Grif's diving journeys

Mexico Cave Diving: January 2011

2011-02-07T20:26:00.000Z

Technorati Tags: Cave Diving,GUE,Michael Griffin,Grifmike,Cave 2,C2,Zero Gravity,Technical Diving,Cenote,Yucatan,Mexico

I have just about settled back into my normal time zone after returning on Thursday from my cave diving trip to Mexico. I though I would move quickly to write up a trip report before I get caught up in other events and end up long fingering it – or not posting one at all.

The cave dives in Mexico are awesome... with plenty of variety. This is not my first time gracing the beauty of the Mexican Yucatan peninsula, but this trip did see our dive team operate from some sites much further back in the jungle. [Wikipedia] These cave systems formed as normal caves underwater, but upper sections drained becoming air filled during past low sea levels. During this vadose, or air filled state, abundant speleothem deposits formed. The caves and the vadose speleothem were subsequently reflooded and became hydraulically reactivated as rising sea levels also raised the water table. These caves are therefore polygenetic, having experienced more than one cycle of formation below the water table. These caves are now fully flooded and offer spectacular cave diving environments.[/Wikipedia]

I landed in Cancun airport after a long 11 hour flight from Gatwick on Wednesday evening the 26^th of January and was met by my main dive buddy Peter who picked me up in our rented car... a Hyundai Atos or as we lovingly referred to it “the Tuk Tuk”. We then drove to Tulum grabbed a quick bite in “Gringo Dave’s” and hit the sack.

Thursday morning the 27^th we met up with Ron who was diving with us from Thursday to Saturday. We went to Akumal and had breakfast together at the Turtle Bay Cafe (great eggs Benedict and kick ass Strawberry smoothie!). On full stomachs we walked into Zero Gravity to get our twinsets, Nitrox and stages. We caught up with Fred Devos who was joining our dive team on Saturday to explore more restricted/remote sites.

Once we figured out the Tetris challenge of fitting in two twinsets and four stages plus all our extra kit into the Tuk Tuk we steamed up the road to Cenote Taj Mahal. This Cenote is quite close to Zero Gravity and we had agreed as a team to use it as our shake down site. We wanted a location from which it would be easy to get back to ZG just in case something failed... and Peter’s high pressure hose did! We had a spare (thanks Ron) and we fixed it in the surface pool of the cave entrance.

Once all other gear was tested in 2m of water and all team members were happy that their gear had survived transportation (took about 20 min of in water checks) we turned down the main cavern line at Taj with the “Waterfall” at the end of the line in our sights of the dive plan. This waterfall is actually a halocline waterfall... where the salt/fresh water mix comes out of the wall at the end of the mainline. We took all right turns on the cavern line T’s then tied in our reel at the end of the cavern line and headed past the “divers/die” warning sign... found the cave mainline and tied in. We then followed the mainline and passed by the jump to the “Chinese garden” which was our target for the second dive. After 45 minutes of navigating some fantastic cave passages we hit the end of the line. It stops dead in the wall. We could see a very thick halocline in the water column above our heads – but there was no visible flow out of the wall... so the Waterfall effect was not there this time! We turned the dive and headed out... leaving our reel tied in as we were planning a return trip back onto the mainline as dive 2 was heading for the Chinese garden. We exited the cave and surfaced into daylight, dive one had a 90 minute runtime and everything was running smooth.

Dive 2 started around 1h: 30min later. Gear check done we headed back up to the mainline and this time we turned onto the jump for the Chinese garden. I was diver 1 so ran in the spool from the mainline over to the jump. Cookies and markers down we headed into the splendour of the Chinese garden. This section of cave is truly breath-taking and features stalagmite and stalactite formations which are very closely gathered together and resembles... yes you guessed it... a Chinese garden! We continued down the jump line and hit two T’s and turned left on each T. On the second T the system narrows down into a very thin chamber with thousands of formations all along the roof and floor... almost like entering into the jaws of an alien beast’s mouth. The dive was thumbed just as I was half way through this section so we turned for daylight just on 50 minutes of runtime. We emerged into daylight on the 92^nd minute. Fantastic two dives in the bag and a great day of shakedown dives. We headed back to Zero Gravity and refilled all our stages and twinsets. Peter bought a new SPG hose and installed it.

Friday the 28^th we headed for Cenote Car Wahs. We had heard of a cave section on the downstream line known as “Satan’s Silt Hole” it was meant to be very tight and restricted as well as potentially very silty if one was to screw up their fining etc. We decided to head to the Room of Tears on the upstream line on the morning dive and save the silt hole until the second dive. The lines in Car Wahs are set way back into the submerged entrances and it took us a little while to find the upstream line. We tied in the reel and headed up the system. We dropped our stages and tied in the jump at the “Rabbit hole” and navigated into the Room of Tears. This is a great section of the cave with really fantastic formations. We continued on the line and added in another jump and added a few T’s. We did not encounter any Halocline on the way in. When the dive was turned we were very far back into the system. On the way out I suddenly noticed we were swimming through a Halocline... thinking that was “strange” my spider senses started to tingle... no halocline in... but one on the way out? We are in the wrong fecking passage... Bo$$oc&s!! In what felt like less than 1min from this deduction we came across an unmarked T. This means that we were travelling over a section of cave that we had not marked. I signalled the team to turn around and head back along the line we had been travelling on.

The team responded immediately and we began retracing our steps. Within two minutes of the about turn Peter’s light failed! I of course started to laugh – it was typical. I think I threatened the cave with a dose of C4 at that stage if it didn’t start to behave itself... Peter deployed his backup light. Within a few seconds Peter was moving forward again on his backup scout. Ron was in diver 1 position and had moved over on a jump that snaked back above into a tunnel directly above our heads (these caves are like Swiss cheese). Peter signalled that Ron had gone up the jump. I stopped on the line we were on just opposite the jump; held my position while shining my light back up on Ron. He returned after a minute and signalled that that was not the route. Just as we resumed momentum back on the line we turned a corner and could see our markers on a T. We were back on track – we now knew the way home and to daylight. We exited in good order and there were no further mishaps on the exit. When we emerged into daylight we tried to post mortem (no pun intended) how we missed the T. But disappointingly no one could put forward a good reason as to why that T was missed. Mexico we knew placed a huge challenge on navigation and you just couldn’t take it for granted as there are so many passages and lines, some tied only inches away from each other – so if you’re asleep at the wheel it is potentially very easy to move onto the wrong line. We knew that and were being careful – it never happened again – but it disturbed us all that we couldn’t see why what happened happened. Nevertheless we were all grateful to be in a position to talk about it and we were all very happy with the fact that we kept focused, kept our heads and stuck to our training – the team had held it together and we had survived a potentially very dangerous event.

Dive 2 in Car Wahs was just Ron and I as Peter’s torch was screwed (turned out to be a failed cell in his battery). As we were descending into the downstream cave entrance at the bottom left side of the Cenote we noticed a meter long Crocodile swimming straight for us... luckily were are not superstitious considering the morning we just had. I was keeping a very close eye on this pre-historic creature approach us when from the corner of my eye I noticed a Turtle swimming just below my nether regions. F8ck!! In the blinking of an eye I realised the potential collateral damage that might occur if the Croc got a little confused in his food chain. I reached down grabbed that Turtle and shoved him away to my left hand side as fast as I could. That Turtle moved like a bat out of hell and the Croc turned his line of sight towards him. However in a couple of seconds the Turtle had disappeared behind a collapsed tree trunk, the croc turned away in disgust and then proceeded to rise to the surface (around 5 meters above our heads). He placed himself into an S shape with only his eyes and snout breaking the surface and his tail whipping to rotate his vantage point. We watched on in fascination but then decided that discretion was the better part of valour and headed into the cave. We tied into the line just beyond the “divers/die” sign and proceeded with a very tight, winding and twisting cave diving journey. T after T and jump after jump we laid down our markers and jump spools while observing our anti-silting techniques to ensure the visibility in Satan’s Silt Hole did not turn to pea soup. There was a very mild halocline effect in the cave passages and almost the entire 90 minutes were spent in seriously tight restricted cave. I loved every minute of it. We exited the dive with a huge smile on our faces... awesome cave and really challenging on our navigation and fining technique. It was great to have that level of intensity on this dive right after the difficulties encountered during the morning. It really was a case of; if you fall off the horse... get back up! We headed back to Zero Gravity and refilled our twinsets and stages.

Saturday the 29^th we met with Fred Devos at Zero Gravity who was joining us for our dives today as we were moving into caves deeper into the jungle. We loaded up Fred’s 4x4 truck and with Ron and I standing in the back and Peter in the comfort of the passenger seat we rolled over the roughest road in the universe to get to the remote dive site of Tux Kupaxa. This is an awesome cave system featuring a few ancient bone sites within the cave passages. The cave is too far inland to have any significant Halocline. I have included a link to a YouTube video of this cave system... unfortunately this is not my video (more on that later) but it will give you a good understanding of what this cave looked like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=840sD_TJ-Mw . Our dive in this network lasted just over 2h:15min and I loved every last second of it. We came across the sloth and Mammoth bone sites which just made the exploration of this system even more rewarding. We exited the dive on a huge high. This cave will definitely see us return to it in the future – there was just so much more to see.

Dive 2 on Saturday saw our team repacking Fred’s truck, emerging from the jungle to head over to Cenote Aktun Koh. This site is rarely dived by cave divers; the passageways are tight and thick with silt. A wrong fin kick here would cause huge silt outs. On the plus side the cave is very pretty, but restrictive and a definite challenge to navigate without causing said silt out. Carefully and cautiously we proceeded into this system. We really enjoyed this cave. On the 50^th minute we turned the dive and headed back through the system to find daylight. On the return we came across a seriously restricted passage... Fred signalled the team and we came over to a spot on the cave floor where Fred was indicating for us to “take a look”... we were floating above the remains of an ancient Mayan. What looked to be the shoulder bone and a few other “bits”. The remains were just visible in the heavy silt. If the cave continues to silt up these bones will disappear from view very shortly. But as we “only look” and “do not touch” we did not try to reveal any other parts of the remains. We treat human remains with the utmost of respect so we continued to exit the dive... breaking into daylight and the cool early evening air just after the 95^th minute of the dive. Ending an awesome day of cave diving. A big “shout out” goes to Fred Devos for his help and assistance in getting our team into these amazing dive sites.

Sunday the 30^th our team reduces down to a team of two as Ron had to head back to Boston. So Peter and I head for Grande Cenote. On dive 1 we headed down the left cavern line and tied into the mainline with our reel and moved along the system and took the jump towards and past Cenote Hotol ending up surfacing in Cenote of the Star... which was a lovely treat. After a bit of a chat on the surface pool of this Cenote we submerged back into the system and headed back to Grande Cenote. We surfaced into daylight just after the 97^th minute of actual dive time. Great dive and great fun!

Dive 2 in Grande Cenote; this time we took the first jump over to Paso de Lagardo (lizard pass) this section of the cave section was much smaller and tighter than the passageways of the mornings dive... Peter and I loved it. After a blissful 104 minutes we returned to the surface of the Grande Cenote. Another fabulous day of cave diving was in the bag.

Monday the 31^st we arrived early at Zero Gravity loaded up the Tuk Tuk with our twinsets and stages and headed onto the track road to Cenote Minotauro. This Cenote is almost directly behind Zero Gravity but down a long dirt track road. We arrived at the site where we met a Spanish cave diving team receiving instruction from a non GUE instructor. We kitted up and headed into the surface pool to quickly cool off as the weather was getting very hot... dry suits with 30 degrees C air temp are a tough combination! We executed two dives almost back to back upstream. The cave passages were fantastic... a great mix of large passages followed by tight restrictive points. Our first dive ran at 98min and we quickly changed tanks and in less than 15 minutes we proceeded with dive 2. Dive 2 lasted a full 90 minutes and was just as enjoyable as the first. We pushed a few extra jumps on the second dive and we were rewarded with fantastic passageways and really interesting cave sections.

When we surfaced after dive 2 we recalculated our gas and decided we could try to go a little on the downstream line. Boy were we glad we did. The downstream passageways were very tight, and were going all over the place. The lines were laid fairly crazily and we were dropping cookie after cookie. The dive was quite shallow – these winding, tight passages were averaging at max depth of 5 meters so we were getting great mileage out of the dregs of our twinsets from the aftermath of dive 2. We exited Cenote Minotauro just after 40 min of a wonderful dive 3. The only annoyance was that on the return leg of this dive my light started to fail... the cord began to flick the bulb on/off whenever I moved my arm. We could exit safely (I held the cable in place) but I had to get a replacement light from Zero Gravity for the final day of diving. Despite the pain of the light cord failing Monday was yet another really excellent day of cave diving.

That evening we headed into the town of Tulum on a quest. A mission often spoken about (if you can find it?) to find the “blue house” opposite the “massive tree” in the town. This house provided shelter to a small Mexican lady who spoke no English but held in her possession the coveted key to gain access to the fabled dive site known as Jailhouse. Simply; nothing more than a glorified muddy hole in the jungle which yields an opening into a massive cave system. Luckily Peter and I found the house. Again luck was on our side as Pete speaks fluent Spanish and was able to negotiate possession of the key overnight... so all we had to do was head down the road to find Jailhouse in the morning (after a tasty breakfast in the Turtle Bay cafe!).

