OkiMike(Offline)

DAY 3

Hump day. If my memory serves me correctly, after we met for breakfast, we gathered on the beach in our swim trunks and proceeded to take the swim test. Gideon ran a measure to a boat’s moor line that was sitting out a way from the beach and determined it to be about 100m. We, therefore, had to swim out and back twice for a total of 400 meters in 14 minutes or less. Michael was the strongest swimmer of the bunch but we all finished with plenty of time to spare, however, not without cuts on our feet from the shallow reef near the shore. It was a strange experience to do the test in an open water scenario where currents weaved in and out of the little bay, but had a grander feeling than just doing 16 laps in a 25 meter pool. (I had brought my pool goggles and was greeted by some beautiful reef scenery as I swam). Here, I might mention for the sake of those struggling with the swimming test to practice doing your 400 meters either in the ocean or in the pool but (in the case of the pool) without kicking off from the wall on each pass. If, like us, you’re forced to do it in the open ocean, there will be no wall and you might find yourself a little more tired than if you’d only prepared for the test in a pool and had been relying on the walls to help you swim the distance within the available time.

When that test was done, we ended with our underwater swim for 15 meters. To do this, Gideon measured a distance away from us in water about 1.5 meters in depth and we just had to start swimming under the surface from our starting point until we reached him. Again, there were no problems there.

Back on shore, I think we actually met for an early lecture session on helium because we were going to be using 30/30 for the dives that day.

Before diving, we grabbed some lunch and checked our gear. Michael and I swore that some of our gear had been tampered with: I had an SMB whose bungie-restraint cord was removed from around the bag and Michael had something with one of his regulators. Gideon, of course, swears that he had nothing to do with it! When we were ready, we donned our gear and walked to a waiting banana boat that would take us to the Alma Jane, a wreck that lies pretty much in 30 meters of water.

It was exciting to be diving on Trimix at last and on a real wreck!

(Dive 1) – 1:48pm

There was a massive buoy on the surface that led down to the wreck which also had a marker at 6 meters which we could use on our first dive to practice drills. For the first dive we were to, again, do down to 6 meters, do valve drills, OOG drills and then deco bottle switches (which was also my first time to use real 50%) and then ascend to the surface.


(Image: Michael donates to Michael.)

Reviewing the video, we were still plagued by the occasional dangling light cords and bungled steps in gas switching, but in general, I could see in the video review that we had improved quite a lot.

(Dive 2) – 2:14 pm

This was it! Our first dive of the class below 20m where we could test the benefits of the 30/30 mix over the more oft-used 32% enriched air. We still didn’t need to do deco, but the dive would incorporate it so we’d get practice for doing real 3 meter stops after a dive a depth and in the proper time.

Though later dives on 35% would show me that breathing on Helium is a lot easier, for some reason, I didn’t notice anything different on this dive with only 30% in the tanks except, of course, that we could talk funny on the surface and sort-of verify that we had some amount of helium in our tanks.

For those who haven’t gone diving using Trimix, the only noticeable difference in warm water is that you don’t become narc’d and are, therefore, clear-headed at depth (which is, at the Tech 1 level, between 30 and 48 meters). Cold water divers, if they are silly enough not to use a separate drysuit inflation source, will definitely notice that they get really cold really fast breathing on helium and using it to inflate their drysuits because of how fast it conducts heat away from the body. Incidentally, I tried this once a number of months later while assisting Gideon as videographer in a drysuit Tech1 class in Izu, Japan—hey, you have to say you’ve tried it ONCE just so you know from experience… But that was in 23 degree (Celsius) water only to 45 meters for a few minutes. I can’t even imagine doing it in colder water or for the entire 30-minute bottom time. Brrrr…..I was frozen. But in the waters of the Philippine we had no such concerns!

We were moving pretty slowly on this dive and it took us nearly 4 minutes to reach our planned depth. No sooner had we arrived then the AoD struck the right side of Michael’s right manifold. I happened to catch the AoD work his magic and stopped to see Michael do his own self-check first. After that, he called Paul over to check his bubbling and Paul confirmed that it was broken and we proceeded back to the line after Michael closed the isolator.

Michael was soon out of gas and after donating to him, I saw that we were on the upline so I began to run deco as had been pre-planned. Before we could move up though, Paul’s right began to bubble and, as he didn’t see my signal to “move up”, we had to wait at depth until he evaluated the problem. He was quick to determine that the bubbling stopped when he shut down his right post, so after switching to his backup we began to move again. No need to fix the problem as we’d soon be off our backgas once deco began at 21 meters.


(Image: The AoD: hard at work or hardly working?)

