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So there we were, kit all ready to rock and role, tanks analysed at 24/15% Trimix and a booking for the Moldavia. Andrew is gagging for it as he missed a few dives when I went off to do my Tmix liveaboard and I am so cheesed off with work that I could do with a good dive to sort my head out.
Quick call to Defiant on the Monday afternoon and my worst fears are confirmed. The dive is called off.
The reason turns out to be lack of support not the weather so I spend three hours ringing around and finally get hold of Steve from Nuaticat out of Brighton who is doing the Ferry in 48m. Ideal for our mix. A lot of help from Steve and a few calls to Adventure Divers of North London and we are all booked to go.
Arrive Brighton at 7.10 for an 8.00 depart to find Andrews car (but no Andrew) and an empty boat. Strange me thinks. Steve finally turns up at about 7:45 and Andrew shows up too and it turns out the go is now 9.00 and the Ferry is off. Now I cant think why the Ferry is off because the sea is flatter than a flat thing but I know Andrew has to get away early and I note that Andrew and Steve turned up at about the same time. So me thinks he bribed the skipper to take them to a site closer to shore so he could make his connection later that afternoon.
Now I don’t know about you lot but when a planned dive is cancelled and a back up venue is provided I kind of expect the dive to be crap. By now the Adventure divers teem showed up. Andrew and I are sitting back having a ciggy watching the fun as our twin sets are all rigged up with two stages attached ready for us to sit in and go. Loads of kit arrives via the sweaty diver camel train and it is all too soon apparent whom we are diving with.
A Clampers. Whoops.
Not a twin set or a stage in site.
Now I have to say this surprised me as it was a 48m dive we had planned but the biggest rig on the boat was a single 15 of 28 nitrox and pony.
I looked at Andrew and suggested we got in first so as not to hold them up too much. At this point the skipper announced we would be diving the Nyon. What’s that? Said one of the lads,
‘ Is that Nylon as in the tights?’
‘As long as its not pants’ I replied
I looked to Andrew for a response to my razor sharp wit and was greeted with a look which bordered between ‘you pratt’ and coma.
The Nyon turns out to be a 5364 ton Swiss motor ship in 48m (listed in the book at 43m) standing between 10 and 14m proud so easily dived at 35-40m.
As per plan Andrew and I were first in. Our profiles are way off so it is decided to use an old 48m profile as back up and dive our computers. Andrew plans a 25% mix into his Vytec and I have the VR3 running 24/15 and the Vytec on gauge mode and my old 48m plan on the top page of my deco slates.
We drop on to the wreck and are pleasantly surprised to find about 10m viz. The shot was obviously on the stern section which is quite well broken up and we have a poke about before going exploring. Loads of broken china and glass was noted in this section and hundreds of photo slide frames. We followed the port side round to the stern and dropped of the deck (which was at about a 40 deg angle) and onto the sandy bottom at 48m. We were greeted with a massive shoal of bib under the stern and we swam through this to the rudder section and through where the propeller had been removed for salvage.
We then followed up the starboard side of the wreck where I chanced up on some dinner-sized crabs. Once the afore mentioned goodies were bagged we drifted up and followed some easy penetration points into the wreck. The last of these was a jagged gash in the side of the wreck which I looked into and noted some lovely anonomies and dead mans fingers. So in I went for a better look. I then happened upon a massive 18” long lobby. My eyes lit up and I went into hunter-gatherer mode. The size of the quarry even got Andrew excited and he joined me for the hunt. Lobby one was too well dug in but to my surprise and equally large loby appeared to my left. I made a grab for it and caught its left arm / claw. All hell broke loose and so did its arm and it sculled off towards Andrew. Andrew forgot him self for a second and made a grab for the monster but his hand recoiled at the size of the remaining claw and the Loby lived to fight another day.
I thought what a woos I have reduced its armaments by 50% and he still wont grab it.
We exited the room through a tight but do-able hole top left and continued around the port side of the wreck just above our first entry point. I thought I could see the end of the wreck and I finned over and checked my timer for the second time. 35mins had passed and it was nearly time to go. I tried to make the end of the wreck before bagging off but to my surprise it was not the end of the wreck at all just the end of the superstructure and I could see more of the vessel stretching away beneath me.
38mins dead and it was SMB time.
Now due to a strange set of events my 80% was in my travel gas bottle and my 32% was in my 80% bottle. This had worried me so much that I rigged the stages the night before with the tell tale regs. (yellow mouth guard on 80%) so as to avoid killing my self. I neglected however to take the D ring off the 80 tank and put it on the 32. So to use my main reel on the right set up I had to clip the reel off on my rear tank D ring.