Tuesday morning the 1^st February we find the muddy puddle of Jailhouse and meet another 2 man team just about to enter the cave. In less than 30 minutes we were following in their footsteps. The entry sight was real “zero vis” as we proceeded down the line through a huge swirl of silt... The whole basin is one giant silt hole and so the only way to get into visibility is to keep in touch contact with the line and push down into the system. At around 9m deep and just before the first T on the line we broke through into reasonable visibility. Dive 1 we went left on the first T and took the next two rights on the following T’s. Simply stunning cave passageways opened up to us and we really had a great dive. We turned and exited back to the silt hole entrance after completing a 10 minute decompression stop at 6m in almost complete zero visibility.

Dive 2 followed in just under 45 minutes... we again entered the system in zero vis, we tied off our 100% O2 deco stages on the line at 6m and this time headed down the system with a right turn at the first T. This cave section got a little tighter and was a slightly more challenging dive. We took the right at the next T. Really great dive and we finished it off with a 10 minute deco stop on 100% O2 just to help wash out our systems before taking our flights the next day.

Thus unfortunately ended a great week of cave diving. Awesome caves, fantastic dive buddies a few challenges thrown in but all overcome through great team diving and following proper procedures. The only other events to report was Peter’s expertise in bribing a local Mexican Policeman to forget about a speeding offence – this is apparently the way the Metropolitan police like to do business. The exact same situation occurred last year in March on our first Mexican cave diving trip. Peter is one smooth customer when it comes to making the police take the cash and walk away. It never ceases to outrage me, but luckily Peter is much more philosophical about the Mexican police.

The only real negative of the entire trip was the loss of my underwater camera on my BA flight from Cancun to Gatwick. I have been ringing BA lost property every day since my return - but absolutely no joy. So that means I lost about 1h of unreal video and approx. 25 really good underwater photos. That is a serious pain in the rear!

Finally I realise that cave diving is not for everyone (or most people in fact)... but there are very few activities that one can do that gives such a feeling of accomplishment upon emerging from the constant submerged darkness back into the stunning bright daylight and fresh air of the jungle. Meeting the challenge of these fascinating and difficult/deadly environments is hugely satisfying and rewarding.

My name is Michael and I am a cave diver.

As my camera was lost and all video footage with it… I have included this video taken by another team for you to enjoy the splendour of Tux Tupaxa. Enjoy.

First Dive 2011: Portroe Dive Centre

2011-01-02T22:38:00.000Z

Technorati Tags: Portroe,Portroe Dive Centre,Technical Diving,Quarry,Cold Water Diving,Michael Griffin,Grifmike

Sunday morning the 2nd of January saw the day as dry but cold. Members of our dive club picked this Sunday morning as the day we would head out for the first dive of 2011 and we agreed on the location as being Portroe. We all arrived on site for 10am and we were very grateful to Portroe Dive Centre for facilitating our team by opening for us. After we all gathered at the dive site we got our kit together and divided up into teams. Myself and Mike Scott paired up together and headed in for a long meandering dive throughout the quarry.

Time in was 11:03 am and we exited 74mins later, max depth was 31.4 meters. The water temp was a bracing 5c…but we survived it very well due to our dry suits, thermal protection and dry gloves. The quarry is a great site just to practice, train and brush off any of the cobwebs from taking the month of December off.

Unfortunately I lost all the photos of this day out when I lost my camera on the way home from Mexico in early February.

Thanks to the guys at First4Scuba for a great start to the diving year.

Looking forward to 2011; may it be a great and safe diving year for us all.

Grif.

Top 5 dives of 2010

2011-01-01T21:36:00.001Z

Technorati Tags: GUE,Technical Diving,Cave Diving,Cave 2,Michael Griffin,Grifmike,Trimix,Decompression,Scuba Diving

Sorry I have been so "quiet" - but I have been mental busy with work and diving. Looking back at 2010 I thought it might be interesting to list my top 5 dives of the year. I normally keep a blog - but sadly this year I haven’t had the chance to really update it - so in order to get things moving again here are my top 5 dives of the year 2010... in order of preference:

1) Alachua Sink - as a cave diver this one ranks right up there as one of the trickiest and most challenging of my career to date. Its main challenge is "not to get bent!" as the main access into the system is through a "rollercoaster" series of cave passages that force you down to 45m then up to 20m – and up down, up down etc. through the passageways. Due to this profile and the fact that in the middle of the system rests a 14 meter high mud wall which has not been touched by man in millions of years the access to this dive site is strictly controlled. You can only dive this site on a "scientific" dive and with one of only 8 people granted permission to allow access. Luckily for me Mark Messersmith is one of the 8 anointed and he gladly brought me into the system. Due to the depth this was a full Trimix dive (18/45) with 2 stages of decompression - 50% and 100%. The dive was truly awesome and the passageways were tight and vertical - so very careful trim and buoyancy control was required. I am happy to report that the 14meter mud wall remained "untouched" and this cave dive really was extra special. The deco did present a challenge due to the rollercoaster sections and was executed within these passageways. For conservatism we penalised our average depth by 10m and we ran our deco schedule based on that. For an extra safety margin we remained on the surface (in water) for an extra 20 minutes just chatting and letting our body’s rest (this after the full deco schedule was completed)... we did this as there is still a huge pressure release when you actually get out of the water, so delaying this adds an extra margin of safety. This helped greatly as we had a near vertical climb out of the sink hole to where we had parked the SUV's - a climb we took very slowly! Definitely the best and a technically challenging dive of 2010. I loved it and a big shout out must go to Mark Messersmith for making it happen and to my dive buddy Ron Scharf for joining us on the dive. Great dive guys!

2) Cenote Nohoch - Again you can see the love of caves coming out in my top 5. This Cenote was a sheer joy to dive, not because it was a very demanding technical dive (other than the fact that it was still a cave dive!!). What I mean is that there was no real decompression obligation for it... as the average depth of the passageways was roughly 10m. My dive buddy Peter and I were just using Twin 12L with 32% Nitrox and basked in the stunning blue water of this system for an impressive 125min dive followed by a second dive that afternoon running at 69min. So that’s a total of 3h:14min exploring this system with stunning features and plenty of haloclines to enjoy. While cave diving you must always keep your mind focused and be highly aware of the dangers of caves - these two dives really were fantastically enjoyable. Navigation is a big challenge in this system as it is full of jumps and T-s and we did end up retracing a few of our pushes as we quite simply ran into passages that were too small for rats! Great dives, great dive buddy with a stunningly inspiring cave system... what more could a cave diver ask for? Answer... nothing!

3) U-boat - U89 - Resting at max depth of 60m at the bottom of the seabed off of the coast of Donegal lies the upright remains of the World War 1 U-boat U89. She had the misfortune to surface directly in front of a Royal Navy vessel that quickly proceeded to ram her; hence the final voyage to the bottom of the sea. I will never forget the moment I saw this wreck rising out from the deep - myself and my buddy Declan were quite literally skydiving down near the shot line watching the depth gauge clock out the ever increasing depth when at roughly 30 meters we suddenly began to see the huge (and I mean much larger than the U260 huge) outline of this beast of war. Her conning tower is very slight but very menacing and the super structure is still in excellent shape - there is no difficulty making out the fact that this was a submarine. She has two 4" deck guns - one aft and one stern of the conning tower and the site is littered with 4" shells. You can look into the bow torpedo tubes and even look into the torpedo room from one break in the superstructure - with the torpedoes readily visible. The visibility on this dive was quite stunning and I loved every minute of our 25min investigating her from bow to stern. Deco was just over an hour, but well worth it. I surfaced from that dive with a smile that just would not go away for a few hours... simply awesome wreck. Sorry I have no in water photo - this baby was just way too deep for my little camera!

4) Empire Heritage - This was a World War 2 transport ship and made of I would say fairly inferior materials as the vessel herself is almost totally broken into pieces. However you don’t dive the Empire Heritage for the ship, but rather her cargo... of loads & loads of WW2 Sherman Tanks! If you ever wondered what it would look like for a God to throw his box full of toy tanks onto the floor - then you have to try to dive this wreck. Tanks litter the sea floor, right side up, upside down, on their side and resting on top of each other. It is truly an amazingly surreal experience to drift past these weapons of war and to see them almost perfect with just a little marine growth over their armoured hulls. The visibility on this dive was easily 25m and we stayed amongst the tanks for 25 minutes with maximum depth registering as 63.7meters. Our decompression ran roughly 79 minutes and it was worth every second of it. Fantastic dive and a real treat to get the image of those tanks in your head. It probably would not be as impactful on a second or subsequent dive - but for the first time, this easily made my top 5 of 2010.

5) Fessej Rock - Last but by no means least this deep pinnacle rock rests just off the shore of the Island of Gozo in Malta. Colin and I had just finished our DSAT Tec instructor course and decided to hit 80 meters to celebrate it. I really enjoyed this dive due to the technical challenge of it rather than for any scenic beauty (we in fact descended on the wrong side of the rock - so from 50m to 80m we were flying over a descending seabed. On the upside was we saw lots of sea quills, on the downside there was feck all else to see except for sand. Our Tec instructor Gary was diving a brand new Suunto Helo2 dive computer and I will never forget his face when he came over to me at the 6m deco stop and asked me how much deco time I had left.... my answer 20min. His eyes almost exploded in his mask when he come over to me to show me the readout on his (very cool by the way) multi gas switching Tec computer.... 20 min!! Now I was working it out from my €120 bottom timer and some grey matter while Gary had a €1,000 computer and we got the same answer (I had a lot more change in my pocket!). Needless to say I was more than happy with that... and the dive profile was very sweet on the decompression gradient. Colin as always was a superb buddy and all gas switching and deco went according to plan. Just what you want when returning from 80meters. Thanks Colin!

So that’s my top 5 dives in 2010, there were a few very close contenders such as the dive on the HMS Audacious and Cenote Chan Hol but I am happy with the final selection. 2010 presented me with some truly world class dives and I am very grateful to all my dive buddies and friends who participated with me on them or facilitated in making them happen.

Have a great 2011 everyone and I hope you all dive safe.

Grif.

Florida Cave Diving Nov 2010

2010-11-30T22:44:00.000Z

Technorati Tags: Cave Diving,Technical Diving,GUE,Scuba Diving,Florida,Trimix,Decompression,High Springs,Manatee Springs,Peacock Springs,Alachua Sink,Ginnie Springs

November witnessed a lightning visit to High Springs in Florida for 4 days of great cave diving. I flew direct from Dublin to Orlando courtesy of an Aer Lingus flight. I flew out on Thanksgiving day Thursday the 25th of November and arrived at the Quality Inn in Alachua at around 20:30 that evening local time (it was a very long day!).

Early Friday morning I met up with Mark Messersmith at Extreme Exposure for two days of diving, skill reviews and a little scooter work. Mark introduced me to the general construction of Gavin and Halcyon scooters. We reviewed basic scooter maintenance, battery testing and the general principles of scooter handling and leashing. After an hour or so of basic orientation we packed up our Van/SUV’s and headed for the very familiar ground of Ginnie Springs. We arrived at Ginnie and headed over to the river run and placed the scooters and stage bottles. Mark ran drills with me for the afternoon and we moved quickly onto running the scooters. Mark took a little HD video of my first few runs (I did improve on my fin stability considerably by the end of the 4 days!).

We spend most of Friday utilising the scooters and I have to say I really enjoyed it, once I got my head around the left/right hand use and left/right hand turns. All tasks made considerably easier once I got used to adjusting the leash to find a comfortable towing distance. Once the scooter work came to an end we practiced a few stage skills and then called it a day. Nice day at the office!

On Saturday Mark and I were joined by a dive buddy of mine… Ron Scharf and we agreed as a team to go to Alachua Sink for a dive. This is a challenging site; its main challenge being that of "not getting bent!". The reason for this is that the main access into the system is through a "rollercoaster" series of cave passages that force you down to 45m and back up to 20m - up down, up down etc. in a rollercoaster profile. Due to this aggressive profile and the fact that in the middle of the system rests a 14 meter high mud wall which has not been touched by man in millions of years the access to this dive site is strictly controlled. You can only dive this site on a "scientific" dive and with one of only 8 people granted permission to allow access. Luckily for us Mark Messersmith is one of the 8 anointed and he gladly brought us into the system. Due to the depth this was a full Trimix (18/45) dive with 2 stages of decompression - 50% and 100%. The dive was truly awesome and the passageways were tight and vertical - so careful trim and buoyancy control was required. I am happy to report that the 14m mud wall remained "untouched" by man and this dive really was extra special. It was tricky and the deco also presented a challenge as it had to be executed all within the cave passageways. The "rollercoaster" sections really threw a bit of a spanner into our deco – so we penalised our average depth by 10m and ran our schedule based on that. For extra safety we remained on the surface (in water) for an extra 20 minutes just chatting and letting our body’s rest (this is after the full deco schedule was completed). Our reasoning for this is based on the fact that there is still a huge pressure release when actually getting out of the water; so delaying this always provides a nice added margin of safety. This delay also helped prepare us for the near vertical climb out of the sink hole to where we had parked the SUV's. A climb I can assure you we took slowly! Alachua sink was definitely the best and technically most challenging dive of 2010 due to the structure of the cave. Total runtime of 85 minutes with max depth of 46m. Big shout out to Mark Messersmith for making it happen and to Ron for a great day of diving which finished with smiles all around.

Sunday morning arrived bright and early as I met up with Doug Mudry and Ron at Extreme Exposure. We loaded up our kit and scooters and got on the road for the beauty of Manatee springs. When we arrived at Manatee we off loaded the scooters at the entry site, suited up and splashed into the blanket of green duck weed which covered the surface of the dive site. The three of us tied in and then headed up the Manatee system. I really enjoyed this dive… the cave passages were excellent and there certainly were sections of very heavy flow which reminded me of Ginnie Springs. On exiting after the morning dive Ron hit the road back to Orlando and Doug and I spent the afternoon practicing on scooters (Gavin and Halcyon). We practiced basic navigation, out of gas emergencies and diver towing. All good fun and really enjoyable way to spend the afternoon.

