07.03.09 Despina with the lads. Still nothing.

I'm starting to get the feeling these boys are cursed as far as wreck diving is concerned. We dropped anchor on the Despina and it stuck on the third attempt. Our CCR team and one of the OC teams was in the water and my team was just about ready to get in when Volker told the news. We were drifting. Great.

We decided to dive anyway and descended down the line. We met the other teams on their way up and they signalled u to turn back. We ignored their advice and kept descending. I was expecting to see the bottom but instead found the anchor in eighty meters of water with the bottom nowere in sight. The anchor was held in mid water by cave line disappearing horizontally into the gloom. It was a strange sight. I asked my buddy what he wanted to do and we agreed to follow the cave line. We did this for a while but eventually the reality was that even if we found the wreck we'd have maybe a minute of bottom time left before having to turn back. I thumbed the dive and we headed back and started our long ascent to daylight. 

Simon and Volker had devised a deco station which made the wait a little bit more comfortbale. Actually a lot more comfortable. Thanks guys!

Simon was equally busy with Jorres CCR Mod 1 course today but still found the time to build us a proper shot line system and take care of our gases for tomorrow. Not sleeping too much me thinks.

06.03.09 Ulla with the lads. Three strikes.

05.03.09 Cueva del Agua with the lads. Final sifon.

We had an extremely nice and relaxed dive to the final sifon at 860 m in. We popped up to the second air space for a drink of water I had in my pocket and exited without drama. Run time was 128 minutes.

Our CCR friends, who stayed closer to the sink hole, had a bit of an epic. The mouth piece of one of the rebreathes had popped off the BOV and partially flooded the loop. The fellows sorted it out and exited without making a scene.

04.03.09 Stansfield with the lads. Uphill all day.

We have a CCR team from the East visiting and they were diving off the Deep Impact RIB. So my friends and I were to dive with  an identical chartered RIB which ended up not going anywhere as its engine was dead. Anyhow we were taken out with another boat. A lot bigger but also slower and more prone to rolling in weather. Naturally the weather was sour and we ended up riding out in increasingly heavy seas.

Finally, after some extremely strange events, we were on the shot line of the Stansfield. We kitted up and entered in two teams of two, my team first. The dive itself was splendid and we ended up clocking a little under an hour of deco. The deco was uneventful until at ten meters I felt some odd movement on the line. I first thought that it was just the waves, but realized I was wrong when the rope started accelerating away from me. Not just up but also horizontally away. Apparently it was cut from the bottom and I decided to send a bouy to the surface. That's when I realized my reel was on the boat. Luckily my friend had a Pathfinder which we used to send a marker on the surface and finished our deco. I was a little worried about the other team as they would propably have still been on the wreck when the line was cut.

We made the final slow ascent to the surface and woke up to the seriousness of the situation. The wind had picked up and the waves were big. We were 12 km off the coast with no sign of the boat. "Oops...." said my friend sarcastically and remarked that it didn't look good. He was correct. We had a chat abot what to do and decided to make a swim for one of the buoys we could see maybe 400m away. It ended up being pretty much impossible with the wind and waves against us, and us loaded with twin eighteens plus two stage tanks. We had been swimming for about twenty minutes when my frined spotted the SMB:s of the other team. The situation felt a little less grim but the dive boat would have been  a more welcome sight. I was going throught the potential outcomes of the situation and was getting mentally prepared to spending a very long time floating out at sea, waiting for rescue. The realization of being able to do absolutely nothing is really quite sobering. Then my friend spotted the boat. It was just a speck in the horizon, downwind from us. Elated by this we switched on our primary lights and started signalling. Sure enought the skip saw us and took a course towards us. I checked the surface time from my computer and we had sent just over half an hour on the surface. Quite a short time in reality, but it felt a lot longer just  a few minutes earlier. 

The boat arrived in maybe ten ot fifteen minutes and we handed our stage tanks to the skip. From there it was a matter of trying not to get mangled by the pitching and rolling swimming platform while trying to climb onboard with our heavy rigs. In the end we wereout of the water and theother team had just surfaced. We picked them up and told them about our dive. They were totally oblivious of the boat going missing and just happy to head to port from the rough seas.

As all rough trips this one too came to an end. We unloaded our kit into the diving center and headed to Paddywacks for a hearty meal and some drinks.

03.03.09 Cueva del Agua with the lads.

02.03.09 They're here!

After a long wait my Gavin scooter finally arrived athe diving center. As did my new twin eighteens.  Not to mention the group of friends who were here for some cave diving and deep wrecks. This should be good!

19.02.09 Another one steps into liquid

My friend Mikkis is visiting from Finland and he has now been introduced to lure of the deep. We did a relaxed try dive with him next to the light house in Cabo de Palos.

14.02.09 Bajo de Piles and La Laja with Sampsa.

9.2.09 Wooden wrecks, mines and ice.

I've spent just over a week in Finland diving the Ojamo mine and some wrecks in the Baltic between Sweden and Finland off the Island of Åland. Ojamo was great. We did six really nice dives on the 40 and 28 meter levels with some friends. The conditions were pretty harsh especially for someone used to the nice warm conditions of the Mediterranean. Water temperature in the mine was between two and four degrees with surface air temperatures droppin all the way down to -18. We were pushing two dives a day with 100 min max run times. It was bitterly cold despite the electrically heated vest I was wearing. Ascending from one dive I actually had to break the ice cover from below as the hole had frozen over during our time. 

Åland was no less forgiving. We dived the wooden wrecks of Plus and Helge. Water temperature was even colder than Ojamo and the deck of our boat kept being snowed over on the first day. Luckily we had an extremely good crew who were constantly sweeping offf the snow, helping us with our kit and serving us hot drinks after and between dives. They had aso arranged for us to have lunch of local delicacies at an old pilot station just at the edge of the archipelago. It was truly magical.

My friends hopped on the ferry to Helsinki yesterday, but I headed the opposite direction with my buddy Paco. We arrived in Stockholm, Sweden this morning and Paco headed for another port to catch a ferry back home. I had a meeting in town after which I headed west to Västerås to meat my good friend Per. He had setup something special. I got the opportunity to dive the Sala silvermine. Per had setup everything beautifully. Unfortunately he was recovering from a cold and couldn't dive. Nevertheless we packed up his car and headed for Sala where my dive team to be was already waiting. 

The Sala setup is pretty impressive. The mine was active from 1480 to 1908, so it's big. It's also very diverse with everything from small toght passages to huge chambers. A lot of old mining stuff is still scattered around the tunnels and rooms. 

Our journey began with taking a mining elevator 155 meters below the surface. Exiting the elevator was already a trip in itself. Water rushing down the elevator shaft, dim mine lighting, tight tunnels, cold damp rock. The place was absolutely fantastic and the diving was equally mind blowing. I wish I had had my camera with me as words don't do justice to the place. I will not even try to describe it any further.

Well all good things must come to an end, and this trip too is drawing to the inevitable. I'll make a brief stop in Helsinki before heading back home to Spain.

29.01.09 The freezer

21.01.09 Instructor course, final academics with Simon and Mark.

I did final dive planning academics with Mark after which he did the exam and passed his test. Which means that I passed mine too. There it is.

Simon Townsend deserves a huge thankyou for excellent tuition, a flexible schedule and for going the extra mile of setting me up with a proper student. Additional thanks go to Mark, with whom we will without a doubt be diving soon, and Kexy for the pool session.

20.01.09 Instructor course, open water session with Simon and Mark, again.

19.01.09 Instructor course, open water session with Simon and Mark.

I had another open water session with Simon and Mark. Things are getting better and I'm getting more confident. However it was still tense making Mark do the skills but he's a trooper and pulled though like a champ.

18.01.09 Cueva del Agua with Mike. The dark side gets hazy.

After spending three days off diving I was back to the cave. Mike and I had a plan to head back to the end and explore some of the paths less traveled and hopefully find something to lay a line in. We planned a triple stage dive with a runtime of around three hours. We were both on closed circuit caching full stage tanks on the line so we would have plenty of time. The first cache was planned to be at 520 m on "The Ridge" and the second cache a hundred meters further in at around the intersection to "The Rat Hole" and "Paso Cartagena". We were planning to go to the back through "The Rat Hole" and exit through "Paso Cartagena" and thus didn't want to cache anything further in. The plan was to continue light on a single bailout tank (plus my back gas obviously) and go no further than 350 m in from the second cache.

We hauled all the gear down to attack position in the sink hole and went throught the predive checks and procedurs on our units on topside by the cars. Mike was on his Inspo and I was on the AH-1. A local guy stopped by to gawk at our equipment and remind us of the people who died in the cave. Everything was working and we were in good spirits when we descended to the edge of the water down into sinkhole. Another couple was observing and encouraging us as I stepped over the lip and into the water. I love that moment of stepping into liquid. Stepping into another world of silence, weightlessness and the cool soothing water. Eternal darkness beckoned.

I did not feel exactly weightless after clipping on my three 11l alis. I was heavy and wishing that I could ditch some of the tanks earlier. I was slow getting all my stuff together and Mike was waiting patiently as I finally switched on my light, grabbed the reel and exchanged descend signals with Mike. I tied in the primary and secondary wraps and laid the jump line to the mainline without incident. I did have a minor nagging feeling of something being a bit off but shrugged it off as the heaviness of the rig and continued down the main line placing a line arrow just before the intersection of the "Climbing Tunnel" . Visibility was good. 

I placed a peg on the Y-junction and continued towards "R2". I felt a minor pain on my right foot and pulled on my Jetfin to make it sit a bit nicer, which helped. That nagging feeling would not go away. I was continuously monitoring the unit. Gas was being injected and dumped, PPO2 was good. What was wrong? I felt a little woozy and at some point and switched the BOV to OC for a reality check. I didn't feel any different so I switched back to loop. I still felt a little woozy and actually passed below the mainline at the end of the big room which I never do. That should have been the time to realize it was not going well. 

Being stupid I pushed further in and sloppily passed through R2 propably leaving a massive silt trail behind me. For the first time ever through R2 I didn't bother marking our exit route, but instead kept pushing further in without thinking. Looking back it's all so blatantly obvious that something was wrong, but target fixation and hypercapnia had taken over my brain. I started feeling really dizzy and stopped, hitting the BOV to OC. We were around 300 m in I think and I was hovering over the line breathing back gas through my BOV. I started feeling a little better and did a heliturn to face Mike. I gave him the "Problem" signal followed by the "Narked" signal. I think Mike said "Okay!" into his loop. I signalled the turnaround but there was some confusion and we didn't start heading back before a few hand signals back and forth. I think Mike maybe wanted to in front to make sure he wouldn't lose me in case things got worse. 

