Wreck specialty course… Part 1

Tami, Kate and I are busy with the PADI Wreck Specialty course. It involves four wreck dives, and a theory component. You don’t need to be an Advanced diver to do the course – though all three of us are – but an Adventure Diver qualification is sufficient.

(The Adventure Diver qualification is like Advanced-lite: instead of five adventure dives, you only do three. Also, you can credit each adventure dive towards the first dive of the corresponding specialty course.)

The theory component is simple: there’s a short (50 page) manual that covers safety aspects of wreck diving as well as some of the historical and (marine) biological considerations that should be borne in mind when exploring wrecks. I was particularly struck by the section pointing out that some wrecks are war graves or the final resting place (like Titanic) of many civilian souls, and should thus be treated with the same respect as you would a grave in a cemetery.

The manual is also very clear and forceful on the subject of wreck penetration, an activity that seems terrifying to me. You need the correct equipment, and (as Peter Southwood says repeatedly on his Wikivoyage pages) if you don’t know what that is, you’re not qualified to enter a wreck! Also, there are particular techniques required to handle that equipment: you need to know how to manage a reel, belaying it correctly, as well as how to handle yourself in case of entrapment, entanglement, or disorientation. Added to all this, many wrecks are unstable and all of them are in a state of decay… Locally, the SAS Transvaal, SAS Pietermaritzburg and BOS 400 come to mind (the latter collapsed during a storm this past winter, and is now in a radically different orientation).

Four wreck dives are required to complete the course. This past weekend we did two: a deep dive on the MV Rockeater, a fantastic former diamond driller in Smitswinkel Bay, and a dive on the SAS Pietermaritzburg.

Dive 1: MV Rockeater

The MV Rockeater is the oldest of the Smitswinkel Bay wrecks – it’s been down there since 1972. The ship has a lot of interesting bits and pieces sticking up off it, as well as a collapsed helicopter pad and a drilling derrick that is lying on the sand next to it. It’s 65 metres long and very, very lively. We saw a sleeping pyjama catshark in the wreck, as well as nudibranchs, lots of fish, and the most beautiful sea fans. Space cadet here didn’t lower her camera’s lens cover before putting it in the housing, and didn’t check that everything was in order with the camera while still on the boat… So at 20 metres when I switched it on, it told me to “lower the lens cover in order to shoot”… Opening the housing to do so was not an option! So I just had to look, no pictures.

Our project on this dive was to determine which way the current was flowing, and then swim from the shot line down the wreck into the current. We’d do this to 1/4 of our air, and then turn around and swim back with the current.

Dive 2: SAS Pietermaritzburg

Wreckage of the SAS Pietermaritzburg
Wreckage of the SAS Pietermaritzburg

The SAS Pietermaritzburg is a more recent scuttling (1994) but lies in a very exposed spot just off the Miller’s Point slipway. It has a fascinating history – before being purchased and renamed by the South African government, it took place as the lead minesweeper in the D Day invasion of Normandy. And now it’s lying 1 kilometre from Miller’s Point!

SAS Pietermaritzburg
SAS Pietermaritzburg

The visibility wasn’t great (apparently fairly standard for this site), but it’s a fantastic wreck. Maximum depth (on the sand) is about 22 metres, so you can have a nice long dive in relative comfort. The wreck has all sorts of cool places to look inside, a ladder up to the deck, and for the brave (or foolhardy), some swimthroughs under the hull.

Structure on the SAS Pietermaritzburg
Structure on the SAS Pietermaritzburg

It was nudibranch paradise… Instead of giving my full attention to the mapping project we’d been set (drawing the wreck including estimates of width and length, the compass direction in which it’s lying, and depths on the deck and sand), I was taking National Geographic quality photos of those gorgeous sea slugs.Fortunately Kate’s map was good enough for both of us!

SAS Pietermaritzburg
SAS Pietermaritzburg

Tony was doing dive 4 with Cindy, an Open Water student, so Gerard, Kate, Tami (once she found us!) and I cruised the wreck investigating all the awesome features. We will definitely be diving this wreck a lot more in the future.