Monday morning the 29th Doug and I set out for Peacock Springs. We entered Peacock 1 and headed on towards Olsen sink. What a great dive, it was definitely a darker cave but I loved every minute of it. It unfortunately came to an end after a total runtime of 92 minutes and max depth of 20m.

Doug and I packed everything and returned to Extreme Exposure in the early afternoon to do a little dry suit maintenance on my suit; basically Doug did a full leak test on the suit - sealing up a minor leak we found on the front of the waist. He then removed both zip seal cuffs (one was torn on the inside ring), he sowed in new cuffs and began the process of layering on the aquasure. We left the suit hang to dry overnight at EE.

Wednesday the 30th arrived all too soon but before I got on the road to catch my return flight I picked up my dry suit from EE; and big thanks go out to Zack who had added extra layers of aquasure earlier that morning to the wrist seals – nice job!

Overall I had a fantastic and active four days of cave diving and big thanks must go to dive buddies Mark Messersmith, Doug Mudry and Ron Sharf for helping make it all happen (and to Mark and Doug for teaching me lots of tips and tricks!). Big thanks also go to Andrew and Zack at Extreme Exposure for providing the excellent service and support for my trip. Great trip guys & see you all soon!

Grif

Egypt laid back recreational dives

2010-10-30T00:23:00.000+01:00

Technorati Tags: Sharm El Sheikh,Egypt,Red Sea,Diving,Recreational,Michael Griffin,Grifmike,Anthias Divers,Ritz Carlton House Reef,Scuba Diving

On the 21st of October I headed over to Egypt’s Sharm El Sheikh with my family for a really enjoyable holiday in the warm waters of the Red Sea. While this was family holiday time I did manage to fit in an early morning dive each morning during the week – three dives in Nama bay with Althias Divers and three dives on the Ritz Carlton house reef.

Each of these two dive locations had their own distinct characteristics. Nama Bay had much more larger life to be seen, such as Puffer fish, large trumpet fish, Wrasse, Moray Eels, Lion fish, Eagle Rays, and I am fairly confident that I observed a black tip reef shark. The dives in Nama bay also featured some sections of coral reefs… but the coral was present in patchy groups spaced out on a sandy seabed. All of my video footage was taken while enjoying these laid back dives in Nama bay.

The Ritz Carlton house reef was a very different environment. There was a solid reef wall and it was in superb condition. Fantastic coral (hard and soft) formations with really vibrant colours. However there was little larger life on display during these dives – but did sport plenty of smaller tropical fish. However the reef itself at this site really became the bright, clean and rich star of these dives.

Overall each of the 6 dives during the week lasted just on or a little over an hour each in 28c. The dives were my first single tank (11L ali’s) recreational dives in the ocean since diving in the Maldives back in 2009. I really kicked back and dived just in a rash guard and thermal shorts. A big departure from my normal dry suit, twinsets and stages. This really did accomplish quite a pleasant relaxed vibe!

Thanks go to Anthias Divers in Nama Bay and the dive centre at the Ritz Carlton – both were very good operations and they certainly let me “stay” in the water long after others had hit the towels.

Nice easy laid back recreational dives… just what I was looking for on a fun family vacation.

Grif

Low res video of some of my diving encounters in Nama Bay Oct 2010.

Donegal Trimix Wreck dives Aug/Sept

2010-09-29T22:32:00.000+01:00

Technorati Tags: Trimix,Technical Diving,Donegal,Audacious,U89,Empire Heritage,Decompression,Michael Griffin,Grifmike,Ireland,Scuba Diving

August 13th 2010 I began the long road trip to Carrigart in Co. Donegal. The road is long but the car was loaded with enough cylinders to provide a booster to the moon; two twinsets of Trimix 18/45; two stages of 100% o2; two stages of 50% o2; one stage of Trimix 21/35; two 1L ali argon bottles. Clearly I had a lot of Trimix diving on my mind.

It was a fantastic sunny Friday afternoon while driving up to meet with my dive buddy Declan Burke (DivinDec) for a weekend of deep wreck diving off of the coast of Donegal. We were diving from the superb boat the Rosguill skippered by the equally superb Michael McVeigh. I met with Declan early that evening in the town of Letterkenny for dinner and a chat about our dive plan for the next two days. We discussed our target dive sites as Declan was running the weekend trip he was planning on heading out on Saturday to the Empire Heritage and on the Sunday to either the HMS Audacious or the U89. With a lovely dinner in the digestive tract and having talked through our gas and deco strategies I got back on the road to Carrigart and the excellent accommodation of the Fisherman’s Village. I arrived into the B&B at around 22:00 and the place was busy with a group of UK divers who had just spent a fantastic week of wreck diving from the Rosguill. I said my hellos and goodnight to the guys in fairly close order and retired for a decent night sleep – it had been a very long day!

Next morning I had breakfast with a rousing conversation from the UK divers raging over the optimum lift bag configuration… it was genuinely strangely fascinating. With my fill of scrambled eggs and coffee I headed down to Carrigart dock to meet the dive team for the weekend. It was a mixed group of CCR divers and myself and Declan on OC. The CCR crew were really great guys and although they knew I was a DIR/GUE diver they did not try to convince me of their CCR ways and I returned the favour – instead we all focused on having a great bit of craic! The stunningly beautiful, sunny and calm day helped raise the whole spirits of the guys and crew on board and the banter was great. Our skipper had set course for the wreck of the Empire Heritage.

The Empire Heritage was a World War 2 transport ship and made of I would say fairly inferior materials as the vessel herself is almost totally broken into pieces. However you don’t dive the Empire Heritage for the ship, but rather her cargo... loads & loads of WW2 Sherman Tanks! If you ever wondered what it would look like for a God to throw his box full of toy tanks onto the floor - then you have to try to dive this wreck. Tanks litter the sea floor, right side up, upside down, on their side and resting on top of each other. It is truly an amazingly surreal experience to drift past these silent weapons of war and to see them in almost perfect condition with just a little marine growth over their armoured hulls. The visibility on this dive was easily 25m and we stayed amongst the tanks for 25min with maximum depth registering as 63.7meters. Our decompression ran roughly 79 minutes so a total runtime of 104 minutes and it was worth every second of it. A fantastic dive and a real treat to get the image of those tanks into your memory banks. It probably would not be as impactful on a second or subsequent dive - but for the first time, this was a superb dive.

Dinner was consumed with gusto, there is nothing like a great day at sea to give one a hearty appetite at night. The conversation again featured great banter and superb diving stories shared in peace and tranquillity between myself and the rest of the guys (all CCR) with no one chastising my DIR/GUE OC ways… these were classy, friendly, knowledgeable and accomplished CCR guys. Respect!

The next morning we loaded up the Rosguill from Carrigart dock and headed out to sea on yet another flat calm sea accompanying a suitably stunning sunny day. Michael McVeigh set out to sea with the mark for the U89. This wreck is a WWI German U-boat off of the Donegal coast and rests upright on the seabed at a max depth of 60m. She had the misfortune to surface during operations directly in front of a Royal Navy vessel that quickly proceeded to ram her, sending her on her final voyage to the bottom of the sea. I will never forget the moment I saw this wreck begin to come into focus at a depth of 30m as Declan and I were descending skydiver style next to the shot line. I was watching the depth gauge clock out the ever increasing depth when with 30 meters still to go to the seabed we could start to make out the shape of this huge wreck (and I mean much larger than the WWII U-boats). Her conning tower was very slight but very menacing and the super structure is still in excellent shape - there is no difficulty making out the fact that this was a submarine. She has two 4" deck guns - one aft and one forward of the conning tower and the site is littered with 4" shells. You can look into the bow torpedo tubes and even look into the torpedo room from one break in the superstructure - with torpedoes readily visible. We explored this fascinating wreck for 25min from bow to stern with a max depth of 56.7m. Deco was just over an hour, but well worth it. I surfaced from that dive with a total runtime of 93 minutes and a smile that just would not go away for a few hours... simply awesome wreck. Sorry I have no in water photo as my camera housing cant go below 40m. I pulled out of Carrigart on Sunday afternoon the 15th of August and headed back to Kilkenny with a fantastic two days of deep wreck diving in the bag. Declan was a superb and very capable dive buddy. The CCR guys were superb, great fun and very, very experienced I really enjoyed their company, banter and superb diving stories of the deep wrecks off of the Donegal coast. Michael McVeigh shone through as a stunningly accomplished skipper and he was extremely capable and friendly I left Carrigart already looking forward to a return trip as soon as the next opportunity presented itself…

Tuesday the 28th of September presented just such an opportunity. I got the call from Declan… there was a slot open for a dive on the HMS Audacious. I was in my gas station blending gases quicker than I could say “I will be there!”. I arrived into the Fisherman’s Village on Monday evening the 27th and instantly bumped into some of the CCR divers I had met on my previous trip to Donegal in August. We headed out for dinner and caught up on our diving news and views. When we arrived back at the B&B Michael McVeigh had put a real treat onto the agenda. He had gathered three ships bells and wanted us to record them being “struck” (rung) for the first time since they had been recovered from the deep and restored to their original glory by Kevin McShane. The three bells were:

Transylvania: She made her maiden voyage on September 12, 1925 from Glasgow to New York. In September 1939 she was used as an armed merchant cruiser.On August 10/1940 the Transylvania was torpedoed by the German submarine U-56 35 N miles north of Tory Island. She was taken in tow but sank before reaching the coast With the loss of 48 lives. [click hear to ring the bell]
H.M.S. Carinthia: Sunk; a converted Cunarder. The Secretary of the Admiralty regrets to announce that H.M.S. Carinthia Captain J. F. B. Barrett, R.N, armed merchant cruiser was torpedoed by a U-boat and subsequently sunk. Two officers and two ratings lost their lives when the ship was hit. The next of kin have been informed. The remainder of the officers and ship's company have been saved. Survivors arrived at a British port on Saturday and described how the Carinthia replied with all her guns to the submarine. One of the men Was badly injured add has been taken to hospital suffering from pneumonia which he contracted after the ship went down. The Carinthia was a 20,000-ton Cunarder built in 1925. With some 50 others she was taken up for naval service at the beginning of the war armed and commissioned as a man- of-war. [click hear to ring the bell]
RMS Amazon an ocean liner sunk by German submarine U-110 on 15 March 1918; U-110 was sunk by escorts the same day. [click hear to ring the bell]

Tuesday morning it was early start to the day and we once again loaded up the Rosguill with our gear and we steamed out in the direction of the WWI super dreadnought HMS Audacious.

[Wikipedia] At the beginning of the First World War, Audacious was part of the 2nd Battle Squadron of the Grand Fleet. On 27 October 1914, the 2nd Battle Squadron — consisting of the 'super-dreadnoughts' King George V, Ajax, Centurion, Audacious, Monarch, Thunderer and Orion — left Lough Swilly to conduct gunnery exercises at Loch na Keal.

In a middle of a turn at 08:05, Audacious ran upon a mine laid by the German auxiliary minelayer Berlin. The port engine room was flooded immediately, and Audacious began to list heavily and settle by the stern. Captain Cecil F. Dampier, thinking that the ship had been attacked by a submarine, hoisted the submarine warning and the rest of the squadron steamed away from possible danger. Audacious — though unmanageable — was still capable of making 9 kn (10 mph; 17 km/h) on her starboard engines. Dampier believed that he had a chance of making the 25 mi (40 km) to land and beach the ship. The light cruiser Liverpool stood by, while Audacious broadcast distress signals by wireless. The Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet, Sir John Jellicoe, ordered every available destroyer and tug out to assist, but did not dare send out battleships to tow Audacious in because of the apparent submarine threat. Meanwhile, the White Star liner Olympic arrived on the scene.^[1]

At 10:50, with flooding worsening in the starboard engine room, Audacious stopped. Dampier brought the bow of the ship round to sea and ordered all non-essential crew off. Boats from Liverpool and Olympic assisted until all but 250 men were taken off. At 13:30, the captain of Olympic, Commodore Haddock, suggested that his ship attempt to take Audacious in tow. Dampier agreed and with the assistance of the destroyer Fury a tow line was passed within 30 minutes. The ships began moving toward Lough Swilly, but Audacious was so unmanageable that the tow line parted. Liverpool and the collier Thornhill attempted to take the battleship in tow, but to no avail.^[2] In the meantime, at 13:08 a message had arrived from the coastguard station at Mulroy that the steamer Manchester Commerce had been mined in the same area the day before. At 16:60, Malin Head reported that the sailing vessel Cardiff had also been mined the previous night. Upon learning this, at 17:00 Jellicoe ordered the pre-dreadnought battleship Exmouth out to attempt to tow Audacious in. In case the ship was saved, he also requested an officer from the Construction Department at the Admiralty, in anticipation of major repairs.^[3]^[4]^[5]

Vice-Admiral Sir Lewis Bayly, commander of the 1st Battle Squadron, arrived on the scene in the boarding vessel Cambria and took over the rescue operation.^[5] With dark approaching, Bayly, Dampier and the remaining men on Audacious were taken off at 19:15. At 21:00, Audacious capsized and exploded, sending debris into the air. A piece of armour plate fell on and killed a petty officer on Liverpool, which was 800 yd (730 m) away. This was the only casualty in connection with the sinking.^[6]^[7]

Jellicoe immediately proposed that the sinking be kept a secret, which the Board of Admiralty and the British Cabinet agreed to, an act open to ridicule later on. For the rest of the war, Audacious' name remained on all public lists of ship movements and activities. Many Americans on board Olympic were beyond British jurisdiction and discussed the sinking. Many photos, and even one moving film, had been taken. By 19 November, the loss of the ship was accepted in Germany.^[8] Jellicoe's opposite number in Germany, Reinhard Scheer, wrote after the war: "In the case of the Audacious we can but approve the English attitude of not revealing a weakness to the enemy, because accurate information about the other side's strength has a decisive effect on the decisions taken."^[9]

On 14 November 1918, shortly after the war ended, a notice officially announcing the loss appeared in The Times:

“
H.M.S. Audacious.
A Delayed Announcement.
The Secretary of the Admiralty makes the following announcement:—
H.M.S. Audacious sank after striking a mine off the North Irish coast on October 27, 1914.
This was kept secret at the urgent request of the Commander-in-Chief, Grand Fleet, and the Press loyally refrained from giving it any publicity.^[10]
”

A Royal Navy review board judged that a contributory factor in the loss was that Audacious was not at battle stations, with water-tight doors locked and damage control teams ready. Note that Marlborough, of the subsequent (but fairly similar) Iron Duke class, was torpedoed at Jutland and for a time continued to steam at 17 kn (20 mph; 31 km/h).

