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Adventures & Training Above and Below the Water!

December 9, 2006 - BSC Dive with Chris Mayo & John Thibidoux

The Non-Search & Non-Recovery Dive

It was but 9:22am when Chris's cell number popped up on my caller ID, well, where are you now?  Fortunately my alarm went off this morning and I abided, albeit no help in arriving on time at BSC to meet Chris & Tibs.  They were ready when I arrived but I calmed them with Donna's homemade cookies while my cylinder took a drink from Steve's air banks.  The plan was an S&R dive at the east end of the Hole, to recover a 5 gallon pail anchor that disappeared from sight when the rope attached to it ended up being far short of the required distance to reach the surface.  This anchor is approximately 100' east of the far red buoy marking one of three turning points for the annual triathlon at BSC.  We agreed to surface to the buoy, our search pivot point, to maximize the plain ole air we were breathing, as the buoy anchor rests in 117ffw.  Mayo agrees that doubles are meant for below-surface use while Tibs was thankful he disbanded his twin steel 100's before today's adventure.

11:02am this week we begin our descent.  The water was clear as a bell to about 85' where the lights went dim.  At 100', it was lights out down to 117'.  I had the search rope, a high vis yellow nylon variety, the floating sort, that I tied to the buoy's downline.  I payed out about 20' and hit a snag, a knot of course, what else at 117' with the lights out.  Mayo & Tibs illuminated the mess while I tugged and shook the nest in hopes of a simple fix.  Of course this is just about the time I figure it would have been a good idea to wrap the rope around a device designed for just such a purpose; minimize entanglement.  Nah, that was too easy.  Well, we spent 15 minutes of bottom time fooling with this mess and got about 80' of the rope straightened out.  Chris signaled with his light to check in and deco had already started.  We returned to the upline and began our ascent.  At 100' Mayo deployed his lift bag for practice.  Tibs and I greeted our snaggled (floating) rope at 60' and once again invested in its correction.  Five additional minutes paid off when we stretched the full 100' of search rope to its length, then tied it off at 25' on the upline.  Now it is ready for the next S&R attempt.

So, here we are at 25' with about 12 minutes of deco remaining, way the hell past reasonable distances (to the exit) in this water with no thermocline to warm us up.  So start swimming we did, along the north wall headed home.  It was a pleasant swim, a few juvenile fish to occupy our ocular senses.  Mayo caught up to us closer to the exit as he had a surface marker to deal with.  There was a westerly wind on the surface during our ingress so the best idea was to reel in the resistance before he headed west toward the exit.  My deco cleared just as we approached the road exit.  Tibs was already on the surface since he refused to test the internal seals of his dry suit in this weather.

It was a beautiful day and a great dive in blackout conditions - good practice!  The S&R will resume on our next dive to the east end of the Hole.

11:02am start, 117ffw, 54 minutes

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