Life on the SAS Pietermaritzburg
Life on the SAS Pietermaritzburg

Weather permitting, we’ll do the second and third dives for the Wreck specialty next weekend or the weekend after that.

Night Diving Specialty… Completed!

On Saturday I did the final dive of my Night Diving specialty course, and Kate did the first one of hers. We went to Long Beach, did a dangerous surf entry through the 3 inch high waves, and proceded to do some night time navigation.

The goal was for us to make our way out to the yellow buoy, and then swim back on a slightly different heading. In retrospect it was a tough ask, because the buoy is attached to the sea floor by a chain. Unless we had been pinpoint accurate, we’d never have seen it (and indeed we didn’t) even if we were a few metres away.

Kate and I getting our bearings on the beach
Kate and I getting our bearings on the beach. To infinity and beyond!

Night navigation SUCKS. I did not enjoy it at all, but feel rather proud of myself and Kate for our efforts. We did spend two intervals on the surface arguing about which heading to take, and the second time we surfaced for a look-around, we lost the buoy. Detective Kate deduced that it was behind the yacht on our right (yes, we were THAT far out).

Juggling compass, torch, camera (have not figured out night-time photography yet, so my pictures are like something out of the Blair Witch Project) and dive computer left me feeling as though I did not have enough arms. Some kind of wrist-strap that will make the torch an extension of my arm is definitely in order. The fact remains, however, that night diving is awesome fun… But this expedition did persuade me that it’s more fun when you know where you’re going!

Newsletter: Wreck diving weekend

Hi there

The past week has been great for diving and other than Sunday we were in the water every day. The temperature on Friday was 18 degrees on the Clan Stuart wreck. We were lucky to see rays three days in a row at different locations. A truly remarkable creature, this one was a good metre and a half across. We found this beauty at Long Beach in 7 metres of water. We also saw one on Thursday at the upturned yacht wreck near the yellow harbour buoy as well as one sleeping in the wreck of the Clan Stuart on Friday.

Raymond the ray
Raymond the ray

The summer winds are here and most of the boat launching will move to Hout Bay. The wrecks of the Atlantic are awesome and the viz this last weekend was 25 metres on the Maori wreck.

Kate swims with a golf ball on a teaspoon
Kate swims with a golf ball on a teaspoon

Starting this weekend I will be running one of my favorite series of courses being Nitrox, Wreck and Deep specialties. I am also doing a Night diver specialty over the next week or so and have two Open Water courses starting a week apart. I also have three Rescue and Divemaster students and different levels so there are lots of opportunities to get in the water. All dives this weekend will be boat dives and if you just want to tag along as a fun diver please remeber I need to book by Thursday midday.

Enriched Air

Nitrox, or enriched air increases your bottom time. Diving to 30 metres on air you have a maximum dive time of 20 minutes but on Nitrox 32% you have 30 minutes.

Deep diving and wreck exploration go hand in hand with a Nitrox certification and this is how it works:

Nitrox R 1650 (course can be run in the evenings)
Wreck R 1950
Deep R 2050

If you sign up for either Wreck or Deep you will get the Nitrox course for R1250. Choose both specialties and Nitrox will only cost you R950.

Wreck and Deep both require four dives. All four dives will be boat dives and all will be Nitrox dives if you have done the Nitrox specialty.

Klipfish getting his chin tickled
Klipfish getting his chin tickled

Best regards

Learn to Dive Today logoTony Lindeque
076 817 1099
www.learntodivetoday.co.za
www.learntodivetoday.co.za/blog
Diving is addictive!

Newsletter: Halloween dive, wrecks and more

Hi everyone

Summer is closing in on us fast and the water is getting warmer, time to dust off your dive gear and get wet. The rays are back at Long Beach, whales are still around for a few weeks and the ocean is waiting for you to visit.

October has been a busy diving month. The trip to Sodwana was awesome and we are thinking about another trip early December or perhaps early January.