The wreck of Audacious was found 24 miles north of the Irish coast, and filmed for the television show Deep Wreck Mysteries on the History Channel. [/Wikipedia]

The sea was a little rougher today than on our last trip to Donegal, but spirits were high and everyone on board was looking forward to the dive. Declan and I rolled over the side with Trimix 18/45 in our twinsets, one stage of 50% o2, one stage of 100% o2 and of course a 1L ali bottle of argon.

We bottomed out just above the seabed at 63 m and basked in the presence of the awesome scale of this WWI wreck site. Thanks to Martin Kiely for providing me with a copy of his photo (left) from this dive. This picture shows clearly the sheer scale of the ships guns and boy were they stunning… Leaving the overriding impression on anyone who witnessed these astronomical tools of war of “thank God we were never on the receiving end of those bad boys!”

The dive ran flawlessly as we spent a full 20min exploring the wreck. There were artefacts to be seen all over the seabed and this proved to be a great and interesting dive.

Decompression ran at just over 60 minutes and of course it was worth every second of it.

As usual Declan was a superb dive buddy and deco ran as smooth as silk.

I headed back to Kilkenny that evening tired but with a great smile on my face – a superb little trip.

Thanks to everyone on the Rosguill that day – it was superb!

Safe diving.

Grif.

Malta – Tec Instructor & Trimix diving.

2010-05-23T17:51:00.001+01:00

Technorati Tags: First 4 Scuba,Scuba Diving,Maltaqua,DSAT,Dive Centre,Tec 40,Tec 45,Tec 50,Tec Trimix,Michael Griffin,Grif,Grifmike,Ireland,Technical Diving,Diving,Wreck Diving.

Colin and I headed for the shores of Malta to complete our DSAT Tec 40, 45 and 50 instructor examinations and evaluation with course director Gary Mawston. Of course we operated out of Maltaqua in St. Paul’s bay – our regular home from home in Malta – and as ever they were superb; everything well organised with the logistics taken care of. We flew into Malta thanks to a Ryanair flight – my only complaint being the ridiculous baggage allowances available… the “sports bag” allowance is a mere 20kg… my 4 regulators sets and backplate (alone!) were 15kg which was my regular cargo bag allowance shot to pieces! Long story short my baggage was far more expensive than my good self to fly.

Upon arrival on the 11th of May we spent the afternoon tweaking our gear, making sure everything was working 100% and adjusting our rigs, stages and getting our gas blends sorted out.

From the 12th to the 17th we went diving mad – lots of great dives mostly on lovely wrecks. Everything ran really smooth – myself and Colin have been technical dive buddies for quite a while now and have developed that “I know what you are thinking” telepathy which makes handling course skills and required skill demonstrations a real easy day at the office.

After numerous exams, in water skill demonstrations, knowledge reviews and knowledge review presentations, with even more exams – we were delighted to have passed the Instructor courses for the Tec 40, 45 and 50 DSAT curriculum. I wouldn't dare say it was easy – there was still a good challenge to the course; but with a strong dive buddy and my GUE Cave training – it was very manageable. I would also like to thank Gary our instructor for really helping us along the way and for keeping us entertained and enthused both in and out of the water.

Colin and I both look forward to putting our DSAT Tec instructor ratings to good use…

A big shout out must also go to our mate Michael Kinsella – for he aced his PADI open water instructor rating while out in Malta with us. Well done Mr. Kinsella!

With regard to photographs – I did not dive with my camera on course dives and on our non course dives we were diving well beyond the rated depth of my camera housing – so unfortunately I don't have any nice photos of the wreck of Le Polynesia (64m) or indeed the drop off of Fessej Rock off of Gozo island (78m). However here are a few of the surface shots taken in no real particular order during the week.

Malta - Tec Wreck Diving

2010-05-11T06:24:00.000+01:00

Just sitting in Dublin Airport waiting for our flight to Malta. Colin and I are heading off on a week of deep wreck diving... despite the worst intentions of one Icelandic volcano!

- Posted from my iPhone

Location:Swords Rd,,Ireland

Mexico – Cave Diving – GUE Cave 2.

2010-04-12T16:30:00.001+01:00

Technorati Tags: Cave Diving,GUE,Michael Griffin,Grifmike,Grif,Cave 2,C2,Zero Gravity,Technical Diving,Cenote,Yucatan,Mexico,Christophe Le Maillot,Chris Le Maillot

Unfortunately with an avalanche of work waiting for me upon returning from this trip… inevitable delay happened with getting this report written up… so finally; here stands the written testament of one happy cave diver’s Cave 2 report conducted over the 5 days of March 15th to 19th 2010:

Flying to Cancun in and of itself was a mammoth task of endurance: an 11hour flight from Dublin to Atlanta, 3 hour wait in Atlanta airport followed by a 2h30min flight onward to Cancun. I was seeing double but incredibly happy when Sergio and Peter walked towards me at the airport. They kindly picked me up in our rather small Nissan rental car and we headed down the motorway for around an hour to Playa Del Carmen. So after one horrendously long day of travelling and security checks the rest of the evening descended into the mist of time… one thing is for sure: I was not providing any witty conversation from the back of that car.

Many Zzzzzzzz’s later and I woke up jetlagged out of my mind to find it was a sunny Sunday morning even if it was only 4:30am local time (-6h GMT!). After a few hours of staring at walls we walked (myself: bleary eyed) into Zero Gravity at 8am to meet with Chris Le Maillot. Chris was our instructor for our GUE Cave 2 class. The course was scheduled to start the next day, but we wanted to get a few shakedown cave 1 dives under our belt before the course started. Chris was great at getting us all set to go with directions to the gas station and providing us with a cave map of Cenote Eden; our dive site for the day.

We picked up 6 twinsets (twin Ali 80’s) from the gas fill station and with the suspension in our “economy” Nissan under significant duress we headed to Cenote Eden. Four great cave 1 dives ensued and I personally really enjoyed our first interactions with a halocline. The visual effect was very impressive as we passed through the water column, the lighter fresh water resting on top of the heavier salt water inside the cave system. When you pass through these two “layers” the effect can be quite dramatic, as well as negatively effecting visibility, pictures do not really do this justice… its something you really need to experience. As we were running penetration on C1 rule of 6ths our run times were 42, 45, 47 and 51 minutes respectively. Dinner that night was a fairly simple affair and I learned I really hated the taste of anything cooked in corn oil – that was an important lesson for me! During dinner I got to know David and Ron two very experienced cave divers who were sharing our accommodation – they were great fun and provided some fantastic diving stories all through the week, not to mention lots of encouragement when needed. I really appreciated that greatly.

Monday 15th marked the first day of our GUE cave 2 class… we started at Zero Gravity at 7:30am… the jetlag was very unkind. Chris brought us to cenote Taj Mahal… a fantastic dive site with 2 cave lines and a cavern line which also had a route to a further cave line that leads to a site known as the “Chinese Garden”. Both dives were executed on the main cave line with T navigation, stages and a fist full of failures mainly; lights & manifolds. The two dives ran at 70 and 75 min respectively. This really built from the core of Cave 1 skills but added in the handling of stages, deco and advanced navigation… jumps and T’s. I really enjoyed these dives – but Chris was very demanding on our finesse – he drilled into us on our debriefings almost every movement we made in over an hour of diving. His recall was so accurate it was almost scary! However he was determined to mould us into a much more efficient unit. Considering that previously most of our caves dives were in the relentless “push” of Ginnie Springs… the low flow environment of Mexico allowed us to become more “smooth” in the caves.

Tuesday 16th 7:30 start, we moved to cenote Mayan Blue for a further two great dives running at 80 and 75 minutes with stages, deco and plenty of failures. We navigated jumps and T’s as well as plenty of practice running our reels and spools. Deco on one of the cave entrances was more than a little tight – but still the demand for our trim and buoyancy control was unwavering. We also worked like busy little beavers to setup a traverse for the following morning. Very simply a traverse is according to GUE protocol established over (at least) a minimum of 2 dives. Dive one we enter the cave from the intended traverse exit side… navigate on our gas to maximum penetration long the route – at that point we drop team cookies and exit the way we came. The second dive is the completion dive… this time entering the cave system from the alternate entrance. Once we tie in and navigate into the system our aim is to reach the team cookies before we hit out turn pressure. Upon arriving at the cookies we make sure we have enough gas for continuing to the other exit and as a team we agree to proceed. If there are doubts – we would exit the way we came. The Traverse is completed when the team can enter one entrance and exit the other in one dive (post appropriate setup dives).

Wednesday 17th 7:30 start, we entered Cenote Mayan Blue once again – to complete the traverse. It was St. Patricks Day, but the luck of the Irish was not to be found… I forgot my dry suit! It was hanging up on a rack, a 40 minute drive away. With that terrible feeling, a sickening of the stomach I confessed my incredible stupidity to Chris and the rest of the team. I had a reasonable excuse; our gear was moved when in storage the night before and I spent the morning searching for my left post regulator… I found it, but at the expense of my dry suit! Chris kindly offered to go back for it… I would say there were more than a few expletives thrown around the cabin of his truck with “Irish” forming the beginning or end of the sentences. Thankfully Sergio, Peter, David and Ron took great pity on me and avoided the easy task of slagging me mercilessly (which would be the Irish thing to do!) – obviously my face must have shown how bad I felt and the guys didn't pull the trigger on me. Around a very uncomfortable hour later Chris rolled in, with my dry suit and thankfully a big smile. We got straight down to business with two fantastic dives, 75min and 112min runtimes. Our morning dive completed the traverse. The afternoon was focused on navigation mostly jumps. Lots of failures and scenarios thrown at us. Stage and deco bottles... including some stage failures… sneaky! We coped well – but the theme of the week was finesse, finesse, finesse.

Overall despite a very shaky and embarrassing start (for me), today turned out to be a great day of cave diving in a fantastic cave. We departed with another solid review of our need to focus on the finer points, the finesse required to be an effective team, provided by the ever good humoured Chris.

Thursday 18th 7:30 start, our second last day of Cave 2 class… we visited the cenote on the other side of the road from Mayan Blue… cenote Crystal. Two Stage, deco dives running at 120 and 106 minutes respectively. This was a beautiful location with excellent cave. We were getting into our stride now – not overly confident – but relieved that despite the pressure, the long runtimes and the interesting challenge of working in haloclines, dealing with complex navigation and the obligatory “instructor based” failures… ranging from the usual lights, din backward manifold failures, erroneous manifold failures, stage failure, gas sharing blind exits etc. etc. We also had to execute as a team a cave survey using combinations of knotted line, fibreglass tape and survey compass with wet notes. All throughout the task loading we had no major blow outs or any real significant faux pas that would have lead to our collective deaths or expulsion from the mother ship that is GUE! Hence our growing optimism (or maybe it was just my jetlag wearing off). Overall a great day of diving.

Friday 19th 7:30 start we headed for cenote Car Wahs and our last day of the course. We started the morning with the swim test – as petty as it sounds I hate these! I am a strong, but slow swimmer so I never look forward to this part of the GUE course. I think I still carry some psychological scars from my Fundies swim test… just two students… me and an ex-British school boy swimming team member. I was being lapped by this guy by a factor of 3 to 1… did not install any real confidence in me in my swimming. I passed it comfortably… but man that guy was like a speed boat circling a floating stick (me)!

Anyway I digress… Cave 2 requires students to swim 450 metres in under 14 minutes… I was the last one to touch the finish and if my memory serves me correctly I clocked 9m30sec. So I was happy with that.

With that horror out of the way it was time to get back to the diving, we executed two great dives running 71 and 117 minutes. Our first dive featured the usual failure drills but included the lost line, lost diver drills and blind exit gas share… that was fun! We all did well. On the lost line drill… our masks were blind folded and we had a limited time to deploy our safety spools, tie in, secondary tie ins, locate the line tie that in and continue to the exit side. I was unfortunately placed over a bed of pure soft silt and not near any rock that I could feel… so had nothing to tie my safety spool onto… the solution – I tied onto my scout, turned it on and imbedded it face up in the mud. Worked a treat (not that I could see the effect until the end of the drill!). Deco ran as normal in the cave and we exited. At the end of our second dive, Chris ran a long line at the bottom of the cenote and we had to do a full up and back unconscious diver tow. Everyone again completed the task. One final round of valve drills and s-drills and we exited.

Car Wahs presented some really fascinating cave passages – and areas that were very tight and restricted. These were fun to negotiate and deploy the modified kicks. Overall all drills, failures ran well.