In the end he started back towards the sinkhole and I followed. Breathing the back gas I started feeling better and decided to switch back to loop. Breathing the loop I started to feel worse again and decided to do what I was supposed to and exhale every third breathe through my nose, thus flushing the hypercapnic mix out. I felt a little dizzy and switched back to OC on the BOV. I was also suspicious of my drive gas in the stage tank and decided to check that too on the way out. I switched from the BOV to OC on my drive gas and all was good. I stayed on that mix all the way out reeling our jump line in on the way. I had a minor headache but we surfaced safely, hauled and stripped our gear and went for some lunch obviously discussing the reason of the incident.

I had a chat about this with Simon and we came to the conclusion that my CO2 production would have been very high on the previous dive due to the high workload. This would have caused the absorbent to be consumed faster than on a relaxed dive. I had calculated that I had enough hours on the scrubber to make the dive but in fact it was close to being spent and was depleted during our cave dive.

14.01.09 Instructor course, open water skills with Simon. Mike and Kexy exploring a deep one.

Reviewing the instructor skills from DVD as "kindly" suggested by Simon had buoyed my confidence and the open water drills went a lot better than in the pool.

On a more interesting note, Mike and Kexy were off looking for the bell of the Marie Dolores. Mike reports:

Marie Delores Jan 14th 2009 by Mike

The wind was blowing N W offshore at about 14knts, not ideal. However the forecast was for it to drop of to about 3 knots by late afternoon. We briefly discussed possibly putting the dive of till the next day. Kexy was due to leave the following evening so we decided to give it a try. We decided that our best chance of getting the anchor to hold was to head into the weather across the wreck about 20-30m then drop the anchor and drift back over it.

The ride out was uneventful, not to bumpy, as the wind was behind us.  The plan with the anchor worked a treat and it stuck first time. Makes a change on these deeper wrecks.

We dropped down and the viz was not looking to promising, Kexy switched from her travel to back gas around 50m. We then continued down and it got darker and the viz got worse. The wreck appeared out of the gloom at about 99m, so the viz was poor as the deck is at 101m. Immediately greeted by a huge lobster, they are everywhere on this wreck. We had actually landed exactly were we wanted to be at the fo’c’s’le. The anchor was hanging over the starboard side, and as agreed, I signaled to Kexy and dropped down to prep the lift bag.

We had planned a 20 min run time, prior to starting our ascent and we were now 10 minutes into the dive. We swam up onto the deck on the fo’c’s’le  and started our hunt for any artifacts, well, actually we were` looking for the bell. The viz was poor and our HID’s lit up only a small area. Well that’s my excuse as all we found was a lot more lobsters. Anyway at 19 min run time we nade our way back to the anchor I inflated the lift bag slightly and took the anchor across to the port side, then dropped it once we were clear.

The trip back to the sunlight was uneventful.

My dive plan was down using GAP software and the buhlmann algorithm with a 30-85 gradient factor at 110m 13 min’s and I had set up my vision to run using this gradient factor, my deco plan was running about 10 min’s behind. on the VR3 and 15 min’s on the vision. With about 30 min/s to go Kexy signaled she still had 79 min’s to go, I assumed I had misunderstood and that she had actually signaled 29 min’s, no. When the time had come for me to leave and head back to some hot coffee, she still had 45 min’s to go.

At this stage I fell in love with my inspiration all over again. Managed to drop my compass while getting my gear off. Still at least it wasn’t one of the stage tanks……

13.01.09 Instructor course, pool session with Simon and Kexy.

It's still cold. We continued my instructor course with the pool sessions. Kexy was kind enough to play student for me and Simon was observing. It was awkward as they were both experienced instructors and I was fumbling with a year being passed from me doing these skills on my Divemaster course. Well I scraped throught most of it and after freezing for an hour and a half we called it quits and left for the center.

On a positive note my Gavin 33Ah DPV is paid for and should be on its way to Spain in a week or two.

12.01.09 Instructor course, academics with Simon.

Despite the beautiful weather it's coooooooooold! Riding in on my motorbike made me miss my Weezle Extreme undersuit. Anyhow, the dive center was bustling as Mike and Kexy were setting up for a cave dive, Volker was chatting away on his phone and Simon.......being Simon. This was all good, as it has been long since anything has happened and I was happy to be finally starting my instructor course.

After Mike and Kexy left for Cueva del Agua we started with the academics with Simon. It was good fun as courses with Simon usually are. We had a quick lunch and the cave divers returned safe and sound after a nice dive. We got most of the classroom stuff done and will hopefully continue with the pool exercises tomorrow.

29.12.08 Carbonero with Hosse. Fishfood.

The weather was nice and calm but we rode out in old rollers. It was suprisingly rough despite the fact that there was no wind. Anchoring was a bitch as there was a heavy current running. The direction of the waves made it even more confusing as there was a 40 degree angle between them. On the third try and a involving pretty cunning manouver I got the anchor to stick. Finally.

We started getting geared up and planned for under a half hour of bottom time. Suddenly Hosse threw up over the pontoon of the boat. I was pretty concerned. He told me that he was okay and that he always throws up onboat dives before diving. Hard core. Anyhow we continued kitting up discussing the stupidity of wreck diving. Who in their right mind would waste their time bobbing around on a RIB, getting kitted up to see some old piece of junk when there are beautiful caves in the area. I pretty regularily decide that it's my last wreck dive but this time I had a partner in crime who was sharing my thoughts.

Unfortunately Hosse got worse and in the end had to cancel his dive. I dropped in solo to recover the hardware from the bottom. The current was running strong and the vis was appaling. I decided to leave my stage tank with bottom gas behind, and descended with just and oxygen tank, driving the unit from my back gas. I kept going through the routines of checking my gauges and kept descending. All was good, everything was working except that I was a little hot because I had a 200 undersuit.

Eventually the dark hulk of the Carbonero materialized before my eyes as I was almost on the deck. I had a look at my gauges and all was good. I checked my bearings and decided that I was on the stern part. Following the line I hoped that the anchor was on the deck. No such luck. Instead it was on the bottom, with the chain snaking through the beams protruding from the broken section of the hull. To make things even better, it was on the side where the old trawl net is. It couldn't be much worse. I had a moments thought about the situation and remembering our problems with the anchoring in the first place I came to the conclusion that if I freed the chain and the and the anchor, the current would pull me off the wreck and out of harms way. Well hat was the plan anyway.

I descended further to the chain and being extra careful not to get entangled in the trawl net that was flapping in the current started pulling the anchor chain out of the bowels of the wreckage. It ws harder that I thought and I ended up having to wait for a low in the rollers toget enough slack to pull the chain out of the jaws of the wreck. Finally it was free and I was still in free water. I must admit that the trawl net was pretty intimidating though. I dropped to the seabed to have a look at the anchor. It was solidly stuck behind some metal sheets. I took an SMB out of my pocket andconnected to the eyelet of the anchor. I left the securing bungey cord on it andtested if the anchor would pull free. It didn't.

I checked my gauges and realized that I was well into deco now. I had to get this thing sorted and leave before the seasick swede went unconscious on the bobbing RIB. I jiggled the anchor whenever I had some slack ont he chain and suddenly it popped free. That's when all hell broke loose. I was on the down current side of the anchor and it was dragged along the seabed. It bellowed up a clowd of silt and vis was gone. I could feel myself moving inside the silt cloud until I was suddenly jerked to a stop.  The trawl net.

The current had pulled tha anchor chain and myself with the anchor down tha side of the ship and into the trawl net. I considered for a second to reach for my cutters, but remebering how badly they work with anything thinner thana pencil I decided they would be of no use. Insted I started removing the strands one by one from my instruments and the anchor. I got my arm free and immediately was pulled further down. I was still stuck. Actually, it wasn't me that was stuck but the anchor that I was holding on to. Time was ticking but I couldn't face myself having to explain about cut anchor ropes and leaving stuff behind on a frequently dived wreck. So I continued removing the net one strand at a time from the anchor and suddenly popped free. During the entanglement I had been pulled to maybe five meters off the bottom by the boat and suddenly plummeted back to the bottom with the now free anchor. I decided not to dick around with the lift bag and instead inflated my wing to gain positive lift off the bottom. I was huffing and puffing from the work load and had no idea what my rebreather was doing. I had my hands full and didn't want to worry about the unit so I closed the loop and switched to my trusty Apeks second stage. I was suprised that there was not a significant decrease in WOB and after checking my gauges switched back to loop. I was swet clear off the wreck with the hardware. I let go of the anchor and dumped gas out of my wing.

I finally got a bit of a breather in my first deep stop and actually started to have a look at what kind of deco plan I was looking at. Nothing too bad in the end. Two deepstops and ten minutes on oxygen. Obviously I added a couple of deco stops and padded the oxygen stops due to the heavy workload at the bottom. After a very slow ascent from 4 meters I finally surfaced. The wind had picked up  and there was no sign of Hosse. I called for him and still nothing. After a minute or so, to my great relief, he crawled to the side of the RIB and OK:d. I clipped my oxygen tank to the current line and then swam to the back of the boat and climbed on board.

Hosse was in a bad way. He had actually lost consciousness briefly. I quickly stripped out of gear, started the boat and blasted back to port. The ride back was sweet, because we were going with the huge rollers instead of against them. Hosse was lying on the botto of the boatbut finally recovered in the channel.

We both agreed on cave diving being a much better form of aquatic exploits and went for a huge lunch.

28.12.08 Cueva del Agua with Hosse. Twice again.

26.12.08 Cueva del Agua with Hosse. Trouble.

23.12.08 Cueva del Agua with Hosse. Twice

13.12.08 Deep Impact Eplorers. We have a flag.

I finally got a round to designing the DIE logo. Here it is:

Pretty ain't it...?

8.12.08 Carbonero did not happen.

I was looking forward to diving the Carbo again. I was setup for diving with three stage tanks for the extra hassle. This would have also been the chance to test my cool new leash Per gave me. Well it didn't happen as I spent the previous night thowing up and trembling under covers in a fever. Well I'm off the shrimps for good.

Anyhow I did manage to drop by to say bye to Simon who would head back to islands. He also handed me my course test which I need to fill out at some point. Five pages and not a single Yes/No question?! Dude, gimmie a break.....

Then again assumption is the mother of all fuckups so it pays to do your homework.

5.12.08 Carbonero with Simon. Getting there.....

Well another proper dive on the rebreather. Everything went according to plan on the predive operations. On the surface I switched from back gas to stage gas and we dropped down the line to find the wreck at 44 m. The anchor was lying next to the wreck, but it was pretty calm so there was no need to start working with it except for Simon connecting a liftbag to it. We ascended past the railing and onto the deck in a gentle current.

The dive itself was pretty standard. We saw the big conger and I made a small penetration into the area around the smokestack. I expected Simon to follow me and thinking that he was not packing a light I unclipped one of my backups and held it out behind me for him to grab. He never took it so  I looked back and saw his bubbles. I stowed the light back to my harness and made a small turn inside. I  exited the same way I went inand grouped up with Simon. We swam following the railing and had a look at the once proudbiw now peppered with holes and corrosion. It's actually pretty high.