I have been lucky to have dived almost every day since the beginning of the month and congratulations to the following people on their certifications:

Open Water

Anna, Belinda, Richard, Gabby, Lorna, Kate

Advanced

Gerard, Justin, Kate, Sophie, Tami

Deep Specialty

Clare

Students at Long Beach
Richard, Belinda, Anna, Kate and Corné at Long Beach

Kate is here from the UK doing the Zero to Hero program with me. She started on the 13th October and has done Open Water, Advanced, and is busy with Nitrox and Rescue. Next week she will start her Divemaster program.

On Saturday I will finish an Open Water course and continue with a Rescue course. Sunday the plan is to dive the sevengill cowsharks and Boulders, perhaps see a penguin underwater.

Saturday we are having a Halloween night dive.

These are the rules:

  • you must dive in a Halloween theme something or another… use your imagination
  • you must find treasure… I will hide several prizes during the day at the site we dive
  • to find them you must… use your imagination!
  • we will have an egg cracking contest… underwater… where you must crack and remove the shell of a raw egg gently, so the egg stays intact…
  • coffee and ( ) on the beach afterwards… plus you get to open the treasure you found…

November

I am going to run an Advanced open water course, a Wreck specialty, Night diver specialty, and a Deep diver specialty course during the month of November. Dates are 6th, 13th and 20th. The Deep specialty will qualify you to 40 metres and the Wreck specialty will include wreck penetration for those keen to explore the inside of a sunken ship. Night diver will give you great confidence is low visibility diving conditions.

The Deep and Wreck courses are dependent on boat scheduling and detailed dive planning so book early if you are interested.

Best regards

Learn to Dive Today logoTony Lindeque
076 817 1099
www.learntodivetoday.co.za
www.learntodivetoday.co.za/blog
Diving is addictive!

Newsletter: Bye for now…

Hi everyone,

Claremont Virgin Active
Claremont Virgin Active - note the scuba divers at the end of the pool!

We spent Friday in a 24 degree swimming pool with a bunch of kids aged 8 and up. We were conducting Bubblemaker programs, open to all kids 8 and older and it was amazing how quickly they took to scuba gear. A small 10 litre cylinder looks huge when strapped to an eight year old, but within minutes they had the concept, good buoyancy and were off to explore the pool.

Bubblemakers in the pool
Bubblemakers in the pool

The wind was not kind in False Bay this weekend but we managed to dive with Open Water students on Saturday and Sunday in a calm and pleasant Simon’s Town yacht basin. Saturday afternoon we braved the rough ocean for Rescue diver course and despite the rough surface conditions we had good viz and pleasant diving. Many divers, eager to get wet, braved the wind on Saturday and I reckon there were easily 50 divers in the water.

The Sodwana weekend is here and 10 of us are off for a taste of warmer water and a relaxing long weekend. We leave on Thursday and will be back on Tuesday 12th. Gerard, Tami, Justin and Sophie will return as Advanced divers and Clare will complete her Underwater Navigator speciality. I hope to be armed with lots of humorous stories and many, many incriminating photos. Did you know you can make a fortune selling your friends’ incriminating evidence of them misbehaving purely buy using this statement: “How much will you pay me to keep this photo OFF facebook…?” Hehehe… Very profitable…

I am starting a new Open Water course on Wednesday 13th so I will be in the water every day from Wednesday to Sunday.

I plan to book a boat again for Saturday 16th to visit another wreck in Smitswinkel Bay. We will also simulate a few rescue scenarios on the trip so it will be fun. The last dive we did there was pleasantly rewarded with whales right next to us as we surfaced.

I am keen for a night dive again on Saturday 16th, I have torches and cyalumes. Sunday the 17th we plan to dive at Boulders and see if we can coax a few penguins to pose for us for a photo shoot… Underwater that is…

Be good, have fun, and go diving.

Don’t forget to get your dive permit from a post office.

Learn to Dive Today logoTony Lindeque
076 817 1099
www.learntodivetoday.co.za
www.learntodivetoday.co.za/blog
Diving is addictive!