We had completed our exam the night before – so we headed back to Zero Gravity to find out our scores and present Chris with our cave survey map. Our map of cenote Ta Tas was really well received :) but the “real” survey map was more than adequate for the task.

Good news – everyone passed their exams – the end result was that we all graduated as GUE Cave 2 divers. We were delighted but very, very tired. It was a tough 5 days – but contained exquisite caves, long runtimes, stage and deco dives with relentless failures, valve drills, air sharing drills, etc. etc. Chris was excellent, a real professional and a superb instructor… demanding but informative. He was also direct and consistent… and determined to make us a better team. Thankfully we came up to the mark.

While I didn’t spend all my time detailing our dive briefings, team drills etc. It should be mentioned that we were drilled extensively and every dive contained a team dive briefing by us, a detailed team debrief by Chris coupled with multiple cross examinations of “what depth did we turn the dive”, what was our run time to the first jump”, “when your manifold failed how much gas had you”, etc. etc. after every dive… it was like a mini series of Master mind. Great fun once the jetlag had gone!

A quick word of thanks to my two dive buddies: Sergio and Peter… really appreciate the effort we all put in to make this one hell of a success. Chris said it best himself in his debrief “its obvious that you guys care for each other and are working hard to help each other”. I couldn't agree more. I am proud to have been part of the team. Thanks guys, it’s been quite a trip from our C1 class. See you in Mexico again in January, or hopefully maybe in France in September.

So what happened after we graduated on Friday I hear you ask. Well what followed was another 4 days of superb cave diving for Peter and I. Sergio was not able to join us. These were all C2 level and featured stage, deco, complex navigation and amazingly not one failure – after a week of every piece of kit failing everyday it was a bit strange having nothing fail!

I have ran out of time now to detail them in this post… but for the time being here are the names of the cenotes and the runtimes:

Saturday 20th cenote Nohoch: 125min & 69 min
Sunday 21st cenote Car Wahs: 62min & 68 min
Monday 22nd cenote Chan hol: 122min & 62min
Tuesday 23rd cenote Temple of Doom 89min & cenote Taj Mahal 99min

I will try to add a little extra detail to these dives over the next week or so – including the part where Peter and I were shaken down by a local cop and given the opportunity to bribe our way out of a speeding fine! Customer service at its best :)

Below is a YouTube video of some of our dives post our C2 class… unfortunately my camera is low budget, low def and has no added lighting support… so forgive the granularity of the video – but caves are dark, dark places!

Next major trip – Malta for some deep technical wreck dives in May.

Images taken, out and about while diving in Mexico.

Mexico – Cave 2 GUE – coming soon!

2010-03-05T19:02:00.001Z

Technorati Tags: Cave Diving,GUE,Michael Griffin,Grifmike,Grif,Cave 1,Cave 2,C2,Zero Gravity,Technical Diving,Cenote,Yucatan,Mexico,Christophe Le Maillot,Chris Le Maillot

On the 13th March our GUE cave team is heading for Mexico. Sergio, Peter and I are signed up for GUE C2 class with instructor Christophe Le Maillot at Zero Gravity at Xpu Ha, Q. Roo.

Needless to say we are really looking forward to the challenge of C2. I am also personally looking forward to getting into some “low flow” cave. To date all of my C1 level dives have been in the rather robust embrace of the flow of Ginnie Springs.

In Mexico all our dives will be conducted in the inland Cenotes of the Yucatan peninsula. There are plenty of great cave diving videos of these flooded cave systems on YouTube… but one of may favourites is the “Temple of Doom” which I have linked to below, in fact this video is one of the reasons for my early fascination with cave diving:

Cenotes are sinkholes and are found in the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico. These were originally under the ocean and the region's limestone foundation is fossilized coral beds and ocean floor. There are no above ground rivers in this area, all of the ground water sinks through the porous limestone and travels to the sea in underground rivers. Parts of the limestone weakened over time and collapsed, leaving sinkholes filled with water – called a cenote.

During the ice ages, portions of the underground rivers dried up and water dripping through the limestone left mineral deposits in beautiful formations. Decorations - stalactites and stalagmites - formed in the caves and caverns, and were covered with water when the rivers began flowing once again.

Cenotes were sacred to the Maya civilisation, they used the cenotes for fresh water - both for drinking and irrigation - and in religious ceremonies. Some of their cities were built around cenotes. Divers have explored the cenote at Chichén Itzá and have found offerings the ancient Maya made to the gods. Among them copper and gold necklaces, pottery, jade beads, and skeletons of both sexes and all ages.

Not a bad place to go diving… even if we will be in dry suits!

Wish us luck. Hopefully all we go according to plan. If you are interested in just what a C2 class involves… here is a link to a good GUE Cave 2 class report would recommend giving it a read!

I will update upon my return on the 25th March – in the meantime I will try to update via my Twitter and Facebook pages.

Florida – Cave Diving Video

2010-02-07T21:15:00.001Z

Technorati Tags: Cave Diving,GUE,Michael Griffin,Grifmike,Grif,Cave 1,Ginnie Springs,High Springs,DIR Diving,Technical Diving,Devils Eye

As promised please see below the final cut version of our cave diving trip video to High Springs Florida. Warning: my video camera is not HD and I have no light rigging on it… the only light source during this video is our HID dive lights. Obviously in the end section when we emerge from the cave system the natural sunlight helps a lot :) I hope you enjoy it… we had great fun diving it… but yes I know the image quality is not exactly national Geographic!

Florida Cave Diving Trip 2010

Florida – Cave Diving

2010-02-07T20:04:00.001Z

Technorati Tags: Cave Diving,GUE,Michael Griffin,Grifmike,Grif,Cave 1,Ginnie Springs,High Springs,DIR Diving,Technical Diving,Devils Eye

On the 27th of January I finally got on the road for High Springs Florida to meet up with Peter and Sergio my GUE Cave 1 team for a week of cave diving. I flew from Dublin to Newark and then connect from Newark down to Orlando. Not the most efficient way of doing things – but in the absence of a direct flight to Orlando what was a poor Irish cave diver to do? Unfortunately it did result in many comatose episodes in the above mentioned airports. Excitement was however reliably provided at each and every security check point due to my “scary” Halcyon 21watt HID dive light… at every stage it received the focused attention of various security officials and was narko/explosive tested with gay abandon. On the plus side I quickly realised that telling the various security forces that it was a “cave diving light” actually peeked their interest… this ranged from comments such as “man are you crazy?” to “you mean you actually can scuba dive inside caves?”. I left my hometown of Kilkenny at 4am GMT on the morning of the 27th and I arrived in Orlando airport at 00:10am GMT of the 28th… long, long day (which was 7:10pm on the 27th local time).

Peter’s flight arrived in from Boston at around 7:30pm local time, we met at baggage collection and went together to pick up our SUV. Two hours dive later we arrived at the Quality Inn Alachua… our home for the week.

Next morning we met at 8am at Extreme Exposure with Sergio who had red-eye driven up from Orlando at stupid-o’clock early that morning. After a quick catch up we began to get organised… two SUV’s stuffed full of kit already but we still had a lot to do… not least getting our double sets of Twin 104’s filled! These “monsters” weigh in at an impressive 50kgs per set and take more than a little of getting used to. On the plus side they are roughly 18.5L per cylinder giving us a whopping 37L’s capacity and the Extreme Exposure fills usually came in at 240bar of 32% EANX… so that’s 8,880 litres of gas per set. Nice!

Talking to Andrew and Doug at the dive centre we learn that the only cave “open” is Ginnie Springs, apparently there had been unusual amounts of heavy rainfall and the other caves in the region were not accessible. Unbelievably the exact same situation occurred last May when we were diving in High Springs.

Anyway the show must go on, I had organised with Doug to make a custom hood for me – so as we set off for the tender embrace of Ginnie Springs I left in a “sacrificial hood” for Doug to work off.

Over the rest of the week Sergio, Peter and I progressed further and further into Ginnie Springs, we could only gain access into the cave via the Devils Eye entrance as the Devils Ear was closed out due to the high level of tannins in the water of the flooded Santa Fe river.

On the major plus side we found ever more efficient ways to navigate through the flow and found lots of sheltered spots within the system to make our progress increasingly easier.

We were running GUE cave 1 rules – so penetration on 1/6ths… last May this was getting us as far as the Hill 400 Jump approximately 500ft inside the cave before we had to turn the dive and head out. Back then we were using the Devils Ear entrance which is much shorter and provides a quicker run to the start of the mainline than the Devils Eye. Thankfully on this trip we were reliably hitting 1,200 ft of penetration via the much longer Devils Eye entrance before we turned for the exit… so significant progress was made by the team.

Unfortunately due to the corporate crime world never “sleeping” Sergio had to leave on Sunday evening a full day ahead of schedule, he finished with 16 dives completed over the 4 days. Peter and I on the other hand persevered and on our last day of diving we had clocked up an impressive 23 dives. On that Tuesday Peter and I reached our furthest penetration point to date and turned on the “sand dunes”. Needless to say on 1/6ths we were very pleased with that performance.

During the week a few things occurred to note:

Doug’s custom hood was ready for me in two days and so I had plenty of opportunity to dive it during the trip… I must say it was an excellent fit (although a bit tight on the jaw the first two dives)… very warm and very robust. Happy with that.

On Saturday the 30th the cord in my 21Watt HID light failed… F*%K… at the very start of the first dive of the day… it was with many an expletive that I had to get out of my kit and head off to EE… they gave me one of JJ’s 18Watt HID’s to use until Halcyon had the chance to replace the cord under warranty, which they did and I had it back in the water on Tuesday. Thanks Halcyon.

I ran into Casey McKinley, the joint world record holding cave diver and head of the WKPP cave diving team. He had just returned from a trip to Europe and was diving in Finland a few days before… I of course took the opportunity to share some of my Finnish ice diving stories with him… he was a very cool guy.

My DUI Rock boots started to give me a real pain in the ankles. They were a new pair, size 10, same as my old ones – but they are “bigger”… this gave rise to my ankle moving and chafing inside the boot. Obviously this was not something I could let continue as it was starting to hurt. My solution? Converse All Stars… and they worked a treat, gave me fantastic support on my ankle and instantly stopped the chafing. Even better they are far easier to get into Scubapro Jetfins. Of course they attracted comment from every fellow cave diver we met :)

Doug also pressure tested my DUI TLS 350 dry suit at Extreme Exposure and I was very happy to see that the suit was in great knick… we did find one very tiny leak… but over all the suit is in great shape. I will be tending to that little breach in the next few days.

Overall the three of us had a great time in Florida and we really bonded well as a team. 23 dives in Ginnie Springs is not easy work as the flow is quite high in this system. We were a little disappointed that we did not get the opportunity to dive in Peacock Springs or some of the other cave systems like Little river which we had planned… however it has to be said that when I look back on how far we progressed through the Ginnie system I am very happy that as a team we significantly improved our efficiency and comfort while working together in a high flow cave.

So next stop for our cave diving team is Mexico on the 13th of March for our GUE Cave 2 class – I am really looking forward to getting into the “low flow” caves of the Yucatan and nailing the C2 certificate in the capable company of two great dive buddies. Of course I will write a report on our exploits as soon as I can after we finish up on March 25th.

YouTube video of our Florida cave dives will follow shortly…

In the meantime have a look at the photos I took. Unfortunately I have a low resolution camera and as I like streamlining my gear I do not add on strobes, or extra lighting support. Therefore the “in water” shots are taken with just dive lights – I keep the basic flash “off”… as its useless anyway. While the effect is quite close to how we see the caves (via our light beams) it does not really do justice to the full splendour of the environment or give a real sense of the perspective within them. However they are good enough to give you a general feeling for the cave.

Hook Head – cool winter dive

2009-12-20T17:48:00.001Z

Technorati Tags: First 4 Scuba,Scuba Diving,PADI,Dive Centre,Michael Griffin,Grif,Grifmike,Ireland,Recerational,Diving,Hook,Hook Head,Winter dive

Yes another –3.5c morning arrived today… and yes we just had to go diving. The journey down to hook Head was quite entertaining with the roads been covered in sheets of ice… my cars “active” control system was most definitely Active!!

The diving conditions were perfect for the Hook… there was hardly a breeze and the tide was well on its way out. Myself, Micko, P.J. Ronan, Davy and Colum got all our kit ready and took advantage of a fantastic solid rock bench just recently installed at the dive site overlooking the sea view. The memorial bench is a really great idea and it was greatly appreciated by our divers as it makes kitting up so much easier… while I can’t be 100% sure I have a funny idea that “Paul” the person who is commemorated on the bench was a diver.

We jumped into the almost perfect calm sea and basked in the water temp of 8c… we all had a nice laid back dive around the site under the light house. Again I was feeling nice and warm wrapped up in my dry suit and thermals… but Davy and Colum did manage an impressive 40 minute runtime in 8c while sporting semi-dry suits!! Respect!

Myself and Micko played around with our valve shutdowns and I did a few emergency backup mask deployments.

Really enjoyable dive. Hopefully we will continue to see the weather holding out for a few dives over the Christmas break. There is a whisper that we might go diving on the 28th of December… we shall see.

Lough Owel – All Weather dive site

2009-12-13T17:06:00.000Z

Technorati Tags: First 4 Scuba,Scuba Diving,PADI,Dive Centre,Michael Griffin,Grif,Grifmike,Ireland,Recerational,Diving,Lough Owel,Lake,Dive,All Weather

Well having had a very bad spell of winter weather some in our club were getting “itchy” to go for a dive. We scoured the land for a suitable “all weather” site and thanks to Gavin we heard tell of a lake that might be suitable for diving, located just outside the town of Mullingar in the Irish midlands.