On the way back I dropped down to add air to the lift bag on the anchor. After ascending with it for a while I tied the ancor to the anchor line and proceeded to my first deep stop. I was really looking forward to my shallow deco on oxygen. Mainly to see what the sensor reading on the VR3 would be. I did the switch at six meters and observed the reading jump up to 98% when I flushed the loop. All good excpet for the VR3 whining about the mix being too weak. This was because I had set the deco gas O2 content to 100%. I guess I'll either start using a preset FO2 ot 98 or just change the preset value on the fly.

Simon left before I did and he was already on the Martine when I ascended to the surface. The wind had picked up and we blasted back to port.

4.12.08 Cueva del Agua with Simon, Volker and Joe.

The sea was supposed to be a little rough so we had planned to continue our courses in the sinkhole of Cueva del Agua. The dive itself was pretty standard stuff, with us killing time in the sinkhole. I thoroughly enjoyed it due to the fact that the predive procedures went fine. I guess the made mistakes equaled lessons learned.

I did notice some deviances from standard operation of the rebreather. My decrease in FO2 was a lot more than what it's supposed to be. My FO2 was down by an average of 11% at ten meters and hit a max drop of 16% at one point. I figured this was due to the fact that I was getting more relaxed with the unit and my breathing was getting shallower. If I flushed the loop the FO2 would go up and slowly start decreasing so not a lot of it was consumed. I'll just have to focus on breathing deeper to ensure adequate gas exchange in the loop.

3.12.08 Ulla with Volker, Simon and Joe. Proper diving!

We had suffered some ill luck the previous day and had to drop the dive. Today we had perfect weather and were anchored to the wreck in no time. We would dive in two teams with Joe and myself going in first and Simon and Volker would drop in while we were decompressing. I was still on my AH-1 course and Volker on his Meg course.

I got kitted up and this time didn't have any problems like stubbornly breathing a loop without injecting and/or dumping gas out of it. Progress in small steps I guess. I got my kit setup and rolled over the side of thr RIB. Volker handed me my two stage tanks and we quickly dropped in with Joe. I was mentally going over the words of wisdom Simon had given me. I was monitoring the O2 content and flushed the loop while descending. All was good and we descended to the wreck. On the surface the sea was calm but at 34 m there was a mild current running and vis was not too good. I dropped all the way down to the anchor and wrapped its chain around a sticking out of the wreck.

I was getting my bearings and realized that we were on the stern section of the wreck. I had only dived on the bow and was trying to get a general picture in. Swimming around I connected my stage tank containing bottom mix to my second drive gas Swagelok. I disconnected the back gas hose from the other Swagelok and inhaled. The inhalation felt short andI immediately figured out what was wrong.  I grabbed the stage tank that was connected to my rebreather, checked the label and opened the valve. Fresh gas was injected into the loop and after flushing it the O2 content ascended to where it was supposed to be. Needless to say I felt pretty stupid. Again.

Despite the unit being very simple there are obviously some pitfalls. I think I've pretty much stumbled on most of them. In the end it's still a totally different setup from OC and it takes some time to getting used to. My procedures with OC seem to stick deep. I guess the fact that the unit is so close to OC diving makes it harder to get used to the idea that I'm not on OC anymore.

We circled the wreck, looking into hatches and cargoa areas. This piece was rather dull. The bow section is much more interesting because it has the wheelhouse plus possibilities for penetration. Despite the wreck being dull the dive was very enjoyable. After all this was a proper dive after all the shallow water training sessions. I was getting more and more comfortable with the unit and started actually to forget that I was actually on a rebreather. Checking the contents gauges on my tanks made me laugh due to the fact that the needles weren't really moving. I switched back to back gas and disconnected my stage tank, stowed the drive hose and closed the valve. Everything went ok this time. 

We cut our plan a little short and started our ascent 27 minutes into the dive. We made deep stops at 19 and 12 m and continued up to the shallow stops. I was really looking forward to seeing what the unit would do upon switching to pure oxygen. At six meters I connected the oxygen hose to my second drive port and opened the valve after checking the tank label. I disconnected my back gas and flushed the loop and watched the O2 content rocket on my VR3. Everything was working fine and we hovered off the anchor line in calm waters. According to plan Volker and Simon descended down the line looking very technical in their eCCR:s. Towards the end of the deco I noticed my VR3 giving XFAIL warnings. The connection must be oxidized or dirty. I'll have to check for flooding and clean it later.

Note: I checked this after writing this and it was a case of RTFM. The XFAIL alarm is the low PO2 alarm on the VR3.

We completed our deco and made the final slow ascent to the surface. The wind had picked up and it was getting choppy. We clipped our stage tanks to the current line off the boat and climbed on board the Martine. I was totally stoked about the dive and couldn't wait to get back in. Joe is normally on an Inspo and on OC today. His ears were ringing from the noise of the OC rig :)

The weather was nice despite the wind and choppy seas and we chatted away waiting for our friends to surface. It seemed like bad weather was closing in on us and the skies looked turbulent. Finally Volker and Simon surfaced and we helped them with their stages and out of their rigs. I started the engine, took up the dive ladder and Joe hauled up the anchor. I turned the bow into the wind and took the Martine up to plane.

My friends were bouncing around a bit in the boat but it wasn't too rough and the ride was short. Riding back to port I noticed that we were all wearing Otter Britannics. This must have been the first time I've ever been on a boat with everyone wearing the same dry suit. I've been really happy with my Britannic Superskin. I originally had the heavy duty wellies on it but recently changed to neoprene socks and rock boots. The rock boots are great for cave approaches and another good thing is that they take some of the pressure off fin squeeze on long dives. When I had the boots changed I also requested two inches of extra length on the legs of the suit as it felt a bit short. Thanks to JJ/Otter it's now perfect. 

1.12.08 La Laja with Simon and Joe. Back on the dark side.

I finally got around to continuing my rebreather course with Simon. We did the first boat dive off La Laja in mediocre vis. I was also really suprised of the water temperature. It's dropped to 15 degrees, and the thing wreck gloves I was wearing felt a bit too skimpy.

Before entering the water I managed to pull another stupid stunt. When prebreathing the unit I was baffled to see the O2 content decreasing rapidly. What was wrong this time?! I had made sure that the dump valve was open after my previous incident with it. I was looking around to identify the problem when Simon pointed out that I was not plugged into any drive gas. I must be subconsciously really thinking that rebreathers are a lot more efficient than they actually are. Simon made some fitting comments and was kicking myself while connecting my drive gas. Up from there the unit was working fine.

The dive itself ended up being a bit of messing about too. We pretty much immediately lost Joe and as he was on an Inspo, couldn't locate him even from the surface. Well, he had gone back to the boat while we did my course stuff and finished the dive after 70 minutes in the water. 

29.11.08 Bad weather, Lord of the Silt and the D.I.E. emerges.

28.11.08 Cueva del Agua with Mike. Old school soldiers.

After a long dry spell I was pleased to be diving the cave with Mike again. I was equipped for a double stage dive and Mike was on his Inspo, armed with three stage tanks.

While setting my equipment up I was aproached by a spanish fellow who started asking me all kinds of questions about cave diving and what our plan was. Turns out he was part of the Guardia Civil cave diving group from Madrid. Suddenly the site was full of GC trucks and people carrying tanks around. They seemed like a nice bunch and we got along well. They were intending to push to 500 m and asked if they could go in first. We agreed on this and put our equipment together. Noticing that we were fully ready, one of the Guardia Civils came over and informed us that if we wanted to start out dive first it would be okay as they would still take some time getting set up.This was good news for us, and we quickly descended into the sink hole after informing him of our plan.

Doing my predive check I was disappointed to notice that one of my stages was bubbling from the first stage O-ring. Nothing too serious but a nuisance anyhow. I adjusted my gas plan to a more conservative state and we dropped in. Visibility in the sink hole was poor. I made the primary and secndary wraps and laid the line to the beginning of the main line and connected to it. We continued up the main line through the climbing tunnel and R2. We dumped our first stage tanks on the line quickly after R2, at around 250 m. The tanks hit the floor making a huge silt cloud. Pushing on the visibilty got better and we made short work of the restrictions before the Labyrinth. We took the familiar route to the second cache and dumped our second stage tanks on the line at around 600 m. 

Paso Cartagena went without incidents and we entered the tricky line configurations. I was marking all intersections with line arrows and at the end of the line I had a single piece left of my rack of 19 pieces. A lot of intersections. I hovered over the vertical shaft at the end of the line at 860 m and was suprised that it didn't look as bad as I had remembered. I moved out of Mikes way so he too could take a look. I also made damn sure he saw the cookie with his name on it at the end of the line. I felt some satisfaction finally closing the circle of the previous dive that had taken us so close to the end of the line before I turned the dive. 

I was getting close to turn back pressure so we started to make our exit through the halocline and silt. Communication and navigation was good and we were quickly in the tunnel leading to Paso Cartagena. At an intersection I signaled for Mike to stop and spot me while I had a look at the tunnel running parallel to us. there was an in-situ jump line which I followed to the other tunnel. I suspected we should be pretty close to the Rat Hole and indeed there was a restriction looking very much like the one I had spotted from the other side with Jorre. I ducked back into the tunnel where Mike was and we continued our exit through the bad vis in Paso Cartagena. 

We picked up our tanks and continued our exit. I dreaded that I'd see dive lights in the restrictions at 400-500, but the tunnel was dark and quiet. My only concern was that we maybe would have had to pass the large group of Guardia Civil in the restrictions in low visibility. However we had already picked up our stage tanks and were entering R2 when the GC team lights appeared. They were packing some very different equipment form us. Helmets with lights, sidemounts, steel stages and a main light in each hand. Serious illumination. They were closing in on us via Dead Gear so we squeezed out of their way into Restriction 2 and entered the bad vis on the other side. 

The room was siltier than on the way in and there was a team or two on the Buoy line. It was quite hard to tell as they were burning so many lights simultaneously as opposed to our single main lights. The scene was straight out of a science fiction movie with so many lights scanning the chamber. Really impressive. We ended up closing in parallel to the Y-junction with one team and they motioned us to exit first as we had already clocked over 100 min of run time. Not that our gas supplies were low or anything but I thought it was a nice gesture. In the climbing tunnel visibilty was poor and there was a diver in front of us who was moving extremely slowly. We had to just sit there in the tunnel and wait for the route to clear before we could continue. Two thirds out of the Climbing Tunnel I suddenly felt like I couldn't move forward. I thought that I was mistaken and tried to advance to no avail. I was indeed entangled. I first checked the pressure in the stage tank I was breathing and then started to have a look at what could be the problem. I was fiddling around with the climbing rope in the tunnel when I suddenly felt that I was hovering free again. I made some tentative finning and was indeed free. Exiting the tunnel I had a look at my equipment and noticed that the reg of the stage tank I was trailing had pulled free. That must have been the item getting caught on something. I stowed the reg, took my last line arrow out of the line and went to the beginning of the main line behind Mike. 