Paul was the first to switch, with Michael going over to his deco bottle after him. But alas, Michael clipped off MY long hose to his right D-ring when he switched and had to unclip, sort it out and hand it back before I could stow it and, ultimately, move to my bottle.

Then it was my turn to bungle my light cord stowing. At the time, I was still used to keeping it under the long hose throughout the dive as I’d been taught. So even though it was actually correct, according to my previous light usage, I thought it was backwards and began to straighten it out while my buddies were already busy decoing. With everything combined we probably wasted a good 3 minutes at the 21 meter mark. I later joked that Paul had been on his bottle so long that he had probably already finished his deco by the time we were on the move to 60 feet!

Once we were all on our deco bottles, Michael informed me of Paul’s broken right post and I “okayed” him.

From there to the surface, we didn’t have any more problems.

(Dive 3) – 2:54 pm

Our final dive for the day, dive 3 was supposed to be another dive on the Alma Jane with the remaining gas in our tanks. Michael and I were pretty low on deco gas, but Gideon reminded us that we could just go to backgas and double our times if this occurred. Reassured, we dropped again at a pretty slow rate, arriving at depth about three and a half minutes later.

On this dive, Paul led us across the deck of the ship at quite a pace. The goal was to go so fast that Gideon would apparently have a hard time catching us and giving us failures. One difference on this dive though was that we were to be in single-line formation rather than side by side since Gideon promised we could “see the ship better that way”. We each had a laugh knowing that he really wanted us to do it this way so he’d have an easier time of picking us off one by one in the blind spots of those in front!


(Image: In a single-line formation on the Alma Jane)

We actually made a full revolution around the ship before the AoD got bored and paid us a visit. Did I say, “us”? I meant “the poor guy in the back” (Michael). But we were ready. Being in the middle, I signaled for Paul to “hold” and I turned around to check his left post which had been bubbling. I was able to fix it and we continued on.

Already back to the stern, I called the dive due to time, when all of a sudden my isolator went kablooey! Being nonfixable and after conveying this to my buddies, we went up to 21 meters to do our switches. On the way, sure enough, I ran out of gas and Michael donated his to me. Upon reading 21 meters however, Paul ran deco and told Michael and I to switch at the same time. After I had switched, I was holding on to Michael’s long hose and, not wanting him to get them entangled if he tried to stow it AFTER he’d already gone to his deco bottle, I passed it to him before he could switch. However, being on the outside of the group (*bad, bad*) I couldn’t see that he’d already pulled out the deco regulator. He took the long hose back but now had his hands full trying to figure out what to do first, stow or switch. He chose to stow but did it quickly so as to keep the deco schedule moving.

Once everyone had gone over to our deco bottles, Paul shot a bag so we could ascend on the line. Soon after that, as anticipated, my deco bottle actually ran out of gas (for real!) so I switched back to my backgas and notified my buddies. And then the real fun began. After about a minute on backgas, the AoD insisted that I lose that too! Michael promptly fed me his deco regulator and went to HIS backgas but in the mix, Michael forgot to monitor his deco bottle supply now that it was being breathed by someone else. After about 30 seconds of my breathing off of it, the reg went dead and it was a REAL dead. But I made the next fatal mistake (or could have been fatal if it hadn’t been a scenario dive)—I went back to my backgas thinking that the scenario was over and I would just have to really use it even though we were pretending it too was gone. WRONG! (Hint: in this sort of situation, the correct response is to go to the 3rd buddy’s gas supply!)

Of course, Michael didn’t know what was going on though and put the deco reg back in his mouth when I passed it back, but after the AoD insisted, he wisely stowed his deco reg! (Alas, who says that the AoD is not just and loving?) In the middle of all this, Paul motioned for us to “move up”.

At the 3 meter mark, I lost both masks and had Paul guide my hand to the line. But after this, both Paul and Michael began giving me touch-contact signals that were different. For example, Michael would wave my hand back and forth to supposedly tell me to “level off” but Paul would squeeze my hand which I guess meant to “stop”. Or Michael would pat the underside of my arm to signal me to “move up” whereas Paul would tug at my thumb in the vertical position.


(Image: Maskless and on the up-line.)

Using both signals I was able to come to an understanding of what they wanted me to do, but after the dives were over we had to go over this some more. In addition, we were still in the habit of reeling in the spool above 6 meters even when there were failures present. Gideon reminded us, too, that we can just leave it and have a peaceful ride to the surface without having to deal with that one extra task.

The dive over, we formed a queue on the surface, got in the boat one by one and made our way back to the hotel where we went through our regular post-dive routine.

We had an early dinner and then proceeded to the classroom where we started our lecture on decompression. During the next day’s dives we’d need it as we’d be on 21/35 and 50% for real!