As we were all really keen to go diving we decided to brave the –3.5c air temp and head up the icy country roads to Lough Owel on Sunday the 13th December. We arrived at the dive site at roughly 9am. The conditions were perfect; ironically no wind and a clear bright sky, but very frosty and very, very cold.

Myself, Colin, Micko, Ronan, Gavin and Przemek headed down to the jetty and hoped in… the lake is ideal for training dives as the entry point is roughly 1.2 meters deep with a stone lake bed. As we moved out further into the lake the stone bedding stops as the depth drops to roughly 5 to 6 meters and the lake bed changes to a coarse silt. The visibility was an impressive (green) 5 meters and the silt did seem to settle fairly quickly if and when disturbed. However the water was a spine chilling 3c. I was fine (dry suit, dry gloves, argon etc), but I really felt for Gavin and Przemek who braved the dive in a semi-dry and wetsuit respectively. Respect!

This was a very enjoyable dive, but the site would only really be of benefit for training dives… and that is exactly what our club has been searching for. Finally we have a very good “plan B” site if the weather has blown out our regular diving spots. Something tells me we will be seeing a lot more of this dive site in the future!

Malta - PADI IDC/IE Graduation

2009-11-12T16:34:00.000Z

Technorati Tags: First 4 Scuba,Scuba Diving,Maltaqua,PADI,Dive Centre,IDC,IE,Michael Griffin,Grif,Grifmike,Ireland,Recerational,Diving,Insructor,Scuba,Kent Scuba

Just back from Malta where I successfully completed my PADI instructor and Emergency First Response Instructor exams and assessments. My club mate and dive buddy Gareth also passed with flying colours.

We spent a little extra time after the IE earning our speciality instructor strips as well, so everything really did work out for us both.

I would like to thank instructors Garry, Sean & Jan, as well as fellow divers John and Dave from KentScuba who formed our 4 man IDC/IE team. It was a blast guys – thanks for everything!

Above photo: Gareth (L), me (R) upon PADI IE graduation.

Now I am a PADI instructor.

I will be returning to Malta in May 2010 to earn my DSAT Tec instructor rating… looking forward to it already.

Also thanks to all at Maltaqua for making our stay so easy and enjoyable – as usual they took great care of our diving needs.

Malta – PADI IDC/IE

2009-10-27T16:54:00.000Z

Technorati Tags: First 4 Scuba,Scuba Diving,Maltaqua,PADI,Dive Centre,IDC,IE,Michael Griffin,Grif,Grifmike,Ireland,Recerational,Diving,Insructor,Scuba

I am heading over to Malta on Thursday to take my PADI IDC/IE instructor exams. My dive buddy and club mate Gareth is travelling with me and we aim to get our instructor rating over a 10 day stay on the Mediterranean Island. The weather should be good!

We will be based at Maltaqua which is a superb dive centre that I have used in the past to complete technical dives from… they have always provided a great service, so there should not be any logistical difficulties arising on the trip.

I think a day by day report on the IDC/IE might be a bit “overkill”… so I will just post up how we got on when its all over. Hopefully there wont be any embarrassing issues to confess!

Wish me luck….

Scapa Flow ‘09 photos by Chris Jones

2009-10-15T19:33:00.001+01:00

Technorati Tags: German High Seas Fleet,WWI,Scapa Flow,Orkney Islands,Wreck Diving,Technical Diving,GUE,First4Scuba,Michael Griffin,Grif,Grifmike,June 1919,Scuttled,German Navy,Scuba Diving,Kronprinz Wilhelm,Cöln,Karlsruhe,Brummer,Dresden,F2 & Barge

I just received some absolutely superb photos from Chris Jones of our trip to Scapa Flow. I am grateful to him for allowing me reproduce them here on my blog. Thanks Chris!

Me (Grif) on the F2 wreck

(L) Brendan Mc Bride (Centre bottom) Grif on F2 wreck

(L) Colin McBride (R) Grif on deco stop

For more excellent underwater photos by Chris Jones… visit… http://www.flickr.com/photos/chris_jones_wales/

Scapa Flow ‘09 Comic Strip

2009-10-12T20:15:00.001+01:00

Warning: this comic is not to be taken seriously… this is an irreverent look back on our dive teams recent trip to Scapa Flow. The only victim here is the truth… but that's the whole point of the comic!

Scapa Flow ‘09 YouTube Video

2009-10-12T03:53:00.001+01:00

First off...Apologies... my little camera is very low Tec... no fixed lighting, no special lenses and no ballast system. Had to dive with the camera held just in my right hand. Unfortunately the resolution does not do justice to the actual splendour of these wrecks. This shortcoming is really amplified by the lack of lighting, especially while penetrating the inside of the wrecks.

On the plus side; for a guy just diving through a wreck (& avoiding obstacles) by holding a very basic basic camera lose in his right hand... the composition is not bad. Wrecks featured in this video are the Coln and the Brummer. Unfortunately as YouTube has a 10 minute limit many other wrecks hit the ‘cutting room floor’. I do hope you enjoy this video… I certainly enjoyed the dives while making it :)

I would also like to thank my dive Buddy Colin McBride… He was diving in Diver 1 position, I was Diver 2… so Colin features quite heavily in the main dive sections within the video (he is in front of me). A great dive buddy with a fantastic instinct for navigating a ships internal super structure – thanks Colin.

Finally I dedicate the opening song on this video to my wife Jasmine for her love and support – without her I would not be able to achieve anything. Mike.

Scapa Flow ‘09 – Trip Report

2009-10-11T02:37:00.001+01:00

Its been almost three weeks since our return from diving the WWI German High Seas Fleet wrecks at Scapa Flow. As usual it took a little ‘while’ before I could get to writing up the trip report, work requirements had doubled its normal expansion and consumption of time available. So without further a due… or excuses… here follows the First4Scuba Scapa Flow 2009 trip report…

Day 1: Friday 18th…

The epic road trip begins. I had spent Thursday night checking and loading my gear into the car. So Friday morning I hit the road at around 10am and pulled into Conor’s house in Carlow at around 10:30. We loaded Conor’s gear and headed for our Dublin rendezvous. We were meeting Mike Scott and Marty Johnston at the Red Cow hotel on the infamous/famous Red Cow roundabout on the M50 for 12 o’clock. We pulled into the Hotel car park just on 12 and within 5 minutes Mr. Scott proceeded to pull in and drive into and over the car park! A club sandwich later and the four of us headed to Belfast to meet with Colin and Brendan before boarding the Stena Line fast ferry to Stranraer, Scotland. Marty came with me and Conor went with Mike. All road and ferry travel went well and we pulled into the car park of the Travel Lodge in Perth Scotland at around 22:30 that evening. With an unhealthy consumption of a hot MacDonald's meal (conveniently located in the same car park!) we headed for bed… A long day… but enjoyable none the less.

Day 2: Saturday 19th…

Upon a 9am gathering and refuelling of cars we head up the motorway towards Scrabster in the north of Scotland via Inverness. Breakfast was found (surprisingly) in a lovely diner in the picturesque town of Pitlochry. We had a little time to kill today and so decided to head for John O’ Groats which is the most northerly point of the Scottish mainland. Ok it wasn’t Vegas, but it did kill time getting there. We then spent a little time in the Weigh Inn where Colin decided to teach us all a lesson in how to play pool… unfortunately he did this back in 2007 too! Eventually it was time to board the Northlink Ferry from Scrabster to Stromness; our home town for the week in the Orkney Islands. Ferry crossing proved uneventful, but Colin and I did run into Garry our DSAT instructor for a course we did in Malta in 2008. As we pulled off of the ferry we met Chris and Damien who had arrived earlier that day and were already settled into the house we had booked for the week – they gave us directions and soon we were off loading our gear. The house was ideal… just a little up the road from the Stromness Hotel towards the Scapa Scuba dive centre. Close to everything of importance in Stromness and it was really comfortable and well equipped. All rooms were en suite, warm, plenty of hot water and with decent water pressure. The kitchen was also well equipped and bore witness to the fine culinary skills of the brothers McBride… one more successfully then the other it has to be said. After a quick catch up with everyone, we all settled in and got an early night.

Day 3: Sunday 20th…

At 8:30 am we headed down to the pier and began the human chain loading process of getting all our gear (and there was lots and lots of it!) onto our dive boat the MV Crusader, skippered by Kenny and ably assisted by Stephen. Once all our gear was onboard and safely stowed we met to discuss the dive plan for the day. Unfortunately we were down one diver as Brendan was still suffering form the tail end of a cold and had wisely decided to sit out out for a day before getting into the water. We all agreed to head for the dreadnought battleship Kronprinz Wilhelm and then to head for the light cruiser Cöln for the afternoon dive.

Kronprinz Wilhelm (Dive 1)

I did not carry a camera for this first dive, as I wanted to make sure I was paying attention to all my vital kit… just in case something was damaged in transit. However I really enjoyed this dive immensely. Using the word ‘immense’ is no exaggeration to describe this Dreadnought Battleship. She rests at 38m max depth.

I dived this beauty back in 2007 on a single 15L… but this year I was carrying a 12L twinset with Eanx 28% and a 11L deco stage with 50% Eanx. I was aiming to dive Scapa on Trimix but there was a ‘delay’ in getting the Helium… so I had to settle for 28% back gas today. My dive buddy Colin and I were both diving the exact same mixes to ease planning for the week. We were also diving in a team formation… Colin as diver 1, I was diver 2. Colin took the lead position as I had the most powerful torch… so from a team safety point of view he could always signal me and I him. If I had been in the lead Coin would not have been able to signal me, as my torch would have drowned out his beam… thus I would have always been looking back over my shoulder and our dive efficiency would have been in the toilet.

We dropped onto this behemoth and in our team formation we cut a great visual swath along this wreck. She is almost completely turtle; with a slight lean to her starboard side on the seabed… so we came down her Port side and had plenty of superstructure to examine suspended just above the seabed. The visibility was quite good roughly 10 to 15 meters and we had this wreck to ourselves as no other dive boat dropped divers in while we were on her. Great dive, and a superb first dive. Myself and Colin clocked up 15 minutes deco and surfaced with big smiles. Our final delight was provided by the Crusader’s dive lift… it is such a joy to be lifted out of the water with stage bottles rather than having to struggle up a ladder. Dive lifts rock!

Surface interval = lunch and plenty of good humoured banter… and even I got a bit of stick over my GUE ninja ways but apparently my taste in biscuits make up for a lot! :)

Cöln (Dive 2)

Great… in fact a fantastic dive. Loads of penetration within the bulk of the wreck. Colin really was on fire in finding interesting ways through the wrecks.

Needless to say we did not have any difficulty working as a team and absolutely flew through the superstructure of this WWI engineering marvel resting rather serenely at 35 meters deep. From stern to bow this dive was fantastic and the wreck was absolutely covered in life to add that little extra spice. The visibility was very good probably 15 meters and the dive conditions were excellent.

I took the camera but shot video so I will put a composite video of the footage together at the bottom of this post (when I get it done… ahem!). We clocked up 20 minutes deco and surfaced with that superb feeling that only diving can provide… WOW!

Sunday could not have ended any better… two great dives, great team diving and decent weather and to top it all off a fine evening meal of Spaghetti Bolognaise provided by the master chef of the week Brendan McBride. Thanks Brendan!!

Day 4: Monday 21st…

Monday saw another 8:30am start and unfortunately Brendan was still not feeling right so he sensibly opted to say warm and dry. Our team reviewed our dive options for the day with the Skipper Kenny and decided to head for the Brummer and the Dresden. I had been hoping to get Helium on board by Monday morning but this turned out to drop in the “can’t do” box… Kenny apparently had encountered some supply ‘issues’… so Colin and I were destined to run Eanx 28% back gas with a deco stage of Eanx 50% for most of the week. Disappointed but unperturbed we jumped into our first dive of the day… our favourite wreck of 2007 the SMS Brummer…

Brummer (Dive 3)

Again an excellent dive… Colin and I were getting far more time on the wrecks on this trip than back in 2007. We found the Brummer just a little bit ‘less than’ what we though of it back then. I again carried the camera and took video… A great dive with good visibility. Colin took the lead as normal and we rolled through the wreck like a well oiled machine – taking care not to disturb the visibility as we passed through the internals of her superstructure. She lies on her Port side in 36 meters of water. We navigated Bow to Stern and really enjoyed the dive. Her stern guns never fail to impress me, Colin must have radar guided instincts because we literally exited from penetrating the superstructure and we were directly above these impressive weapons. 15 minutes of deco clocked up and we emerged happy and content – we re-jigged our list of favourite wreck dives upon surfacing… the Cöln had definitely overtaken the Brummer on the hit list.

Surface interval = lunch and everyone fell victim to good humoured slagging in the style of Fox News “Fair, Balanced and Unafraid” :) (yes I am being sarcastic!)

Dresden (Dive 4)

The Dresden has always been a favourite wreck of mine. She rests on the seabed at maximum depth of 38 meters and is the most intact of the WWI fleet. I was really looking forward to this dive and so it was with more than a little ‘crap’ that I gave Colin the signal that I was aborting the dive right at the bottom of the shot line almost 1 meter above the wreck… why? My Dry suit inflation had failed.