Deep Specialty course

When I started diving, I did not like deep dives. I hated the boat rides to get to the dive sites – the combination of a vivid imagination and a few scary experiences makes me something of a tense sailor. I also get seasick when the boat stops and the sea is choppy – swell plus motor fumes is a bad combination!

Time has improved the situation. I’m a much more relaxed boat passenger than I was a year ago. I make sure to travel with skippers I trust. I make sure I’m seated near the back of the boat (for bumpiness), and I wedge my feet into the footstraps and hold on to the ropes. I’ve been lost at sea for a little while, and while unpleasant, it wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be.

I’ve also conquered my fear of deep water. Friday’s dive in Smitswinkel Bay was the first deep dive that I’ve been totally relaxed about, before and during. I’ve learned to trust my equipment, and to trust my buddy. I know how I feel at 30 metres down (sharp as a stack of wet newspapers), and I consciously relax. I have breathed off Tony’s octo at the bottom of the ocean (I sucked air prodigiously on my first couple of deep dives) and both of us survived. The apparent viscosity of the water at depth (like swimming through honey) doesn’t surprise me any more, and I know not to over-exert. My buoyancy has improved greatly and I don’t get panicky when I have to inject several squirts of air into my BCD to slow my descent.

Deep dives are awesome. It’s incredible to see the colours come to life when you shine a torch on things, or fire off a camera flash. It’s also thrilling to be able to explore a part of the ocean that is completely inaccessible in the normal course of things.

I also love safety stops. I love floating in midwater, seeing everyone’s bubbles around me, and feeling like an astronaut. We did a dive on the SAS Transvaal in incredibly visibility, and this video Tony took on the safety stop captures the feeling of weightlessness and space.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-raFP0oP3A&w=540]

The only frustration to me is how short the dives are. Because of the increased pressure at depth, you breathe a LOT more air out of your cylinder with each breath than you do on a shallow dive. At 40 metres, each breath consumes five times more air than at the surface. You also have to watch your dive time to avoid hitting the RDP limits at depth. A Nitrox course comes in handy here… But it seems that practice, and improved diving technique, are the key elements to improving air consumption, dive time and enjoyment of the whole experience.

The theory aspect of the course covers dive techniques related to drift and wall dives, decompression sickness and how to avoid it, safety stops and one or two other matters such as photography at depth. The skills required on the dives mainly relate to safety stops, different types of ascent and descent (with and without a reference line), and a little bit of navigation. It gives me great confidence to know that I am now certified to 40 metres, although, as the manual points out, 30 metres seems to be the “optimum depth” for the kind of scuba diving I enjoy.

Newsletter: Treasure Hunting, Whales, Sodwana

Hi everyone

The weekend is closing fast, today we saw 14 whales in the bay, of which four were close to Long Beach and three at the Clan Stuart. They have been hanging around for about two weeks now and don’t look set to leave soon. It is very likely we will dive with them on Saturday as the weather is looking amazing, sunny, 27 degrees and hardly a breath of wind.

I have a posse of Discover Scuba Diving candidates on Saturday, so I will dive long beach in the morning. Afternoon dives will be dependent on where the whales are and we will hopefully be able to get them on camera…on a dive.

Night dive on Saturday as usual, meet at long beach at 6.00 pm. Remember I have torches and cyalumes.

I have good news and bad news:

The good news is that the Sodwana dive trip is filling up fast, the water temperature there today was 22 degrees, flat seas and sunny skies…. Hmm, it’s not too late to decide to come along, a cheaper warm tropical dive trip will be hard to find. We are all arriving in Durban at about the same time so we will share hire cars to keep costs down. There is also an option of diving Aliwal shoal on the Monday… shout soon if you are interested.

More good news, I have been asked if we would be interested in diving the Rietvlei Nature Reserve and water sport facility. Matt works for a company that runs a boat there and they have lost a very valuable stainless steel propeller. It would require some search and recovery techniques and we would be very popular and possibly famous if we find it (the reward may be as much as a case of beer). We would need to be three teams and anyone doing the dive will receive a search and recovery adventure dive log in their log books, free, one less dive on the way to Advanced diver…

Besides, there must be so much treasure down there as it is a seldom dived area… no crocs I assure you. Sunday would be good for this dive.

