The Malteasers Trip - caution its a long one

[fatboy]

nice report foggy

[ScubaSue]

is there something you need to be telling me boys????????

- I have spies

[The Duck]

I'll let Foggy write his bit on the deep dives as I wasn't part of them - John & myself were off just enjoying the dives. I had fortunately done my deep dive earlier.

We did the diver lifts in Portland harbour plus practising sending up a yellow SMB. Now the diver lift was ... er, entertaining. Paul started, lifting Malcome, and he appeared to be doing really well, until the gas switch when things when a little wayward. Malcome then did the lift on me, and lets say it did not go that well. Finally I did the lift on Paul, it was not pretty and could have been done much better - but it worked. I over shot a bit on the gas whitch depth but got things under control, dropped back to the correct depth and did the (simulated [1]) gas switch. Then we ascended in a reasonably controlled fashion to the next stop depth and held it there.

So result - I passed!

Sending up the yellow - points to learned: DO keep the line of with the orange SMB (already deployed) taught and vertical. DON'T had off the reel/spool unless the person being handed off too knows exactly what to expect when you let go of the yellow. And finally, make sure you practise both with the kit and doing the procedures you plan to use.

On both the lift and firing the yellow SMB it's easy to say "oh, I'd do this" or "I'd do that" but it can turn out to be a whole new ball game when you do it for real.

[1] The mornings dive was on the Warrior II so rather than do the lifts on back gas we did them using our 50% deco gas - as the sea bed in the harbour was only 12m.