I was getting a squeeze – my suit inflation was not working and as I was only at the top of the wreck, so I judged it wise to call the dive. A matter of head ruling the heart I am afraid (as well as plain common sense!) Colin joined up with Marty and Mike Scott and I reluctantly headed up off the wreck. As I neared the surface the squeeze was gone so I decided to stay around the six meter mark for a while on the Eanx 50% and just relax. After 8 minutes I surfaced and got back onboard the Crusader. What had failed? – unfortunately for me – it was simple human error. I had not taken into account the depth and time of the morning dive when judging the remaining amount of Argon in the small cylinder I carry it in. As I did not bring my gas booster, I was just partial pressure filling the cylinder… the supply cylinder only had 116 bar. So I only had 116 bar in a .85L cylinder and I had used it all up on the hour long dive on the Brummer that morning. Lesson learned!!

We arrived back in port in Stromness with the team having had another excellent day of diving. Unfortunately there was an ambulance waiting for someone on the pier as we tied up… I hope they had a speedy recovery from whatever happened. I suppose were were all glad it was not waiting for any of our divers… back in 2007 (out of precaution) our skipper called the ambulance to meet two divers on our boat who had to execute an emergency ascent after running out of air on their safety stop! Thankfully both or divers were fine but got a 24hour diving ban.

Day 5: Tuesday 22nd…

Tuesday started with very high hopes as Brendan was back in action and raring to go diving. However as we approached the dive site, in fact as we were kitting up the conditions deteriorated to an alarming extent. We decided to call it a day before putting any divers in the water… it just was not worth the risk… philosophically we took the view that the wrecks would still be there tomorrow! The journey back to port took some considerable time and unfortunately a few of our hardened crew were feeling a bit green around the gills, but we won’t name names! The people who were not sea sick were easier to identify; me, Brendan, Damien, Chris, Mike and Conor :)

So Tuesday consisted of watching most of the Colin McBride DVD library in the sitting room of the house. We then headed out to Kirkwall and the Indian restaurant Dil Se again a favourite from our 2007 trip.

Day 6: Wednesday 23rd…

A fresh morning and with the weather much improved we gathered on the deck of the Crusader at 9am. Our diving targets for the day were the Cöln and the Brummer. This was great… our two favourite wrecks rolled into one day… what more could we ask for? I only have video of these dives… so no pictures to include until I get the video montage sorted…

Cöln (Dive 5)

Again I loved this dive, loads of penetration and Colin and I were really diving in sync… our dive lights were doing all the talking and everything was running slick and efficiently. This was diving at its very best… everything was in its right place, and we were loving it. There was definitely less life on the wreck on this dive. However Colin managed to find new and interesting ways to navigate the internal structure… in fact he made it look almost effortless the way he kept finding entry and exit points and I was grateful for the superb tour he was giving me! We clocked up 15 minutes deco and surfaced with another great dive in the bag!

Surface interval = Lunch and plenty of banter, I am sure you are noticing a pattern here :)

Brummer (Dive 6)

I always love this wreck, and this dive was by no means an exception… the dive was superb. However I was more than a little disappointed to hear that some of our divers who exited the water after me spotted another group of divers from a different boat dropping onto the wreck with hammers and chisels in their kit and running lines all over the external hull. This all just smacked of gross disregard for other divers not to mention pure disrespect for the wreck… I have never, ever found the need to even contemplate the use of a hammer and chisel in my dive kit configuration. Needless to say we were not very impressed with this and to top it all off apparently this group moved around the wreck so incompetently that they killed the visibility. No buoyancy control, no respect and no good intentions, not exactly the type of guys we would go diving with… they wouldn't last one day on our team! I still get a little annoyed now weeks later just thinking about it… and I only heard about it… it was Conor, Marty and Mike who had to suffer as a result of these cowboys.

Day 6 came to a close. Another two great dives in the bag and we began to hatch a plan for Thursday… we decided to try to squeeze 3 dives into one day.

Day 7: Thursday 24th…

Our morning began at 8am with the group discussing the dive planning for the day. We decided on the Dresden followed by the F2 & Barge and finally the Karlsruhe and to top it all off we agreed with Kenny that we would head for the Interpretative Centre on Lyness for our first surface interval.

Dresden (Dive 7)

The “return” and this time I had plenty of Argon for my dry suit… This dive again went like a dream… I really enjoyed it and was still raging that I had to bug out of the dive on Monday. Some great penetration diving followed and I do love the view of her unshielded gun. We clocked up 15 minutes of deco and on our final 6 meter stop we were privy to a sea bird diving and swimming beside us while we looked on in wonder. I had only really ever seen this on TV documentaries… needless to say it is rather fascinating to see occurring for real right in front of your eyes. These boys can swim and certainly this guy was underwater for what felt like 3 minutes. Luckily for the fish, they seemed to be absent from the water that this avian bad boy was patrolling with gusto.

Surface interval on Lyness and a visit to the Interpretive Centre… was very interesting and we were offered the chance to see a brief film on Scapa Flow. Of course we all said “yes please”… the rather helpful lady proceeded to escort us out into a giant oil tank… converted to a museum/cinema. We were all very impressed… and the film showed extended footage of the scuttling of the German fleet and the island life at that time. Great ‘re-cycling’ of an oil storage facility and the items on display ranging from mainland base equipment to recovered artefacts from the wrecks to photographs of the ships and their crew really added a fantastic historical dimension to the sheer size of the endeavour that was Scapa Flow during the great war.

Unfortunately it seems a ‘truism’ that nothing develops mans ingenuity quite as much as war. At their time the ships we were diving on were right at the cutting edge of technology for the 1900’s… its amazing just to think how far we have progressed since… who knows what the technology of the 2100’s will look like… I just hope for future divers that they manage to always scuttle decommissioned specimens along the way to develop as artificial reefs and for our underwater exploration. But I digress… back to the dives…

F2 & Barge (Dive 8)

The F2 is actually a WWII wreck which was captured early in the war and sank at her moorings in Scapa Flow in 1946. Beside her rests the wreck of a 550 ton YC21 salvage barge which sank containing the twin 20mm anti-aircraft guns that the salvagers were attempting to recover. The barge fell victim herself to a storm in November 1968 and she is now connected to the F2 via a 30 meter line. Well as they say; less for the salver leaves more for the diver. While I was not overly impressed with the F2 dive back in 2007 I decided to be magnanimous about the whole experience and give the lady another chance. In fact I believe I said that “in two weeks time when I am stuck behind my desk I would die for a chance to dive the F2”… I wasn’t wrong… foresight is a great thing.

Colin however decided to give the old girl a pass and so I jumped in teamed up with Brendan. We dropped onto the F2… she is resting at max depth of 18 meters; we were both on 32% Eanx and obviously did not need to carry any deco stages. We circled her twice before following the rope across to the barge. Again the barge is exactly that… a barge with a large twin bore 20mm anti-aircraft gun resting in her. Myself and Brendan arrived at the barge and had a nice mosey around and we were soon joined by Chris and Damien. Brendan and I headed back to the F2 and had another little peek around the place and then decided to call it. No deco, safety stop and boarded the Crusader. Ok without doubt this was a very underwhelming wreck… but as I say “a dive is a dive” and I was still glad I jumped in for it, not to mention the fact that I always enjoy diving with Brendan and this dive was no exception.

A point to note: back in 2007 there was a dive capsule visible on the bow dedicated to the memory of a diver who had lost their life diving the F2… it was not there this year, or at least I didn't see any sign of it.

On a happier note: Marty Johnston also opted to pass on this dive; but he did take some interesting ‘entry’ shots as we jumped in… note the optical illusion of Mike Scott walking on water – great shot Marty! :)

Brief surface interval followed… I actually just stayed sitting in my kit on the dive bench… next stop the wreck of the Karlsruhe

Karlsruhe (Dive 9)

To be honest… before we jumped in, I was not overly keen on this dive… I remembered the time back in 2007 where I really did not take to this wreck at all. Well I can’t say for sure what changed over the last two years… but from the moment myself and Colin dropped onto the wreck I really began to enjoy this dive. We dropped down to roughly 24 meters for most of the dive and there was plenty to see as the wreck has suffered from significant “salvage” work.

I am a little curious myself why this dive was so different to the dive back in 2007… but as myself and Colin ascended from the dive I was very happy we did it. I certainly didn't think I would find myself saying I would dive it again when I am back in Scapa next. Upon surfacing myself and Colin noticed that the surface conditions had deteriorated significantly. We got on board and once everyone had lashed their gear down we headed for port. It was a long and very rough passage, although people were not as sea sick as Tuesday the conditions were less than favourable to spines and spleens… and Mike Scott's twinset did a full 360 jump from the kit bench to the deck… thankfully and luckily nothing was damaged in the process of this acrobatic feat.

When we were pulling into port Kenny told us that he had heard that three divers from the boat that dropped in with the hammers and chisels on the Brummer dive on Wednesday, had unfortunately ended up in the recompression chamber. I don't know if it’s true… but it seemed to fit the type of diving they were practicing. No one was surprised… but then again no one would wish that experience on anyone and I hope (if its true) that they all made a full recovery.

Thursday; Day 6 came to a close with three dives in the bag… Friday was unfortunately just around the corner, this was to be our last day diving and we planned two dives… one to include the block ship Tabarka… this was one of our top 3 dives in 2007 and so we were all really looking forward to it immensely.

Day 8: Friday 25th… blown out!

Something about “the plans of mice and men” comes to mind… I was pretty emotional… the early morning conditions were very poor… so the diving was cancelled. However I didn't get appropriate time to wallow in the misery of my disappointment as there followed a flurry of activity to reschedule ferries to get home one day early. We had not intended to leave Stromness until Saturday morning, now we were leaving on Friday. Taking the morning ferry at 11am to Scrabster followed by a “rally” across the whole of Scotland to get to Stranraer in time for the 23:20 sailing to Belfast that night.

A frenzy of unloading the Crusader and reloading our cars was followed by quick showers and a brief but pleasant phone call to a very friendly ‘Sue’ at Stena Line to rearrange our tickets and in the blinking of an eye we were boarding the Northlink ferry leaving Stromness and heading home. Marty thankfully shared some of the driving from Scrabster to Stranraer, luckily the sun was shining and the roads were not too mental with traffic so we made good time. When we landed in Belfast Conor switched with Marty and again Conor helped out with the driving on the way to his house in Carlow. I dropped Conor off at some ungodly time in the early morning only fit for birds and special forces units and I managed to make it in my front door. I did not notice the time when I fell asleep but it was less than 5 minutes from the time I turned the key in my door.

In the end:

Scapa 2009 was a great success; for a number of reasons. The diving was superb. Colin my dive buddy was gifted in finding ways through the wrecks and our slick team work really helped us motor along and enjoy the diving. There were no significant in water problems for any of our dive team. Marty my room mate didn't snore! (nice one mate!) and he was great company during the epic road trip. Finally the esprit de corps amongst all our dive team was great and that made the trip a success from the start… thanks guys…it was a real pleasure!

Scapa Flow is an awful long way to go… but the payoff is really fantastic wreck diving. It was a shame that we lost two days diving on this trip due to bad weather… but that's mother nature for you… unfortunately she does not always comply with our diving schedule or indeed dance to our iPod playlists. Hopefully we will have better luck next time.

First4Scuba Scapa Flow 2009 Dive Crew were:

Brendan McBride
Chris Jones
Colin McBride
Conor McGrath
Damien Joyce
Marty Johnston
Mike Griffin
Mike Scott

Note: I will upload a compilation YouTube video of our dives as soon as I can – hopefully before the 13th of October… hopefully :)

Sergio & Peter pass GUE T1

2009-09-13T20:34:00.001+01:00

Thanks to Sergio for giving me a call earlier this week with some great news… he and Peter both passed their GUE Tec 1 class with instructor Bob Sherwood.

So just a quick note to congratulate my Cave 1 buddies on passing Tec 1 – well done guys!

Looking forward to diving Ginnie again with you in January.

Scapa Flow ‘09 – Epic Road Trip

2009-09-13T17:50:00.001+01:00

Technorati Tags: German High Seas Fleet,WWI,Scapa Flow,Orkney Islands,Wreck Diving,Technical Diving,GUE,First4Scuba,Michael Griffin,Brummer,Dresden,Markgraf,Grif,June 1919,Scuttled,German Navy,Scuba Diving,Kronprinz Wilhelm,Koeln,Coln,Karlsruhe,Konig

A road trip of epic proportions kicks off on Friday next, the 18th of September when our dive team get on the road and head for the Orkney Islands. Our plan is to set off from our various locations (mine is Kilkenny) and gather together just off of the Dublin ring road (M50) to load gear, and pair off into 4 cars with two divers each. 8 divers in all.

What lies ahead of us is a journey of approx. 1,044km through the North of Ireland and on through the wilds of Scotland. The scenery is superb – but the roads are not.

We will leave Dublin at around 2:00pm on Friday and head straight for the Stenaline terminal at Belfast port. We sail via the Stenaline ferry to Stranraer in Scotland and head for an overnight stop in Perth. Saturday morning we have a little time on our side and can afford a little scenic travel as we head due north for the ferry port of Scrabster. At Scrabster we load onto the Northlink ferry bound for Stromness our final destination.

Back in 2007 Micko was my car buddy for this journey… this year Micko can’t make the trip as he and his wife Emma have just had a bouncing baby boy (congratulations guys!) so my dive buddy Marty is braving the road trip with me.

To make our lives really interesting on the way back from Scapa we have to make the Scrabster to Stranraer leg of the trip in one single go. This is going to be our own private “cannonball run” the ferry from Stromness in the Orkney Islands arrives in Scrabster at 10:30am we then have until 19:00 to get all the way across Scotland to Stranraer. My GPS estimates this to be a 7h:30min hour journey – we only have 8:30 hours (assuming the ferry docks and we are out and on our way by 10:30am)… to make it. Toilet breaks may be in short supply.