Somehow during the dive the reel and SMB had flipped up and over the tank so when I slid my hand back along the tank it wasn’t there. I thought I had lost my self inflating blob and reel and was fafing about trying to find it when Andrew (who had already noticed this problem earlier in the dive) eventually stopped laughing and came over and untangled it all for me.
Note to self: get a D ring fixed to other stage
I blobbed off gas switched to 32% and set off the wreck bang on 41m. I followed a combination of the VR3 and the tables up to 6m. The VR3 showed no set stops between 21m and 9m so I ran the table stops of 2 @18m 15m and 4 @ 12m. At 9m the VR3 only gave 2mins of stops so I extended this to match the tables again at 5mins. At the 6m stop my tables said 22mins of stops and the VR3 said 13mins. This was OK as the dive had been a less than 40m for the last 20mins and the plan was for 46m. Andrew then broke the bad news that his Vytec was showing 30mins of stops. Partially this was because he was below me for a fair bit of the dive but mainly because his computer didn’t take the He into account. At this level it reduced deco by 5mins.
An extra 17mins’ was no big deal in the 19c water so we sat out the Vytec and used the last 10mins for the worlds slowest ascent from 6m
So total run time 98min’s
It shows how Andrew and I have progressed as divers that we didn’t bother to sit out the extra 2mins to get the 100. We have done this sort of sad git thing in the past.
Andrew and I were feeling good after a great dive but then we got back on the boat.
All the other divers were coffee finished and dressed. We later found out that they had done between 15 and 18min bottom times with 6mins deco and were back on the boat to a man before we had even finished our bottom time. When they saw our SMB’s go up they were flabbergast at the next hour of waiting for us to surface.
Full marks to Adventure divers they didn’t say a harsh word and even went on to invite us on their next trip. The Moldavia?
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I could bitch and moan about Andrew asking me to take a FEW bits of kit home by which he meant everything including the twin set (no stages) and me having to drag it all up the ramp coz he got off the boat between dives or about the drift that followed in the afternoon because it was pants apart from the big cuttle fish but I wont. The Nyon was a top dive and firmly in my top ten for 2003.
It was one of those unexpected pleasures in life
ATB
Mark Chase
So there we were, kit all ready to rock and role, tanks analysed at 24/15% Trimix and a booking for the Moldavia. Andrew is gagging for it as he missed a few dives when I went off to do my Tmix liveaboard and I am so cheesed off with work that I could do with a good dive to sort my head out.
Quick call to Defiant on the Monday afternoon and my worst fears are confirmed. The dive is called off.
The reason turns out to be lack of support not the weather so I spend three hours ringing around and finally get hold of Steve from Nuaticat out of Brighton who is doing the Ferry in 48m. Ideal for our mix. A lot of help from Steve and a few calls to Adventure Divers of North London and we are all booked to go.
Arrive Brighton at 7.10 for an 8.00 depart to find Andrews car (but no Andrew) and an empty boat. Strange me thinks. Steve finally turns up at about 7:45 and Andrew shows up too and it turns out the go is now 9.00 and the Ferry is off. Now I cant think why the Ferry is off because the sea is flatter than a flat thing but I know Andrew has to get away early and I note that Andrew and Steve turned up at about the same time. So me thinks he bribed the skipper to take them to a site closer to shore so he could make his connection later that afternoon.
Now I don’t know about you lot but when a planned dive is cancelled and a back up venue is provided I kind of expect the dive to be crap. By now the Adventure divers teem showed up. Andrew and I are sitting back having a ciggy watching the fun as our twin sets are all rigged up with two stages attached ready for us to sit in and go. Loads of kit arrives via the sweaty diver camel train and it is all too soon apparent whom we are diving with.
A Clampers. Whoops.
Not a twin set or a stage in site.
Now I have to say this surprised me as it was a 48m dive we had planned but the biggest rig on the boat was a single 15 of 28 nitrox and pony.
I looked at Andrew and suggested we got in first so as not to hold them up too much. At this point the skipper announced we would be diving the Nyon. What’s that? Said one of the lads,
‘ Is that Nylon as in the tights?’
‘As long as its not pants’ I replied
I looked to Andrew for a response to my razor sharp wit and was greeted with a look which bordered between ‘you pratt’ and coma.
The Nyon turns out to be a 5364 ton Swiss motor ship in 48m (listed in the book at 43m) standing between 10 and 14m proud so easily dived at 35-40m.