The bad news is that from tomorrow anyone diving with me will need to ensure their hair is proper, make-up done, dive kit polished and shiny, and they behave underwater, and on the beach… I have a new video camera and will be hunting for footage of you all behaving badly underwater, something I can put on YouTube, or use to embarrass you. If you think you are behaving foolishly and no-one saw, beware, so Tami, no shark wrestling, Clare, no groping of unsuspecting puffer fish, Maurice, no more crayfish in your pockets, and then to all of those that molest poor innocent pipe fish… be warned… luckily the biggest offender will be holding the camera…

Don’t forget all divers need a dive permit, get yours before they get you! Available at the Post Office – take your ID book.

Dive Like a Fish - Learn to Dive Today!
Dive Like a Fish - Learn to Dive Today!

Tony Lindeque
076 817 1099
www.learntodivetoday.co.za
www.learntodivetoday.co.za/blog
Diving is addictive!

Plan your dive and dive your plan

Three divers approached me at the dive centre one day, requesting I take them to a dive site where they could dive to 60 metres. They wanted to test some new equipment configurations. Two were certified advanced Nitrox divers, qualified deep technical divers and had made several dives to over a hundred metres… in a lake. The third diver, like myself, was qualified to dive to 40 metres.

So we draw up a plan: they will dive to 60 metres, spend 6 minutes at that depth, ascend to 50 metres and spend 5 minutes there, then ascend to 40 metres 5 minutes thereafter and so on until the reached 6 metres where they would switch to pure oxygen to reduce the deco stop time as the current at this site is strong. The third diver and myself would meet them at 40metres.

Using a software program called V Planner we calculated that including the descent time and ascent times for each stage, at a controlled rate, we would enter the water precisely 16 minutes after they started their dive and we would meet them at 40 metres. We would then all be together for the next 30 minutes, ascending with them to their 6 metre safety stop, ensure they had both switched to pure oxygen and then leave them and return to the boat.

The plan was that we would spend 6 minutes on our descent to 40 metres and all four of us would reach 40 metres together. They were made to clearly understand that should they have a problem at any depth deeper than 40 metres we would not be able to help them as we were diving 12 litre steel cylinders on a Nitrox 32% mix, limiting our depth – and what’s more we did not have the qualifications to go to 60 metres.

We discussed the plan in great detail and everyone was set. A red SMB would be hoisted if they experienced any difficulty and a yellow would be released once we met at 40 metres.

Mistakes happen

We started our descent on time, and watching my dive computer and timer I descended at the agreed rate. My buddy, however, did not. He descended way too fast. Believing that they would be in control of their dive he descended very fast and joined them, ahead of schedule at a depth of 55 metres. They were 3 minutes behind schedule as they had struggled to come to terms with the ocean current. Now we had a problem. I waited at 40 metres, but they arrived late, and this meant I would risk going into deco before we left for the 30 metre stop.

At this point my buddy ran out of air. He was closer to the deep divers as he was reading their slates, so he grabbed the first regulator he could see: the deco tank regulator, filled with pure oxygen. At depth oxygen is toxic and can kill you in a matter of minutes. I grabbed it out of his mouth, so he grabbed my regulator out of my mouth as he was now starting to panic. He was holding onto me so tight I could not reach my octo so I reached for the octo of another diver. So here we were three divers locked together at 40 metres, each with a regulator in our mouths that belonged to someone else. I managed to get him calmed and off my cylinder and onto the octo of the deep diver with the most air. Now back to normal, we started our ascent and did the required safety stops, reached the 6 metre stop for them to switch to oxygen and headed for the surface. I reached the surface with 10 bar in my tank.

Deep dive
Ascending from the almost disastrous deep dive on Atlantis in Ponta do Ouro. Note the hang tank of pure oxygen.