The rest of the exit went without drama and we spent our shallow stop checking out the Guardia Civil in the water. 

31.10.08 The Dark Side gets darker.

This blog will be on hold for about three weeks as I will be traveling due to work. I have some stuff up north and then I'll be on the Children of Bodom / Slipknot / Machine Head tour for two weeks. I should be back by the end of November to continue my rebreather course.

Be safe, play it loud! 

30.10.08 Cala Fria with Simon. A steep learning curve.

In result of the wind direction changing, Cala Fria was ok to dive. We geared up and went diving. I was happy to see the VR3 was giving sensible readings after the calibration. Funnily enough a minute into the dive the O2 content started dropping. I was puzzled as it should only drop about 7% close to the surface. I was in two meters of water and the O2 content had sropped from 32% to 16%. When it hit 15% I switched the BOV to OC and kept monitoring the reading. I thought I had maybe done a mistake in the calibration but obviously wasn't too keen on finding out the hard way if my loop contained a hypoxic gas or not. The reading rose a little, and I switched back to SC. Immediately I was on a hypoxic mix and went back to OC. Then I realized what the problem was. No bubbles. I had forgotten to open the dump valve and was breathing the same gas over and over again with the O2 content decreasing as it was metabolized. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

I notified Simon and asked him to open the valve for me. The valve was open and I switched to SC. I was happy to see the O2 reading increase to where it should be. Damn, that could have been a costly mistake if I hadn't been monitoring the O2 content carefully. Simon wrote some appropriate comments on his slate and showed it to me grinning. 

After the first hickups, the dive went well. I was very pleased with the unit and with the switching block gone it was sleek. I was also not carrying as much lead as on the previous day. I only had 2 kg and it worked perfectly. I felt very comfortable with the unit except for getting very hot in the water and ended up taking off my hood. 

I noticed that for an easier WOB it helped to drop my hips a bit lower than my usual trim. We had also rethought the gas switching procedure and now it was much smoother. Incredibly easy I thought. I will change the drive hose routing and connection placements for a more streamlined configuration as well as reducing the risk of having my long hose accidentally under the drive hoses.

What is very new with the rebreather is the lack of a solid rigging. With OC it's so simple and everyone I know rigs up the same way more or less. With the AH1 it's different. The odds of anyone having the same unit and diving with me are extremely slim. So in a sense I can now rig it up the way I see fit. I will of course take all the fundamentals of the OC setup I was using and try to apply them as best I can to my AH1. 

29.10.08 Cala Cortina with Simon. Oi! Where's my arm?!

The van was packed with our rebreathers and we were having a hard time finding a dive site. The sea was choppy and we ended up in Cala Cortina. It was the worst visibilty I've ever seen outside the cave. I'd say it was around 50 cm. Close to the shore the goop was so thick that you couldn't even see your arm. So the first rebreather dive was very interesting. We managed to find a spot with maybe just over a  meter of vis and I did some basic skills of handling the loop, operating the BOV, valve drills and doing gas switches. We clocked just about an hour and hobbled back home. I made further modifications and calibrated the VR3 O2 sensor link. It had been giving some fairly dubious readings.

28.10.08 Patience amigo, patience.

From day one I disliked the bulky switch block on the AH-1. That piece of plumbing had to go. Turns out it wasn't such an easy job, but in the end I managed to get some stainless steel pieces fabricated to get the female Swageloks connected to the drive hoses. Incredibly enough I got the pieces done in the same day, which was great.

Getting them to seal was a bit of a task, but we got there eventually and everything is looking as it's supposed to. 

27.10.08 The AH1 is in the building

The rig and the rigger.

26.10.08 Cala Cortina. Freediving with a cam plus a Meg try dive with Simon and Jorre.

The happy CCR guy / The crystal clear waters of the Med.

25.10.08 Cueva del Agua with Jorre and Alex.

Alex from the US was doing a cave course with DI and we were there to do a penetration dive to 400 m and some fun stuff. Our dive went in the lines of crawling through the siltiest nastiest tunnel in the entrance area on touch contact and in darkness. It was fun as usual. It just hit me that I've actually never seen that tunnel although I've been through it several times.

Something we noticed was that Alex does not breathe. I've never seen anyone consume this little gas on a cave dive.

It's also very possible that this was my last dive on OC for a while.

Jorre and Alex.

22.10.08 The Dark Side.

It is done. I have bought a rebreather and my course starts next week. I know that I have mentioned the Meg earlier, but I ended up with something different. My first rebreather is a GDS AH1 PASCR. It is a Halcyon RB80 clone. It's not a closed circuit rebreather but a semi-closed passive addition rebreather. A gas extender if you like. I was very tempted with the Meg but for various reasons decided to go with this. One reason being the fact that my back is shot and I was doped up on painkillers and muscle relaxants while making the decision. Pretty cool, eh?

21.10.08 Cueva del Agua with Jorre. The Labyrinth.

Hauling our gear down to the sink hole went as usual except for a little lack of motivation on my part. Nothing too serious though and it evaporated as soon as I stepped into liquid. I always do a short relaxation routine before any activity in the water and today was no different. I took off my mask and rolled over to float face down on the surface breathing my back gas. I like the calming feeling of the bubbles running up my face to the surface. I enjoy the weightless feeling and the cooling water after the sweaty kitting up. I mentally went through the dive and then rolled back to top side for a look at my surroundings with new eyes and the right mindset. 

We went through bubble checks and S-drills. We were carrying two stage tanks each in addition to our twins. The HP hose in one of my stage tanks was leaking. Propably the swivel O-ring in the HP hose connection of the SPG. Irritating but not too serious. I will change all O-rings on my seven regs when I get back to the workshop at the center.

We went through the dive on the surface and dropped in with Jorre on point. He laid the jump line to the main line and we pushed in. I had my camera with me for some pics of the new area. To my dismay the flash wasn't firing. I took a closer look and noticed that the hot shoe mount had slid partly out during transportation. It'll do that if the housing is on it's back during transportation and there's bumps on the road or something. I wish I had checked on the surface. From now on I will tape it.

We did our first gas switch just after R2 and ditched our stage tanks to the line. There was no point dragging the camera further so I clipped that too to the line. At this point we usually swim in left of the line, but while clipping his stage tank into the line Jorre drifted to the right side, which of course started raining debris on him. The ceiling was raining on top of him, dislodged by exhaled bubbles. We continued pushing in leaving the silt to coat our stage tanks and camera.

At around 370 m in Jorre signalled me to pass him, which I did and took the lead. Our second stage tank depot was on the bank at 520 m. A strange place as gauge depth there is only 2-3 meters. Switching to my back gas I noticed that the water was completely fresh. I didn't detect any salinity in its' taste. Must be rainwater seeping through the rock.

Twenty meters after the stage depot we arrived to the intersection where the first entrance to the Labyrinth was. I placed a line arrow to the line and made the turn to push in. The place was worthy of its name, El Labyrinto, The Labyrith. It was a real maze of tunnels and complex shapes. I was taking great care not to lose the line which was partly covered in silt. Our bubbles left a wake of debris hitting the floor and silt rising. This was geat stuff! I passed a Y junction and marked it, taking the left left line in. On my left there was a large debris cone with a clean ceiling. Generally the place felt a lot more threatening than other areas. Huge flakes hanging from the ceiling. Fracture lines were clearly visible and at one point there was a man sized rock hanging from the ceiling supported only by a section of rock that was the girth of my wrist. 

Advancing past the debris cone I noticed a line running parallel to us on the left hand side. I quickly came to a T-junction, marked it and took the right hand line, leaving the left for later. We shortly arrived at another T and after marking it I made a right turn doubling back towards the main line. At least I thought so. Another T later we were at the first Y-junction.I checked the line marker and it had my name on it. I indicated this to Jorre and signalled him to go back in. In the end it turned out he hadn't received my signal and on our exit suggested to go and have a look at the same tunnel. Hand signals weren't enough so I took out my wet notes and scribbled on it that we'd already been here from the other side too.

We swam back into the silty tunnel and came back to the previous T. From there I took the lead again and eventually found another exit  to the main line at around 560 m. We turned back in to do more exploring and following the lines. The area was very interesting albeit menacing and serious. At a couple of sections we ended up retreating the line in total silt out and one section had a detached line laying freely on the floor.

After making a complete mess of the Lab with our exhaled bubbles we retreated to the main line. We swam further in to Colgadero II. I signalled to Jorre that this was the tank rack we had used on our previous long dive with Per. Per and I had had a discussion about this setup and decided not to use it for our tanks again but instead ditching them to the line on a bank further in. 

We continued to the next intesection and did some sightseeing on the left side, finding another line to Paso Cartagena. We also had a first look at La Ratonera aka the Rat Hole. IMHO it did not feel intimidating and there was plenty of room to manouver. We turned the dive there and didn't see the end so maybe there's tricky sections ahead. I guess we'll find out eventually.

We reached our second depot, did the switch and swam out. We made a brief trip down the T line to the tunnel at 350 m. A very nice tunnel with some tight sections. This tunnel had of course seen very little traffic and we ended up exiting some sections with zero vis. 

I picked up my stage tank and camera at the first depot and we exited to the sink hole. The light was beautiful and I ended up shooting a few cavern pictures. Our total run time was 129 minutes.

The sink hole.

20.10.08 Cueva del Agua with Jorre and Pinni. Old friends and new friends

Per left two days ago but my finnish cave diving buddy Jorre flew in for two weeks. So the cave season is still running hot. A newer acquaintance, Pinni with DIR Ausrtia was visiting, so I invited him to join us for Jorres warm up dive. We ended up having a very nice trip. A nice relaxed dive through R2 to the restriction at 440m, where we turned back. We swam out to the Y-junction after the Climbing tunnel and doubled back in taking the Buoy-line. We swam back in to the T-junction at 200 m and crossed it to turn back just after the "Dead Gear".

Jorre had a Nikonos slave flash with him for some extra lighting in my cave diving pics. We were experimenting with it but failed miserably. It will take some more practice to get it working and syncing properly. So for now the pics are lit by the on-board flash only.

Pinni in his groovy red suit / On the way out / Add any logo...

16.10.08 Cueva del Agua with Per. The final sifon. End of the line.

We had mixed feelings about where to go today. Our original plan was to head back up tghe coast to Cueva de Moraig but we changed our plans and decided to go for a push in Cueva del Agua. I was still half asleep when we picked up our twins and four stage tanks from Volker at eight in the morning. We had a cup of coffee on the way and very little was spoken. I guess Per was still asleep too.

We hauled our stage tanks to the entrance and got our gear sorted. Everything went pretty much as usual, and we entered the water and did our S-drills and bubble checks. The tank o-ring on my other stage tank was leaking a little so we added some conservativism to our gas management plan.

