A Happy St. Janos Day - aka Brandy and Mince Pies off Nauticat

[swissdave]

Nice report Janos sounds like a good day was had by all, and thanks Howard for the report on what actually happened

[sexydivebuddy]

[Janos]

Originally Posted by Paul Oliver

Nice report, sounds like i missed a good day out I've not dived HMS Minion and it would have been nice to do.

If i remember correctly she was a decommissioned ship/destroyer that sunk under tow to the scrapyard. You should have seen some large round holes on the deck where the turrets were removed?

Yes!

The wreck was decided at the last minute, based on the viz, so I had not time to read up on here. But there were definitely large circular bits with big holes in the middle.

One thing I missed out from my report is that we got to see Steve's new boat. She's luvverly. Plenty of kitting up space (even more than the current Nauticat) and wet and dry covered areas.

Should be brilliant when she's finished.

Janos

[Andy the Coastie]

Originally Posted by Janos

Well today, as I'm sure you all know is St. Janos Day, and so I always try and go for a dive around this time.

The weather hasn't been kind to us these past few weeks, or even months - I've only been out to sea once since September! After last weeks storms I was a bit worried as to whether the St. Janos Day dive would be in a quarry, but things improved over the past few days and today the weather gods were smiling on us and a nice big fat lump of High Pressure meant low winds and flat seas today.

Viz reports (thanks to Paul Oliver, who went out of Brighton last Sunday) weren't great, and so once everyone on board (AndyP, true to form, arriving in the nick of time) we set off to the wreck of the HMS Minion, 12 miles straight out. This was clearly a more sensible decision than the wreck we'd pencilled in (the Nyon) which was 6 miles down the coast and 6 miles out.

We had a good group on board: myself, Howard the Dude, Mark Chase, Zak, Blanaid, Uri, Clare, Mark Emery, and Bob Cooper, not forgetting the grumpster himself - Andy P, and Callum P, who although not diving, has been on a few YD trips now and knows when to punch the Dude and when to tell him to shut up.

Where was I? Oh yes. On the way out I had a bit of a discussion with Clare about the O2 window, then a discussion with the Dude about Christmas and food. It was nice to meet Bob too, a man who's tanks I've seen many times in Amphibian being filled, but I'd never met the man before. He offered me a mince pie, so is definitely A Good Sort. But I declined as I wasn't feeling that hungry having scoffed a huge slice of pork pie for breakfast as I drove across from Dover, where my out-laws live.

So. On site we kitted up. Uri wasn't diving because he'd had a bit of trouble with his sinuses I think (and hadn't even brought his kit, but just came out for the ride) but he lent a huge hand to help me kit up [1].

Just then - disaster - Blanaid's OC reg decided to piss gas allover the place and she sensibly aborted the dive before it had even begun, and Howard, Mark, and Andy P jumped in as a kinky threesome.

Then it was Zak and my turn, and splosh. In we went. The water wasn't too cold, and my hands were warm enough in my tropical warm water gloves (the sort with the white Amara palm). We decended, meeting AndyP who was ascending, and after a brief bubble check we hit the wreck in 40m.

My initial impressions were a bit poor - the viz was only a couple of metres - and the wreck wasn't looking great, but once we'd moved away from the shot things looked up. The viz improved and the wreck got a lot more interesting. The Minion sits broadly upright in 40m to 45m. However she is in a sandbank, so the bows are quite proud, but as we moved off the seabed rose up to meet us. She is well broken up by the bow, so probably was in some sort of collision, but moving aft the wreck becomes more and more intact, and "shiplike".

I was in the number two position. Being shat on my Zak as he singleminded set off in a pursuit of lobsters. Actually, that's a bit unfair - he was a very attentive buddy. However, (with a little bit of help from me) he did manage to catch five lobsters. Three of which we released as they were in berry (and one only just so, so well done us for resisting the temptation) but the 5th and final one was massive - Zak reckons 12 pounds.