As per plan Andrew and I were first in. Our profiles are way off so it is decided to use an old 48m profile as back up and dive our computers. Andrew plans a 25% mix into his Vytec and I have the VR3 running 24/15 and the Vytec on gauge mode and my old 48m plan on the top page of my deco slates.
We drop on to the wreck and are pleasantly surprised to find about 10m viz. The shot was obviously on the stern section which is quite well broken up and we have a poke about before going exploring. Loads of broken china and glass was noted in this section and hundreds of photo slide frames. We followed the port side round to the stern and dropped of the deck (which was at about a 40 deg angle) and onto the sandy bottom at 48m. We were greeted with a massive shoal of bib under the stern and we swam through this to the rudder section and through where the propeller had been removed for salvage.
We then followed up the starboard side of the wreck where I chanced up on some dinner-sized crabs. Once the afore mentioned goodies were bagged we drifted up and followed some easy penetration points into the wreck. The last of these was a jagged gash in the side of the wreck which I looked into and noted some lovely anonomies and dead mans fingers. So in I went for a better look. I then happened upon a massive 18” long lobby. My eyes lit up and I went into hunter-gatherer mode. The size of the quarry even got Andrew excited and he joined me for the hunt. Lobby one was too well dug in but to my surprise and equally large loby appeared to my left. I made a grab for it and caught its left arm / claw. All hell broke loose and so did its arm and it sculled off towards Andrew. Andrew forgot him self for a second and made a grab for the monster but his hand recoiled at the size of the remaining claw and the Loby lived to fight another day.
I thought what a woos I have reduced its armaments by 50% and he still wont grab it.
We exited the room through a tight but do-able hole top left and continued around the port side of the wreck just above our first entry point. I thought I could see the end of the wreck and I finned over and checked my timer for the second time. 35mins had passed and it was nearly time to go. I tried to make the end of the wreck before bagging off but to my surprise it was not the end of the wreck at all just the end of the superstructure and I could see more of the vessel stretching away beneath me.
38mins dead and it was SMB time.
Now due to a strange set of events my 80% was in my travel gas bottle and my 32% was in my 80% bottle. This had worried me so much that I rigged the stages the night before with the tell tale regs. (yellow mouth guard on 80%) so as to avoid killing my self. I neglected however to take the D ring off the 80 tank and put it on the 32. So to use my main reel on the right set up I had to clip the reel off on my rear tank D ring.
Somehow during the dive the reel and SMB had flipped up and over the tank so when I slid my hand back along the tank it wasn’t there. I thought I had lost my self inflating blob and reel and was fafing about trying to find it when Andrew (who had already noticed this problem earlier in the dive) eventually stopped laughing and came over and untangled it all for me.
Note to self: get a D ring fixed to other stage
I blobbed off gas switched to 32% and set off the wreck bang on 41m. I followed a combination of the VR3 and the tables up to 6m. The VR3 showed no set stops between 21m and 9m so I ran the table stops of 2 @18m 15m and 4 @ 12m. At 9m the VR3 only gave 2mins of stops so I extended this to match the tables again at 5mins. At the 6m stop my tables said 22mins of stops and the VR3 said 13mins. This was OK as the dive had been a less than 40m for the last 20mins and the plan was for 46m. Andrew then broke the bad news that his Vytec was showing 30mins of stops. Partially this was because he was below me for a fair bit of the dive but mainly because his computer didn’t take the He into account. At this level it reduced deco by 5mins.
An extra 17mins’ was no big deal in the 19c water so we sat out the Vytec and used the last 10mins for the worlds slowest ascent from 6m
So total run time 98min’s
It shows how Andrew and I have progressed as divers that we didn’t bother to sit out the extra 2mins to get the 100. We have done this sort of sad git thing in the past.
Andrew and I were feeling good after a great dive but then we got back on the boat.
All the other divers were coffee finished and dressed. We later found out that they had done between 15 and 18min bottom times with 6mins deco and were back on the boat to a man before we had even finished our bottom time. When they saw our SMB’s go up they were flabbergast at the next hour of waiting for us to surface.
Full marks to Adventure divers they didn’t say a harsh word and even went on to invite us on their next trip. The Moldavia?
I could bitch and moan about Andrew asking me to take a FEW bits of kit home by which he meant everything including the twin set (no stages) and me having to drag it all up the ramp coz he got off the boat between dives or about the drift that followed in the afternoon because it was pants apart from the big cuttle fish but I wont. The Nyon was a top dive and firmly in my top ten for 2003.
It was one of those unexpected pleasures in life
ATB
Mark Chase