Dropping in Per laid our line to the beginning of the main line, and I took over from there as planned. Visibility was suprisingly good despite six the divers in the water yesterday. We pushed through the climbing tunnel and entered the main shaft throug Restriction 2. All was going as planned and we were making good time in the clear warm water. I hit my gas switch pressure first and swam a little further for a better stage tank cache area. The switch to our second stage tanks went smoothly and we clipped our first stage tanks to the line at around 280 meters in. That´s propably the closest switch to the entrance I´ve ever done, but the extra conservativism gave confidence. 

We pushed on at a steady pace making good time. The restriction at 430-490 went nicely and we passed the first air pocket. I clipped a green clothespin marked with my name to the main line and pushed though to the downhill tunnel. The muddy banks opened up into the best section of the cave, "The Labyrinth". Beautiful high galleries. I reached my second switch pressure at around 550 meters in but had to to push on as there was no place to stash the tanks. The main line was about ten meters above the bottom of the gallery. We reached the second cache at 590 m and clipped our stages to the rack line secured above the main line.

Free from our stages we were even faster and kept advancing through the labyrinth marking our route carefully. Paso Cartagena was a disaster. I managed to hook my ankle into the slab in the restriction and then kicked up a huge cloud of silt while jiggling it free. Per didn´t want me to feel too bad about my clumsiness so he did the same. We left a mess behind us throughout the tight tunnel. It was ironic because the restriction was totally clear despite our passage through it yesterday.

Just after Stargate I ran out of markers and Per passed me his rack. We continued onwards and the cave system kept getting more complicated. Then suddenly we were at the second air pocket. I could see it reflecting our lights above us and bending the rays into its roof. We were getting close. I followed the line over a small cliff and descended to the bottom of the gallery. The line was partially covered in silt and we were in a halocline. I saw fine but Per must have had some exciting times in the blurry wake behind me. 

Finally we reached the cookie I had put into the line with Mike. I took it out and pushed on. I was pretty disappointed to find only about fifteen meters of tunnnel left before hitting the end of the line. Well actually I was disappointed for Mike as I had turned the previous dive here so close to the end. At the end of the line I felt very excited and started looking for a tunnel that would lead us further into the system. Unfortunately the way was shut and all we could find was a vertical shaft with maybe something  of an entrance on its side lower down. However it was extremely tight and would take a lot of commitment to push in head first to have a quick look before the silt killed your vision. After that you'd have to crawl out in total blindness. Well, not today.

I stupidly attached Mikes and my cookie into the line instead of Pers and mine and we turned to leave. The exit went without incidents except for maybe the nice lo-vis crawl though Paso Cartagena which we had so successfully trashed.

Well, there it is. I guess the point of focus on future dives will be the Labyrinth and Galleria del Terror I, II and III. Plus I have to take Pers cookie back to the end of the line.

15.10.08 Cueva del Agua with Per. Old friends revisited.

Per was here in April when we pushed to 490 m in and turned the dive in the restriction. A lot has happened since and today I was happy to push through that halocline infested restriction with Per. We were armed with a stage tank each which we dumped at 330 m, switching to back gas.

Anyhow, we pushed though to the depot at 600 m and continued to Paso Cartagena. I signalled Per of the restriction in front of us and he gave the go ahead so I pushed through with Per following close. I could see his beam below me all through the restriction. You gotta love divers like him who make things just so easy for the diver on point. I could see his beam illuminating the line with my light except for an occasional glimpse on the side tunnels and parallel lines. There was no nervous movement in the light. Just a steady beam focusing on what we were doing. We pushed on forward marking all intersections until just before the intersection at 720 m. Per's light changed from a steady headlight to rapid up-down movements. I stopped and heli-turned around dipping my light not blind my friend. It was time to head back.

Per adjusted some equipment and doubled back into Paso Cartagena. I took note of my back gas pressure and run time and followed him. We pushed through the restriction and made our way back through the restrictions to our cached stage tanks. I stayed back while Per clipped the tank to the harness and the followed him. We switched back to the stage tanks and pushed towards the exit. I collected my reel and reeled in the line from the main line to the secondary and primary wraps. After our safety stp se surfaced with a run time of 100 min.

On top Volker had arrived with Werner and two of his friends. They arrived yesterday and were here for a week of cave and wreck diving. Additionally my buddy Jorre will be here on Sunday so it'll be a proper cave season for a change!

14.10.08 Cueva de Moraig. Wasn't it about time?!

This cave in Moraig has been eluding me for a long time. There's been talk of going there on various setups but nothing has ever really materialized. Today my swedish buddy Per and I finally pulled through and made the 200 km drive up the coast. We were lucky to have a mobile tank depot early in the morning at Volkers place and got underway in good time. It turned out we needed the time as we had some route finding problems despite the excellent directions we got from Volker. In the end we miraculously found the place and took the first glimpse of the entrance.

Cueva de Moraig is the exit of an underground fresh water river to the sea. The halocline on the sea is clearly visible from the shore. According to what we'd heard this cave should be totally different to Cueva del Agua. As opposed to our home cave this cave was cold flowing water with very little silt and a sea entry. We were really excited to be here and dive it. The seal looked pretty flat with some old breakers lazily rolling in every now and then. 

We kitted up and took our twins and stage tanks to the entry point. We went through our plan and entered the water. Even though the breakers were small the water was frothing and jumping in was a wild guess in terms of hitting rocks. Anyhow, everything went well and we regrouped outside the cavern area. We were both okay and started to swimming down the coast. After turning the first corner we saw a small arch and despite minor doubts decided that this was it. We dropped in and Per tied in. Per led and pushed trough the arch and found a cave beyond it. We pushed futher and couldn't find anything more than a round pool with a surface exit. Obviously the lack of a halocline and flowing cold water should have been the tell tale signs of being in the wrong place. But hey, what can I tell you, we were stoked and not too observant. We ended up surfacing in the pool and found ourselves in our starting point. Quick change of plans. I tied in another reel for laying an exit line and Per reeled in his on our way back out to the sea. I tied my reel in at seven meters and we surfaced.

After making note othe surface location we continued down the coast on the surface and finally found the real entrance. We were flushed towards the open sea by the cold fresh water and decided to dive down to dodge the current. We dropped in and Per tied his reel in and puhed through the entrance arch to the pool on the other side. We were there, sweet. Out instructions were pretty vague about the entrance except that it should be in the left corner. Per was fighting his way through the current trying to find an entrance in a monster of a halocline, but to no avail. In the end we surfaced and swam against the current to some rocks. Beyond the rocks there was another pool in a cave and I stashed my stage tank and took off my fins to go and have a closer look. I slipped and crawled over the rocks to the pool and noticed that it was flowing fiercely. I tied in and yelled to Per that I'd take look. He told me to be careful. I dropped in and fought through the current following some electrical cables. The tunnel dropped down and opened up. This was it!

After ascending and notifying Per we dropped back in with Per on point. We followed the cables pas a garden gnome (?). Visibilty was four meters and the flow was strong. Still, after all the mishaps in the pools, rocks and route finding this was proper cave diving and we both regained our composure and pushed in against the current with grins on our faces.  I did find the five cables an odd choice for a main line and in the end we came across a parallel cave line which we jumped to due to the bad vis. Apparently the electrical cables had something to do with a deco station or something. 

Swimming in felt strange due to the limited vis. At some point we pushed through a bigger room where the walls, floor and roof disappeared. The only thing real was a white cave line and the particles in the fast current. What a strange feeling.

The walls were solid rock with a clay floor here and there with sections of rock. We passed the first tank depot and pushed in propably to a max penetration of a hundred meters. We came across a second parallel line and turned the dive. Exiting was bliss. A few kick here and there, riding the strog current out. This must be incredible in god vis. It had been raining heavily so I guess there was plenty of water to run though the cave. Apparently the vis can be incredible so I guess the season and rain effects it.

We exited the cave and after collecting our stage tanks and reel swam out to sea. My reel was where it was supposed to be and we reeled it in to exit from the small pool we had accidentally found. We were pretty tired and dehydrated after spending over two hours in the water, working or swimming most of the time. Tired but happy. 

My buddy Perra enjoying some hard earned rehydration after our dive in Cueva de Moraig.

13.10.08 Carbonero revisited

A visit to Carbonero. I was buddied up with Per and Craig. So we had a proper tec team instead of a mixed configuration which was nice. Diving with us were also two german doctors so we were in safe hands. We dropped in and I found the anchor to be off the wreck maybe five meters jammed into the end of a steel pipe. I started to think about the odds of that but eventually snapped back, connected a reel to the anchor and ran a line to the wreck.We experienced some current with mediocre vis. A nice tour around the whole wreck after which the guys ascended and I dropped down to free the anchor and joined them. I tied the anchor into the anchor line at our first dep stop in 28 m. A few jellies in the water and deco on oxygen and back gas only.

Other than the dive I finally got to see the new ride. Sweet! 740 RIB with a Yamaha 200 HP V6 outboard. As the pic indicates, Leon was giving us some surface support on this trip.

The boat, the skipper and the guy driving the boat.

12.10.08 DIVER Mag / Despina

Thanks to Thomas, David D, David H, June and Vesa for support!

11.10.08 Cave fever

10.10.08 C-DAY!
 

The rain is over and we were prepared for a late excursion to Cueva de Agua. We arrived after noon and dropped in with Per. We even had some tourists gawking at our antics. There are some small changes, I think. The pulley system bottom chain was detached from the bolt and is hanging freely, which made doing a surface tie off dodgy. I ended up threading the bolt so at least we had a rigid point instead of the free chain.

After our surface checks we dropped in through primary and secondary wraps. I left my backup computer on the secondary wrap as it was going crazy and beeping every five seconds. Pushing into the beginning of the main line I felt a little sloppy being out of the water for three months. Fortunately I had Per with me so there would be no surprises. We had an initial plan of pushing to the beginning of the main shaft at 200 m but once there we decided to push on. We finally turned back at around 380 m. I actually never saw Per's hand signal as we were right in the middle of the halocline and everything was blurred out. I thought that this would be a logical place to turn and followed Per outward on the line. Perfect communication :)

We headed back all the way to the back of the B-line. My mind was already on the exiting but Per signalled to turn back into the A-line because we still had 150 bar gas left and only 100 m in.  Good call. We headed back to the beginning of the main shaft and  headed back. Per was very interested in all the jumps and also found a very good  setup for a photo.

We surfaced at 75 min and were quite pleased with the dive. After a long time out of the water everything is a bit awkward, but we ended up having a great dive. 

I also had some new equipment for the first time, but I never used it. I will not go into the details.  Take a wild guess... :)

Another big issue for me was that I finally caved on the primary light update. Looks like my halogen days are over and propably I'm the last diver on the planet switching to HID. It only took about three years to make up my mind. I'm going not going to miss my huge canister, although it's nice to drag something very close to a habitat along.

We spent the afternoon setting up gear and filling tanks for a double stage push tomorrow. Volker will be there too with his Cave1 student so it feels like a proper expedition. :)

P.S. I'm diving without the digital eye for now, but there will be new pics shortly for sure.