Driftin back along the wreck we saw Andy P, who had managed to fix his problems (his dil had freeflowed on entry) and was on his way to regroup with his team mates. We saw the DIR team a couple of times as well, and then we were back at the bow, where I had to blob up (why is it always me with Zak) and we decoed up.

This was my first proper dive with the Shearwater computer plumbed into my KISS and it behaved well. The only minor comment I have is that the TTS assumes that the diver will be using the same ppO2 throughout the ascent as is currently in the loop, so when I got to 30m or so, and my ppO2 was 0.9, and so the shearwater assumed that I'd be using 0.9 for the rest of the dive. As a result my TTS was a tad long at 56mins, but this dropped to 39 minutes when I brought my ppO2 back up. I guess it will be something that I get used to in time.

Zak had one or two cell problems just after we started the ascent, and the swearwords were initially high pitched, but the tone lowered as we ascended.

I was quite warm throughout most of the dive, but on my 6m stop I started to chill a little, and so I swam in circles gentlely around the reel. After completing one lap imagine my surprise to see Zak grinning at me whilst wearing a 2 ft Satan hat (ok it's a Santa hat but I like the typo). Clare has some surface pictures but they don't do it justice. In the water it wafted and waved like a demented snake!

Back on board Anyd dished out the promised brandy and mince pies, and then it was off to the pub for a drink or two and a discussion about what has been a throughly excellent St. Janos Day for me.

Thanks to all who were there, and please post the photos!

Janos


[1] - "Why Struggle" is my motto

A good report,,, however. MORE SALT WATER DIVING is needed and the fresh water ventures left until ya 80 years old and can't drive to the sea side.

[wreckweasel]

Originally Posted by Andy the Coastie

A good report,,, however. MORE SALT WATER DIVING is needed and the fresh water ventures left until ya 80 years old and can't drive to the sea side.

How many times <shakes head> you lot have to stop telling grandad where the cooking sherry is

It was a nice little bimble, that salty stuff gets everywhere though.... and theres no cheap red plonk waiting when you get out. Shocking.

[Mal Bridgeman]

Originally Posted by Janos

Just for info, here's my printout from the Shearwater.

Hi Janos,

It's an interesting graph. Is the "brown" part, the Shearwater's view of your "ceiling"? Does is have a last stop at 6m option?

TIA
Mal

[Janos]

Originally Posted by Mal Bridgeman

It's an interesting graph. Is the "brown" part, the Shearwater's view of your "ceiling"? Does is have a last stop at 6m option?

Well you know me. I like my graphs

The brown part is my deco ceiling (using 30/85 gradient factors). However you can see that we did a deeper stop (at 40 minutes) than the Shearwater's first stop. For the first lot of stops I stayed 3m deeper than the Shearwater was saying, letting my 18m stop clear when I was at 21m for example.

The Shearwater doesn't have a "last stop at 6m" option. But on a high setpoint (I was on pure O2 by this point) it doesn't make much difference, so I stayed at 6m until the Shearwater was clear. Popped down to 7m for a quick cell check, then ascended.

The green wiggly line is my ppO2. Remember this reflects the ppO2 recorded by the cells, not what is in my lungs, so some of the big spikes (eg at 62mins) are caused by pure diluent passing the cell faces when the Shearwater recorded the info.

Janos

[Mark Chase]

Hers my profile.

Deco ceiling in orange. Green line is set point PP02 (Unit not plumbed in yet).

Fuzzey line is ascent rate.



ATB

Mark Chase

[Juz]

Originally Posted by Mark Chase

Hers my profile.

Deco ceiling in orange. Green line is set point PP02 (Unit not plumbed in yet).

Fuzzey line is ascent rate.



ATB

Mark Chase

Mark,

What was the change to 0.65 PPO2 from 60 - 65 mins for?

Juz

[Bob Cooper]

Clare

Any pics. of that lobster...?

Bob