My buddy had been to 55 m on a Nitrox mix of 32%. The maximum safe depth for this blend is 40 metres. He had almost sucked on a cylinder of oxygen at 40 metres, this is a lethal dose at depth. Mistakes happen. Be meticulous with dive planning, rehearse your incident scenarios and make sure you dive your plan.

Wreck penetration

Once you embark on the Wreck Specialty Diver course you can choose to include wreck penetration if you wish.

Wreck penetration
Wreck penetration

There is more to this aspect than just having a big torch! Passages deigned for walking along become very tight spaces if the ship is lying on its side and a once narrow walk way will have you crawling along the bottom of it while your tank scrapes the top, dislodging rust from above and silt from below – reducing visibility to zero despite your huge light.

Wreck penetration
Take care not to swim into overhead environments without a reel, line and a light

Once in a wreck you need to move very slowly as the diver behind you will not have a good time swimming in the silt cloud you create. Your bubbles are also enough to create a cascade of flaked rust in some instances. It is extremely important to use a reel and line, tied off at the entrance. You belay the line at various points to prevent the line following a route you can’t navigate on your return. If you don’t do this, the line will find the shortest route through the wreck behind you – not necessarily person-sized! Cyalumes attached to the line are useful just as a back up torch or three is also an essential requirement.

Wreck penetration
Orient yourself using daylight when penetrating a wreck

Always ensure you have studied a drawing of the layout of the sections you plan to penetrate. The MV Aster wreck just outside Hout Bay Harbour was purposely scuttled by divers, for divers. As a result detailed drawings of the interior of the wreck exist, and it is an ideal site for training in wreck penetration.

Night Diving as a Specialty or a fun dive

Tony and I do night dives quite often. We love it – there are creatures that only come out at night, and there’s something very exciting about going somewhere familiar and seeing how different it looks at night. We’ve seen something new on every night dive we’ve done (latest: white sea catfish at Long Beach). Besides, I LOVE cyalumes (for the uninitiated, those are the awesome little light sticks that you snap to release a chemical and then they start glowing) and all things glow in the dark.

I admit that I found my first night dive a little bit scary, and I still find I have to be more deliberate about relaxing in the water and not letting my imagination run wild. But it’s a very good discipline, forcing yourself to breathe deeply and be calm, and very quickly you get distracted by all the creatures that are either attracted to or hypnotised by your torch.

A lot of fish will swim right up to your torch, giving excellent photographic opportunities and time to examine them in detail. I specially like the beaked sandfish – they only come out at night (when I dive Long Beach during the day, I always wonder where they are). They’re long, thin, shiny, cream-coloured fish with translucent fins like dragon fly wings, and they use their pointy noses to dig themselves into the sand when they get a fright. But most of the time they gather together in little groups, milling about langurously on the sand. They love to check out torches and are not shy unless you make sudden moves or try to touch one.

I’m busy doing the PADI Night Diver Specialty – since we do so many night dives, and since I’m hungry to learn more at the moment, it seemed like a good idea. It’s not a demanding course at all, but I’m enjoying it. The manual covers night diving techniques in a lot of detail, and has a very useful section on choosing a dive light, and the relative advantages of different types of light and batteries. Most of it seems to be common sense, like remembering not to shine your light in people’s eyes, not going into any overhead environments (because there’s no daylight for orienting yourself) and making sure you have a backup light. However, it’s the kind of common sense that one needs to be reminded of or have specifically pointed out – I would never have thought about the danger of going into caves or penetrating wrecks at night, and would probably have gotten myself into trouble without giving it a second thought.

The practical section of the course involves three dives. There are a couple of navigation tasks, and on one of the dives you have to sit on the bottom for three minutes with the lights off. It’s surprising how light it is underwater at night. We did a night dive at Long Beach on Saturday, and even though there was cloud covering the moon, the ambient light underwater from our cyalumes and from the city lights was not inconsiderable.

If you enjoy night diving, or want to challenge yourself with something new, different and unusual, this is a really cool specialty to try. You can also do a night dive as a fun dive with an Open Water Qualification, or as an Adventure dive towards your Advanced Open Water diver qualification.