09.10.08 The sky is leaking

08.10.08 Back to eternal darkness

Deep Impact looks pretty much the same as before. Hmmm...a little tidier. I stopped by briefly in the center to go through the plans for the next weeks with the Metalhead. Looks like it'll mostly be cave diving. My friend Per is arriving today and Volker has a Cave 1 course underway.

19.09.08 another one!! (by Kexy)

After a first failed attempt a few weeks back (too much current, the anchor just didnt hold), here we were again, another try in locating a new wreck:

The team this time consistet of Volker and Kexy on OC and Mike Long (in a fluoroscent green drysuit!) on his Inspration rebreather, christened Miss Piggy  - she is as wide as she is long. Sandro was doing boatcover, thanx again for your patience and help, Sandro!

We got the anchor right on the second attempt, it seemed to be holding fine and I (Kexy) jumped in the water first, just to find a pretty strong current on the surface, which made it quite an achievment putting on the stage tanks.

The bottom gas we used was a TX12/48 and both me and Volker were diving 4 stages each.

Finally everyone ready I was glad to drop underneath the surface for a bubble check and soon we were on the way down. Passing 50m the current eased off and my tired hands could get a rest, we didnt need to cling on the line anymore. The colors changed from blue to a greener shade and e few minutes later at around 80m, I could see a shape coming closer – there she was, lying upright in 109m of  water, our new found wreck!!!!

I was laughing and cheering through the reg, or shall I say squeeqing, due to the helium in my gas. Mike attached the liftbag to the anchor and we started our exploration, past two big holds towards the stern of the ship. Huge lobsters were eying us up curiously, not used to intruders on „their ship“ and their bright lights disturbing the darkness.

The wreck seems to be a freighter, about 60-70m long and quite intact, nothing giving away the reason for her sinking.

We turned around at the stern, heading back past the anchor line, with a quick look at our VR3 deciding we can sqeeze in a couple of minutes more, our bottom time going past 20minutes now.  Volker was already on his way up, while me and Mike continued till we reached the engine room and had a quick look inside.

Every additional minute at this depth will penalize you and drastically increase your hang time later on, so 24min into the dive it was time for me to start my ascent, shortly followed by Mike and Miss Piggy..

The deep stops came and went and at 66m I had my first gas change, Hovering next to the line my only companion was a jellylike creature, like a little seethrough spaceship with tiny lights inside.

Coming shallower the current picked up again and I had to jonline to the line to be able to rest my hands. The stops growing longer we hung like flags in the current, wishing for the time to go quicker.

Anything as an excuse to eat chocolate, I had a mars bar to give me some energy!
For those who never tried eating in the water – ist salty and mars bars work great. A word of advice: never, I really mean never ever try eating chocolate with nuts in it!
It turns into a hard gluey substance that sticks on your teeth and regulator!

After 3hours in the water everyone was up safe and happy, already planing the next dive on the wreck! Can´t wait! Hope to write soon with more news about the DIE team and their explorations!
 

12.09.08 more Wreck & Tec Diving (by Kexy)

Micha from Nürnberg is here, so we will be diving wrecks every day. Micha is getting used to our, sometimes a but wavey seas, sea sickness tablets do help a lot, haha! His drysuit is turning into a wetsuit on every dive, but other than that, we have a great time. 

04.09.08 Tec Training (by Kexy)

Lots of tec dives, Craig from Manchester has completed his Decompression Nitrox course, congrats to a great student!
 

24.08.08 Another dive on the old "El Vapor" (by Kexy)

Dive on the „El Vapor“ wreck, with Catharina, Thomas, Craig, Neil and Kexy, found a box and tried to open it, in hope to find a treasure. Had visions of gold and being rich and diving the whole world...but...the only thing that was in the box: sludge!
Diving is like a box of chocolates, you never know, what you gonna get!
 

10.08.08 The new boat gets his name - Martine (by Volker)

It was my brothers wish to name the boat "Martine". We did it to say Thanks for his support.

04.08.08

New Merchandise (by Volker)

Today we received our new line of Shirts and Hodded Sweats. All designs are done by Jussi and they look great.

August 2008

The busiest month of the year is here! We are going out every day and this year the weather seems to be more diver friendly!!

Cecilia, Maria and Anna from Sweden are here again – girls rock – and they are keeping us busy: diving during the day and partying during the night..If the day only had more than 24hours...

We stareted off with a dive on the Naranjito wreck and then a dive in the Marine Reserve, with Cecilia, Mike and our spanish friends Sergio and Juan Carlos. Welcome back Cicci!
Great viz and an awsome dive, if only there werent soooo many waves..
Lots of barracudas and groupers in the Marine park.

In the afternoon we are teaching courses and going on shore dives, Cabo de Palos (for those who like keeping fit and walking the steps) and Cala Reona (for me, Kexy, liking it easy) being our preferite places. Cat and Sin have just finished their OW and Advanced courses, well done guys!

24.07.08 The new boat has finally arrived (by Volker)

Late on the 24th. of July we put our new boat into the water. To see how it works we drove to the "Sardin" island with some friends.  

14.07.08 

Another season at Deep Impact Diving Center (by Kexy)

Here  a few words from the replacement blogger, Kexy, while waiting for Jussi ´s return:

After a few months away, I am back to Deep Imapct for yet another season of play and work!!

Bad news first: I arrived at the center to find out that our boat has broken down, so we  are inpatiently waiting for Volker to sort  a new  (bigger? Better?) one out and using Peter´s in the meanwhile..
The first few days I´ve spent doing boat cover and some cleaning action.
Last Friday we have decided to go out and check out another new site, looking very promising on the fish finder.
Juan, Angel and myself  dropped the anchor and started gearing up. The sea was a bit choppy, it was alreday 5 o´clock in the afternoon by the time we hit the water.
The viz was good the first 30m, slowly dropping down to a greenish tint at 45m. With a slight narcosis hitting me I coninued the descent and soon we could slowly see the silhouette of a wreck coming up! Cheering through the reg, I dropped to the anchor first and attached the liftbag, then reeled a line towards the wreck. And there she was, looking like a fish bone, with metal beams sticking up her side, sitting upright in 49m of water. 
About 50m long, she seems to be out of metal and wood rotting away, pretty collapsed, partially covered in nets with a big boiler sat in the middle section.

I was taking pictures and soon it was time to start the ascent, the guys already above me, everyone happy to have found another dive site! The fisherman call the spot  `el sama` and it looks like they will have some company from divers there as from now..

The next day, Volker, Peter, both diving on  Dolphins, Thomas and myself dropped down again, to explore the wreck some more. A very short dive for Volker, who had to bail out just 5minutes into the dive. :(
 Myself and Thomas, both on twins with two stages, followed by Peter, spent 30min on the wreck, taking some more pictures and having a rumage around.
The viz was great, a good 15m, with lots of light and fish keeping us company. The deco went  very quickly and soon we hit the surface with  a  big grin on our faces.
Hope to be back soon and find out more about the wreck. Will keep you posted!

Back to revising a bunch of regs now and making the important decision wether to get a Pee valve with my new drysuit. Unfortunaltely, the girls pee valve is still some pretty shady business, But hope never dies. I am determined to find one that works!!! Report follows.

Kex
 

10.07.08 The beautiful people

The summer is getting hotter and hotter and the area is getting busy. The holiday season is definately picking up momentum. Gone are the slow and peaceful days of deep wreck and cave explorations. The days of multiple dives on single tanks are here for a couple of months. I will miss most of this as I have been assigned to other projects outside of Spain and outside of diving. I will leave by the end of the month, and if all goes well I should be back in September.

I rounded up my equipment today and packed them up into flight cases to make room for other divers in the center. I had four cases full of diving gear. I left my eight tanks (2x12 twinset, two 11l stages and four 7l stages) in the center and was happy not having to carry them up to my apartment. In addition to the tanks my two drysuits are still in the center as they will be shipped to Otter in the UK for maintenance. I hope to see them in a better state in  a couple of weeks.

As there will not be any diving on my part for a while, this blog will be updated less frequently. However, make sure to stay tuned as there will be updates and pics of a divers travels through the strange places of the world.

I wish you all a fantastic summer of exciting, safe dives. Evolve. In the words of my motorbike mentor Toni-J: "Be safe. Take it to the absolute maximum but be safe"

P.S. I did get a chance to break away from my prodcution office and take some time with my best friend for some free diving. I had a camera with me so here's a pic of her in action.

 01.07.08 New stuff

We're printing new shirts for Deep Impact and the designs are finally done and ready to be sent to the print shop in Germany. Be sure to get yours. Other than that I'm trying to make up my mind on which HID to get. I've always been diving on a halogen but the canister is huge and especially for the cave dives the burn time isn't sufficient anymore. Other frequent topics in the dive center are DPV:s and CCR:s (as usual).

29.06.08 Work and play

I'm involved in an advertisement project which involves some underwater shooting. We were off Isla Grosa shooting it and managed to have some fun in the sea and sun while working. I got a chance to try out Volkers Dräeger, which I liked.

28.06.08 Amazing vis on Carbonero and some chain shopping.

We had a big group of divers this time and rode out in the bigger boat. Volker and Rob dropped in first followed by Thomas and me. Vis was incredible. I spotted Robs tanks thirty meters below from six meters. I've never seen the wreck like that before. We dropped down and ditched our stages on the bow and immediately went below decks to get some pics. The others weren't interesed in the bowels of the ship so we pretty much had the place to ourselves. We made our way into the engine room where I was so engulfed in the photography that I missed the huge conger eel we had for company. Thomas signalled a warning as the thing was swimming past my head. The tight spaces of the engine room made the eel look even bigger as it swam very close to us while making its exit. Well we survived and kept shooting. Earlier Thomas had spotted a piece of chain he wanted for his boat and we dropped to the seabed to recover it. We made a mess of the bottom as the chain was partially buried in the sand and beneath debris. We got it on its way to the surface and doubled back towards the bow below deck taking pictures all along. We collected our stages and made an uneventful ascent excet for spotting a huge sunfish. Meantime Volker had been rescuing another entangled sunfish from the net we were cleaning earlier. We need to get back and clean off all of it.

Thomas dropping in, securing stages and not being eaten by a conger eel.

27.06.08 Lost anodes

Dropped in to the lovely waters of the Tomas Maestre harbour with Volker to replace the anodes on a friends sail boat. That pretty much sums it except that I got a bottle of red from a neighbouring boat for checking out their hull.

21.06.08 Another fish rescue with Thomas and Klaus.

Rode out in a little choppy seas. Dropped in with Thomas and Klaus. Visibility was incredible! I could see the wreck from 18 meters. The bottom is at 45 m with the deck at  38 m so that's over 20 m vertical vis. We dropped to the deck and I was really sorry I didn't have my camera with me. However we were there with a job to do, so there wouldn't have been too much time for photography anyway.

