with glass in place and a fair bit of steel too. I didn't have a liftbag, and now neither did Simon. All I could do was drag it back to the shotline and hope some kind soul would help me out.

As I got back to the shot I saw a few other divers, and asked if they had bags. Before I could inervene there were 2 SMBs attatched, and off she went.

We ascended and stuck closely to the plan. 3 hours in the water is ok, but not twice in a weekend, and not when you've got 5 hours to drive home at the end of the day! Total runtime 120 minutes, with just short of 30 minutes bottom time we did 90 minutes of stops, this time I stayed with Chris as his computer cleared. No snoozing on this one.

Photo posted here on Southwest Mafia: http://www.southwestmafia.com/forums...ead.php?t=2038

Hope this has been of help. Some facts, names, places and boats have been changed so no-one gets into trouble

Digs.

Useful facts maybe:
Diluent leftover form last week 10/70 trimix.
Depth 80m and 70m roughly. VR3 is in the bag waiting to be cleaned!
Runtimes 170 min and 120 min.
Bottom times roughly 30 min on each.
Portholes - 3, and the glass from another one. No tools were used in the making of these dives.

[divegyrl]

Those were some long run times!
Three hours in the water is a looooong time! P-valve or no p-valve!
Nappies are rather more dependable than those things I'm thinking!
There was a rather funny thread on SWM last week about the trials & tribulations of p-valves attachments..........

Doing those depths in warm water in a wetsuit seem much more appealing although I know some people have problems 'going'

Glad to hear that the other diver is on the mend, hopefully he will be back in the water again soon

[Mark Chase]

Digger you are a poof

Simon then drove 250 miles, got home at midnight, got up at 3.30am and did three days of 140min run times with me

now he is hard core

and he dosent have to borrow lift bags to put up port holes ;D

Cracking report thow M8



ATB

Mark Chase