We were there to clean the back deck of a huge fishing net we had spotted the last time. Thomas and Klaus immediately started towards the stern while I dropped over the railing and descended to the bottom to get our anchor on deck. The anchor was entangled in some thick fishing line which I cut with my modified Fiskars gardening clippers. I attached the liftbag to the anchor and inflated it. I ascended to the deck with the anchor and dumped some air out of the lift bag and connected the anchor to the wreck.

I swam past the engine room and over the destroyed section to the stern and found the guys in full action. Thomas had attached a liftbag to the net and inflated it. The guys were cutting the net off the wreck. I started to cut the small floats that were supporting the net in mid water. Once I got those off I cut off a section of the net that was hopelessly entangled to the railing. I started to cut that of from the railing too and rolling it into a tight ball. I was beng very careful not to get myself or any equipment caught in the net. Klaus was on a single tank and signalled he was leaving. I okayed him and kept working.

I had most of the railing cleaned up when Thomas swam up to me and pointed that the net was on its way to the surface. We had clocked over half an hour bottom time and it was time to go. I started heading to the anchor but was stopped by Thomas giving a short yell into his reg. I turned around to see him caught in the net from his reel. I motioned him to stop and unhooked the lines from the reel. We continued and he got caught again, from his reg. He managed to sort that out himself and we continued to the anchor. I grabbed the anchor out of the hole I had put it and inflated the lift bag connected to it. We started our ascent and at my first deep stop I tied the anchor line into the anchor to have it dangling in free water. The rest of decompression was uneventful.

After surfacing we drove back to the lift bag and the net. I started pulling up the net and we all started cutting out living and dead fish and crabs from the net. A particularily nasty job was cutting out a large and lively scorpion fish and a dead rotting fish. In the end we got the scorpion fish out alive and let him back into the deep. Seagulls were gathering around and we sure stank like fishermen.

19.06.08 Back on the the deep one from last week. Identification is getting closer.

The summer is really getting hot, but somehow this time I didn't feel as weak as normally in the sun. It must have been the great sushi and beer we had the previous night in Cartagena. I was still diving dry, so I had seven tanks with me including a small suit inflation tank. Dave and June were doing boat cover and the diving team consisted of Volker, Thomas and myself. Arriving on the site we anchored in without too much fuss and were definately connected to something on the bottom. This time there was no drama with dropping stage tanks etc. We kitted up and clipped our stage tanks on in the water. I also had my camera with me to get some documentation of the wreck. I was a bit worried, because the housing is rated to 60 m and the deck of the wreck was at around 76-78 m. I definately didn't want to take the housing deeper as I had just received information from an experienced underwater photographer advising me against it. I was willing to take the gamble though for the sake of possibly getting some pics of the wreck that might help identify it.

We dropped in on our travel mixes and switched to bottom gas on the fly. Water temperature dropped at around 21 m and cooled still on the way down. At around 70 m we hit bad vis and there was no sight of the wreck. I was disappointed and stopped my descent at 76m with no signs of the wreck. Volker kept descending because the anchor was his responsibilty. Thomas stayed on the line for support at 76 m. I was there to take pics so I went to have a look. I took off form the anchor line and swam out at 76 m in free water. I was expecting the looming side of the ship but never found it. Instead below me I started making out shapes of pipes and debris. I was on the wreck. This was great news! Judging by the size of the damage this ship had definately been torpedoed which would support our evidence in this wreck being the SS Despina G. Michalinos. I was going to have to get deeper if I was going to get any pics. I was expecting the housing to fail at any time but it didn't. I ended up shooting in 85 m and the housing worked fine. I got carried away with the shooting and lost my bearings. I figured I'd do a free ascent and shoot up an SMB later if need be. For now I still had ten more minutes at the bottom. I started looking around to get an idea where the wreck was going when I saw Volkers HID and swam to him. He was laying a line and searching for the large piece of the wreck. We hit it and Volker tied in the line. I had left my back gas SPG unclipped because my left D ring was getting crowded with the four stage tanks I had with me. Now the SPG was somewhere out of reach. According to my calculations I should still have plenty of gas in my double twelves, but I signaled Volker to fish out the gauge. As expected I was okay with the pressure. Volker swam out to the deck and I followed, stopping to take pics. Volker disappeared further down the deck and I kept shooting.

Shooting pics was hard becaure there was a lot of partciles and the vis was bad plus it was dark. So the AutoFocus was having a lot of trouble focusing on anything. Additionally I was using a 15mm fisheye which means that trying to hit your own priary light hotspot for focusing is a bit of a task. I managed to land some shots, but not a lot. Volker returned and thumbed the dive. It was time to go and I followed the line to the anchor and started my ascent. I passed Thomas on the way up. Volker was battling it out with the anchor against a trawl net. He managed to himself and the anchor over it without getting entangled and followed me up the line with Thomas. I was really stoked that the housing had held. Ascent time was 75 minutes and decompression went without drama. Total run time 96 minutes. Gas setup was more or less the same as the last time.

We have now pieced that the damaged area we were anchored to was to the stern of the engine room. This concurs with the captains log of the U-35 that sunk the Despina. We will next attempt to find the bridge and gather more information. Hopefully we will get confirmation to the identity of the wreck. Check out the wreck section for more info on the Despina including the logbook of the U-35 captain and a picture of the Despina.

Volker reeling / the wreck / tanks anyone? / Jussi decompressing

18.06.08 Ulla the minesweeper

Riding in in a little choppy seas. We anchored in and Klaus and I descended first. Dave was doing and AOWD course with the other divers so Klaus and I had the wreck pretty much to ourselves. We were looking into the nooks and crannies and penetrated most of the possible sections. I got carried away with photography and eventually Klaus signalled me that he was leaving. I stayed a while longer shooting and then went to the anchor and secured a lift bag to it and started my ascent with it. I noticed Klaus was maybe fifteen meters above me keeping an eye out. Everything went smooth and we were being pushed away from the wreck with the wind and current. I decompressed on oxygen and surfaced.

Ulla outside and inside

16.06.08 Big plans

15.06.08 Carbonero with Catharina and Thomas. A fish rescue.

A sweet sunny day. We rode out to Carbo and anchored in. We dropped in. Vis was great and a piece of a mast was visible from fifteen meters and I made the outline of the wreck from 21 m. The wreck lies at 45 m. Thomas and Catharina took off for the stern so I had a chance to get a moment by myself. I attached a lift bag to the anchor and secured it. I collected my camera from the deck where I left it to sort out the anchor, swam into the engine room and squeezed past the boilers to the lower level. I managed to score some nice pics although I wish I had had some more support equipment with me. Anyhow the engine room was sweet and I pushed further in towards the bow and found an exit by the smoke stack and bumped back up to the deck. There was a brand new rope laid over the wreck with a collapsed bottle at its end. I freed it the best I could but it didn't make it to the surface.

After messing about long enough I swam to the stern over the destroyed section with the current and found my buddies in some weird rescue operation. My first thought was that they were entangled in the large fishing net sprawled over the whole stern section. Thomas was cutting furiously. Cat swam past me and signaled that she was leaving. I okayed her and went to have a look at Thomas. He seemed very into the cutting so I took off too to the anchor to get it ready to go. I collected the O2 tank I had  connected to the chain, tooke the anchor chain loose and started inflating the lift bag to neutral. Everthing was okay, except there was no sign of Thomas. I finally caught a glimpse of his primary light, so I took off from the deck and hitched a ride with the current to the stern where he was. We agreed to ascend and left. I tied the anchor to its rope at around 30 m. Deco was uneventfull. 

On the boat I finally found out that Cat and Thomas had freed several fish including a badly entangled moon fish! Unfortunately there were several dead fish in the net and we decided to go and do a cleanup operation in the near future. Thomas had cut two dozen floats off the net and the surface was strewn with them.

A nice relaxed dive after all the serious business in the cave and the deep.

14.06.08 Cueva del Agua with Mike Long. The second and third air pockets and the mouth of the final sifon.

The dive didn't start well as I realized on the way that I had forgotten my computers. I didn't really need them except for telling the time. Fortunately Mike had a spare bottom timer I could borrow so we were sorted. It was still a nuisance, since I prefer to keep everything the same on every dive. Especially today as we were planning to go further in than we had yet been.

Mike laid the first jumpline to the mainline and I took the lead. We dropped in through the climbing tunnel and pushed to the main shaft through R2. I switched from my first stage tank to my second stage tank at around 330 m. We were a bit faster than the last time but my switch from the second stage to back gas was in the same spot as the previous time. Just before Paso Cartagena at 630m. We cleared the restrictiotn and pushed to the four cross at 720 m. We had previously decided which line to take so we marked our exit line and pushed on.

The tunnels opened up a little and we went through several intersections, marking exit lines if necessary as we passed them. It felt pretty confusing to me and I was taking extra care not to make any mistakes with the line markings. Intersection after intersection. Finally we arrived at the second air pocket. It looked perfectly clear as opposed to the murky surface of the first one. We pushed on and quickly arrived at the third air pocket. It seemd as there was lines everywhere. For some reason there was two lines to the air pocket plus another line going parallel to the one we were on. I pushed on and thought I had hit a dead end. A large room seemed to be strewn with boulders at one end. I assumed the roof had collapsed burying the tunnel, until I noticed a small opening just below the roof and a line going through it.

I like doing these dives at a relaxed pace and prefer not to push too far on one go. We were about an hour in as I put in our cookie and signaled Mike the turnaround. On the way back we popped up to the third air pocket which was pretty cool. A red roof and clear water. It felt strange having a brief chat there before descending back to the line and heading out. On the way back I noticed the 800 m marker. I was tempted to go back when I realized how close we had been to the final sifon, but what's turned is turned. So we made it to about 820 m. We did a royal job of killing the vis in Paso Cartagena and crawled through it in close contact. On the way in I had made a mental note of staying to the left of the line on exiting as there was more space on that side.

The rest of the dive was relaxed cruising. After the cache at 600 m it's pretty much familiar terrain so you tend to be lost in thought kicking monotously towards the exit. Except this time I had a call of nature like there was no tomorrow and was pretty uncomfortable. P-valve was not hoked up. Additionally my fins were squeezing my feet and the last fifteen minutes was agony. We ended up surfacing with 135 minutes dive time. I was quick getting out and running to the bushes.

12.06.08 Another successful exploration dive with Volker and Mike Long.

We were exploring a potential wreck site in perfect weather. The dive started in a bad way as we lost a stage tank due to careless clipping by our boat cover guy. It was Mikes travel mix so fortunately he could still dive. Had it been his deep mix I would have felt sorry for the boat cover sitting with Mike on the boat for two hours. :)

Dropping in, Mike went first. I was second followed by Volker. I was breathing my second deco gas (TX2808) until I switched to bottom gas (TX1540) at and we did a gas switch cross check with Volker to make sure everything was okay. We continued our descent in perfect vis and hit an algae layer at around fifty meters. Suddenly visibility turned bad and it started to get dark. I knew we'd hit the bottom but I was still disappointed to see the anchor chain and the anchor. I switched my primary light on from my canister and lit the scene while Mike attached a lift bag and a reel to the anchor. My VR3 registered 88 meters hovering maybe a meter and a half above the seabed. Mike reeled out towards the north and I swam over him to his left side. I was starting to question the sensibility of this operation in my mind when I heard Mike cheering into his loop. I lifted my head and saw a massive steel wall in front of me. Literally a meter and a half away. I would propably had banged my head into it if weren't for Mike. I was awestruck. It felt so bizarre and so out of place down there in the darkness.

I hit the inflator button on my wing and started ascending next to the wall. The ship was perfectly upright on its keel and the wall seemed to go up forever. Finally I reached the side railing and popped over to the deck at around 76 meters. On my right there was a beam across the deck from the railing. I kept thinking it was a lifeboat davit, but that wasn't it. Time was of the essence and it was critical to try to get as much details in as possible. I swam over the beam to Mike and Volker who were on the other side of it. On the deck there was a large opening which I assumed was a cargo hold until I saw the top of a boiler. Apparently the superstructure had been wooden and was now rotten away. At least we now knew she was a steamer. I swam over to the other side of the wreck and stared down into the darkness. I returned to the center of the deck and swam a little bit away from the engine room with Volker. There was no visible damage anywhere to give clues to why this ship had sunk. We turned back and on top of the engine room I realized I had two minutes left in the plan. It would take that time to get back to the anchor and start the ascent. I signaled Volker the turnaround and he signaled that he would stay for another two minutes. I okayed him and turned around to leave and saw Mike swimming towards Volker below me. I was happy they were buddied up and started towards the side of the ship. I saw Mikes line and followed it over the side of railing.

I felt very dark and lonely descending back into the bottom. I was very aware of the depth, the bad visibilty and the time challenge. The whole world consisted of a braided nylon line in the beam of my primary light. I followed the thin white line on the bottom and finally got to the anchor. The anchor chain lay on the bottom for several meters and finally lifted off and was connected to a rope which shot up towards daylight. My time on the bottom was up and the dangerous part was about to begin. I checked my gauges and realized I was over my planned time with one minute. We had planned for fifteen minutes at ninety meters. We had never hit ninety and had spent half of the time on the deck so there was nothing to worry about. I still had 110 bar back gas when I started the ascent. I was getting cold in my drysuit.

When I was switching from my back gas (TX1540) to my first decompression mix (TX1925) at seventy meters I felt two sharp tugs on the rope from below. Okay, there had been miscommunication and the guys didn't know where I was. It's not like there would have been anything to be done if I was not on the line anyway, but I guess it's comforting to know. I tugged back twice and continued up to my first deep stop at 59 m. I was happy to see the stream of bubbles racing to the surface from below me. A little while later I saw Mikes yellow Inspo and Volkers tanks. So far everything was good. We exchanged okays and I continued my ascent to my second deep stop at 46 m and switched to my second deco gas (TX2808). The guys were following me as I continued to the last deept stop at 39 m. I was getting colder and colder and was looking forward to getting off the helium mixes.

After the deepstops I ascended to my ceiling in eighteen meters changing to EAN41 on the way. I was happy to feel the water getting warmer as we got closer to the surface. I wasn't shivering any more. Decompressing on a line is not really fun in my book but it's torture if you're cold. Not to mention ineffective. I still remember some of the worst moments of decompressing under ice after diving the Ojamo mines in Finland in winter. It doesn't get much more uncomfortable if everything else is going according to plan. Anyway, this would not be one of those nightmare decompressions. Water temperature was okay, the sea was getting choppy as it usually does in the afternoon, but everything was going as planned. I finally ascended to six meters and switched to oxygen. I snuggled up for the last forty boring minutes. Volker was trying to entertain himself palying some game on his VR3 but looked like he quickly lost interest. I was trying to sort out my decompression tanks but managed to get them into a worse jam. Luckily Volker helped me out and I got them sorted. Mike was by himself below the boat on an emergency tank line to not crowd the anchor line. The rest of the oxygen deco was uneventful and one by one we did the last slow ascent to the surface. Big smiles all around :)

10.06.08 A bad vis day in El Farallon with Vesku.

Driving down to El Farallon felt pointless as the sea looked bad after being battered by some big weather the previous day. Visibilty didn't clear and we dived for twenty minutes in bad vis. Miraculously we hit our anchor line on the way back.

07.06.08 A sunny day in La Laja and El Farallon with Vesku

Fantastic calm day. Nice diving on the shallow reef and the tour around El Farallon. I found a reel and an SMB too. Luckily there was not a diver attached to them.
 

 
06.06.08 Cueva del Agua with Mike Long. Paso Cartagena

We were finally back after the unlucky dive in the end of April. We pushed through to the second cache without any incidents. We continued to follow the line around a curved wall and hit the 600 m mark. A little after that we hit an 3-X intersection with two exit lines. We marked ours and pushed in only to find ourselves at a restriction. I swtiched from my second stage to back gas and went closer to inspect. It was shaped like a triangle and I had my doubts about pushing through it until I saw that it opened up immediately after the hole. I pushed in with my wing and tanks making contact with the rock. The tunnel on the other side was different again. We pushed on and passed an intersection from where a parallel line was visible on the left. We finally hit a 4-X intersection at around 720 meters and I turned the dive. Exiting was uneventful. We were pretty stoked about this dive and were looking forward to coming back soon to push further. 

050608 Stanfield with Mike Long. Bad vis and pics

I was eager to get back to Stanfield after the incredible vis we had the previous time. Unfortunately this time it was bad but I still managed to land some nice shots of Mike and his Inspiration.

Mike shooting video in engine room and around deck areas

02.06.08 Cueva del Agua with Mike Long and Werner. Ill communication

We planned on pushing to around 400 m or rule of thirds. I turned the dive at around 425 and there was some strange communication I did not understand happening. I just pointed to the exit and we left. Werner took some pics on the way out. 

01.06.08 Stanfield with Thomas and Siggy. Incredible vis

This was a truly magical dive. Vis was great and I managed to land a couple of nice shots of the guys. 

Thomas exiting / Siggy in engine room

31.05.08 Carbonero with Thomas and Werner. Mediocre vis and entanglement

A pretty nice dive except that vis wasn't perfect and I ended up cutting Werner out of some fishing lines. Luckily he's a cool cat so no problems there.

Werner in engine room / Thomas getting ready to leave / Thomas decompressing

28.05.08 Cueva del Agua with Werner. Nice dive and a happy snapper

A very nice relaxed dive to about 380 m. Werner and I took a lot of pics with his pocket camera. It was actually really handy because of the small housing.

22.05.08 Stanfield with Thomas and Volker. TX course dives

We were doing some more stage tank and liftbag drills with Thomas. Our Portuguese friends were diving the wreck with us.

14.05.08 Stanfield with Thomas. TX course dives. No wreck

Missed the wreck and ended up fooling around with our lift bags and stage tanks. 

03.05.08 Carbonero with Thomas and Volker. TX course dives

Some stage tank and liftbag drills with Thomas. 

28.04.08 Cueva del Agua with Mike Long. A string of unfortunate events

The first dive ended very quickly as Mike got water in his loop. We ascended back up to check the problem. Luckily the scrubber was dry and after a little maintenance we were good to dive again. At around 150m we turned the dive due to more equiment malfunctions. Enough is enough and we left the cave.

24.04.08 A successful exploration dive with Volker and Mike Long

We were exploring a potential wreck site in perfect weather. We anchored in and started the dive. I was pretty sceptical about finding a wreck especially after the business with the swedes. I was very wrong this time as Mike cheered into his loop. We had indeed found a wreck. We dropped to the deck and I hovered over it at 83 m. The side of the wreck was open with just the supporting beams poised up towards the surface. Swimming uo the deck we found an anchor winch covered with huge lobsters and realized we must be on the bow with Volker. Mike was somewhere toward the stern shooting video. We swam back towards the stern and hit an area which was destryoed. At that point it was time to turn back and we all met at the anchor line and started our ascent. The ascent was uneventful except that I was a little cold as usual.

22.04.08 Cueva del Agua with Mike Long and Volker. More CCR cave course

I was buddied up with Mike for his cave course drills. We did a bunch of line drills and touch contact line following.

19.04.08 Cueva del Agua with Mike Long. Finally past 500

We finally passed the first air pocket and entered "The Labyrinth" The tunnels change dramatically after the long tight section. The become diamond shaped and are very deep but not as wide. Beautiful area with a lot of side passages and circuits. We took care not to screw up any intersections. We reached the second tank cache and turned the dive at around 590 m. I was a little nervous pushing back through the restriction but apparently for no reason. The rest of the swim back was uneventful.

16.04.08 Cueva del Agua with Mike Long and Volker. CCR cave course

I was buddied up with Mike for his cave course. We pushed to 400m and back. We did some line drills in the cavern area.

15.04.08 Isla Grosa sea cave with Mike Long. CCR cave course

I was buddied up with Mike for his cave course drills. We did the usual line laying and tie offs, lights out and lost-line drills. All good.

12.04.08 Cobre with Mike Long and Volker. The plate remains a mystery

We were back exploring the mysterious plate Mike had found. It's stuck tightly and we had no luck trying to pry it out for inspection. Crow bars next time.... :)

05.04.08 Stanfield with Per, Matias and Kexy. Anchor fought me

I was going solo while the others were rummaging inside the wreck. Matias did some amazing pics. The others had a good time watching me wrestling with our boat anchor and lift bag.

03.04.08 An unsuccessful exploration dive with Per, Matias, Kexy and Volker

Dropped down to 67m to explore a bump in the sonar. It turned out to be a reef. We came up to find Kexy already on the surface and Volker in his equipment. Bummer. Kexy and Per went for a dive in the Isla Grosa sea cave on the way back.

02.04.08 Carbonero with Jurgen, Per and Matias. Two dives

Per and Matias were diving together. I was expermenting with some photographic equipment while waiting for Jurgen to descend. He found me eventually but had spent a lot of time already so we only did a short tip to the engine room and back before ascending. Unfortunately our anchor got stuck in something so I had to get my gear back on and free it. 

01.04.08 Cueva del Agua with Per and Matias. A good and a bad one

Entering through Galeria del Stress we pushed to about 490 m before turning the dive. We dropped in for another one to explore the eastern tunnel and ended up silting out the place and getting separated and then exiting

31.03.08 Cueva del Agua with Per and Matias. Taking the sights 

A nice orientation dive checking out the lines and getting a feel of how the first 220 m are laid out. I learned a lot diving with the guys.

27.03.08 Carbonero with Steve and Bill. Trouble on the surface and some friendly fish

Bill had a problem on the surface and passed the dive. Steve and I did the tour and ascended with some extremely brave fish keeping us company. They were really nosey, nipping something from our suits. It was hilarious. The seas had got choppy and we had a rough ride back in.