Scapa Flow – Review dive log 2007

2009-09-08T21:34:00.001+01:00

In anticipation of our forthcoming return dive trip to the scuttled WWI German High Seas Fleet I decided to review my old logbook entries and look at the dives we did in Scapa back in 2007. A lot has changes since our last visit… mostly down to the fact that this was my very last single tank dive trip… and back in 2007 I was not qualified to complete decompression.

With a view to organising my gas planning I have also included the max depth (sea bed) of each dive site next to the logged dive depth of the 2007 dives.

Dive No	Dive Site	Depth (m)	Run Time minutes	Dive Summary	Max Depth(m)
1	SMS Brummer	32.3m	25	Great	36m
2	SMS Karlsruhe	24.5m	32	just ok	27m
3	SMS Dresden	35.1m	29	v. good	38m
4	SMS Coln	33.8m	32	v. good	36m
5	SMS Markgraf	42m	45	“Special”	45m
6	SMS Kronprinz Wilhelm	29.3m	35	good	38m
7	Tabarka	15.2m	48	Great	18m
8	SMS Brummer	34m	33	Great	36m
9	F2 + Barge	17.1m	43	ok	17m
10	SMS Dresden	31.1m	36	v.good	38m
11	Gobernador Bores	17.1m	39	just ok	18m

For those within our dive team it might be useful to review the above sites with a view of formulating dive plans.

My intention is to plan for a bottom time (not total run time!) of between 35 to 40 minutes on all dives below 30 meters while carrying a single 7ltr 100% deco cylinder for decompression. Note: I will be keeping 80 bar as emergency reserve gas, so usable gas will be calculated as follows: Fill Pressure – 80 bar (in twin 12L) = usable gas.

So dive limit will be determined by reaching either 35/40 min bottom time OR hitting Usable Gas limit… which ever comes first.

The above dive table will probably become my standard dive plan for dives deeper than 30m but shallower than 40m. As Trimix seems to be ridiculously expensive in Scapa so I am unfortunately forced to dive the 30m + depths on Nitrox mixes. I am not happy about this… but needs must.

For example: a 30 minute dive on 28% Eanx at a depth of 39meters would demand a 1 min stop at 18 & 15 meters, 3 min stop at 12 meters, 4 min at 9 meters and finally 8 min at 6 meters. Total runtime of 48 minutes (including 1 min for final ascent from 6m to surface).

Any dive shallower than 31m I will be utilising a standard 32% Eanx mix.

For the Markgraf 45m I will have to use a 25% Eanx mix. Far from optimal!

I would rather be using GUE standard gases and certainly Trimix 21/35 for the 30m+ range… but the logistics are not forthcoming – as I am the only Trimix diver and the dive boat want me to buy the full Helium J cylinder for €400 stg... that's just too punishing for a single diver to carry – but I will see if I can get Trimix fills on the fly from one of the other dive boats or dive centres when I am over there – therefore just pay by the fill! Fingers crossed.

We shall see. Either way I can’t wait to get back onto and into these huge battleships.

The 2009 Scapa Flow High Seas Fleet Dive team are:

Colin (Mr. McB) McBride
Brendan (U-boat) McBride
Damien (Flash) Joyce
Chris (Shooter) Jones
Marty (Wing Nut) Johnston
Mike (Slob knob) Scott
Conor (Floaty Bones) McGrath
Mike (The Grif) Griffin

Below I have posted some surface pictures from our 2007 Scapa visit… I look forward to updating them real soon!

Scapa Flow – upcoming return trip

2009-09-05T19:40:00.001+01:00

On the 18th of September our dive team is heading off on a road trip of epic proportions; destination: the Orkney Islands in order to enjoy of a week of extreme wreck diving on the scuttled German WWI High Seas Fleet.

This is a return visit for me and many of the dive team, we dived there in September 2007. Needless to say everyone is really looking forward to this trip. I certainly can’t wait!

The following information is a little background on Scapa Flow and the wrecks to be found there.

Scapa Flow is a sheltered open lagoon, encircled by the Orkney islands. It contains some of the most interesting wrecks in the world. For years it was the main anchorage of the British Royal Navy, and has many relics left of British naval history. In June 1919, the interned German navy scuttled most of its High Seas Fleet to prevent them from falling into Allied hands. Despite subsequent salvage, 8 of them remain and provide excellent wrecks for technical/wreck divers.

The following wrecks are going to feature in our dive plans… thanks to http://atschool.eduweb.co.uk/jralston/rk/scapa/wrecks/index.html for the reference material:

The Dresden: a Light Cruiser - Dresden II class

History: Built at Kiel and launched April 1917. The Dresden laid a few mines off Embden and was attacked by a British submarine in August 1917. Owing to a turbine failure she was one of the last ships to arrive for internment at Scapa Flow. Sank at 13.30 on 21st June 1919,

Diving info: The Dresden lies in 35 metres with her nearest surface point at 18 metres. In some ways she resembles the Koln, but her stern is more intact and gives the diver a better appreciation of that area. She lists at a slighter angle than the Koln and part of her deck has rotted and dropped away to reveal some of the innards. The bridge is intact and the whole superstructure together with the mainmast makes for excellent diving. The bow anchor chains are present, but like the Koln, the gun platforms are empty. Towards the stern the officers' accommodation section is obvious with its windows and open doorways. Both stern guns still remain as does the stern anchor.

The Koeln : a Light Cruiser - Dresden II class

History: The Koeln was built in Hamburg over 1915 – 1916 to replace its predecessor which was sunk at the Battle of Heligoland Bight in August 1914. She joined the German navy in early 1918, but apart from a little scouting saw no action. By the time of the Scapa internment, the Koeln was in bad repair and her slow speed held up the Fleet. The boat was scuttled at about 14.00 on 21st June 1919.

Diving info: The Koeln is in good condition, and makes for an excellent dive. The boat is in 35 metres of water and lies on its starboard side with a very slight list. Because of the orientation of the wreck, the Koeln is quite light when the sun is out and it is easy to make out many of the structures on her. There are many ways of diving the Koeln. You can descend straight to the sea bed at 35 metres and then work your way up the vertical deck. Or else land amidships on the port rail and either go to the bows or stern making sure to buoyant on mid deck level (about 25 - 30 meters). Or stand from one end and go straight to the other. The Koeln is large enough and interesting enough to make a few dives necessary before you get the picture.

The highest point is 20 metres which is the midpoint port rail. It makes a convenient place to start a dive from particularly if the shot is near here (which it often is). Although it is possible to stay around this depth and inspect a port side midmast 6 inch gun whose barrel points upwards, you need to go deeper to see the best of the wreck. You could continue to the stern and pass over a salvage hole towards the stern most pair of 6 inch guns. They are both in good condition. By swimming over the stern you can then land on the long rudder (there is no propeller!). An impressive sight.

Or else move along towards the bows and pass the lifeboat davits that dangle over the side of the boat. You can look over and see the deck of the boat plunging down to the dark seabed some 15 metres below. As you approach the bows the depth increases down to around 28 metres. Near the sleek almost knife edge bows are two capstans with the remainder of the anchor chains. Behind the capstans working back toward the mainmast are the platforms of two 6 inch guns which have now disappeared. The mainmast still has a basically intact structure.

When diving this wreck it is easy to imagine being on a fast and lean cruiser. Her remaining guns are well preserved and even unpromising items like lifeboat davits and the holes left by her absent funnels are all memorable and add to the unique atmosphere that this wreck creates.

The Brummer - Light Cruiser - Bremse class

History: Launched in Dec 1915 at Stettin. The Brummer took part in a raiding operation against a convoy bound from Bergen to the Shetlands in October 1917. They massacred the convoy and as a result Germany considered using it as a lone commerce raider. However, the combined total of American and British naval opposition made this unworkable. The Brummer sank at 14.30pm on 21st June 1919.

Diving info: The Brummer can be a darkish dive that is different from the Dresden class cruisers. Partly this is because of her orientation and partly because this is a more open wreck that divers can partially enter. She lies in 36 metres with 20 metres being her shallowest depth. She lies on her starboard side with her bows slightly shallower than her stern. At the bows you can see the anchor capstans with the chains still hanging off them. Behind them lies the 6 inch bow deck gun with its armoured shield. Aft of this is the control tower with its narrow viewing slits and open access door and directly behind is the bridge. The bridge and mainmast structure is largely intact, and presents the diver with a mass of wires and cross rigging. Just aft of the bridge is the mid 6 inch gun with its barrel facing astern. Amidships is a mess of salvage damage. It is possible to enter the ship here and explore her interior. Further back at the stern can be found another 6 inch gun. The rudder can be seen lying on the seabed.

The Karlsruhe - Light Cruiser - Konigsberg II class

History: completed in January 1916 at Wilhelmshaven the Karlsruhe saw a little action around the Baltic islands in 1917 and did some mine laying and guard duty in 1918. Sank at 15.50 on 21st June 1919.

Diving info: The Karlsruhe is the shallowest of the High Seas Fleet. She lies in 26 metres with a minimum depth of 12 metres. The boat is quite badly broken in places, but is nonetheless a rattling good dive. She lies on her starboard side with her stern section relatively intact with capstans and mooring bollards still attached to a sloping quarterdeck. Her mid section has been extensively salvaged, but this means that parts of her structure are more easily seen. Towards her bows there are two 6 inch guns that straddle the sea bed having collapsed from the main deck housing. Her bows are intact and quite imposing. Anchor chains from the capstans lead out over the deck through hawse pipes set in the damaged deck. An anchor chain runs out along the sea bed. She has an excellent control tower.

This is an excellent dive not least because the salvage damage has made some parts of the cruiser more obvious than in the more extant ones. The stern is quite impressive.

The Koenig – Dreadnought Battleship - Koenig class

History:Ordered in August 1911 the Koenig was built at Wilhelmshaven. She was launched on 1st March 1913 and completed on 10th Aug 1914. The Koenig was in the 3rd Battleship Squadron. She fought at Jutland, and was hit by the British battleships. The Koenig fought in the conquest of the Baltic islands during 1917. She sank around 2.00pm on 21st June 1919.

Diving info: The Koenig is virtually upside down in 40 metres of water at 58.53.13 : 3.09.07. Her starboard side is only a few feet above the silty bottom whereas the port side is well embedded. Her keel is at 20 metres. Life has not been so good to the Koenig. She has been extensively salvaged, not least for the radiation free steel some of which has found its way to the moon in the 1969 expeditions. A lot of the hull has been blasted apart which at least gives the diver some appreciation of the inner bulk of these battleships. Amidships her starboard casemate guns are clearly visible. Underneath her deck the centre turret of her 12 inch guns can be seen half buried in the mud. Unfortunately, the guns cannot be seen.

The Koenig is now a pile of wreckage, but an excellent dive for wreck ferrets. She is big and quite intimidating.

The Kronprinz Wilhelm – Dreadnought Battleship - Koenig class

History: First ordered in April 1912 she was launched on 21st Feb 1914 at the Germania Yard in Kiel. Originally named Kronprinz, she was rechristened in honour of the German Crown Prince in January 1918.

The Kronprinz only saw two actions.

She took part in the Battle of Jutland. She was in the 3rd battleship squadron and fired many shots on the British battleships.

In November 1916 she took part in a rescue operation off Denmark. The aim was to tow the aground U boat U-20 which had torpedoed the Lusitania. The exercise failed, but on the way home the Kronprinz was hit and damaged by a British torpedo. She limped home and remained in port. In 1917 she took part in fleet manoeuvres off Heligoland Bight. Both the Kronprinz and the Grosser Kurfurst were involved in a collision which called for extensive repairs.

Towards the end of the war she got mixed up in the German Fleet's mutiny and got sent to Kiel when the Fleet dispersed. It is thought that experience of the British fleet's fire fight at Jutland directed at the feisty Koenig ships made the crew realise their possible mortality and insecurity even in boats as powerful as these. During November 1918 the Armistice was signed and the ship was subsequently sent to Scapa Flow. She sank just after 1.00pm on 21st June 1919.

Diving info: The Kronprinz Wilhelm is at 58.53.39 : 03.09.46. The sea bed is about 38 metres down in cool, green Scapa water. She lies on her starboard main deck with most of her superstructure embedded in the silt bottom. She is virtually upside down and the only access to her decks is from the port side at a depth of 30m plus. The highest point of her upturned keel is about 12 metres from the surface.

The first impression when you dive her is size and confusion. This wreck is enormous and the profusion of steel, wreckage and general debris is overpowering. Her hull, however, is relatively smooth and uncluttered. Rather like a steel platform that has been well colonised by encrusties and brittle stars. There are four bilge keels that stand out quite nicely and give the diver some navigation marks. In places, the hull has been shattered by salvage work. The bow and stern both have salvage holes as does a large area some two thirds away towards the stern.

To get the most from this wreck you must get to the sea bed and work on alongside or in. This means that you have to descend off the port side of the hull. This is a thrilling experience as you drop off into the gloom and pass by the tangled wreckage on the way down. At about 30m you arrive at the gunwales and you can then peer in as the deck runs at an angle to the seabed. It's dark, exciting and tantalising. So many shapes, but what are they? Much of the superstructure is buried, but towards the stern the turrets of the most aft guns can be found. To do this means entering a cave, with the deck the roof and the seabed the floor. If you are the first dive team there, then the guns can be clearly seen - a superb sight. They are upside down, the most aft barrels sticking in the deck. To see them closer means entering the cave and that's when you need to be careful. The silt stirs up quickly and without an attached reel it's easy to lose your bearings.

Along the gunwales are the secondary gun turrets - 7 per side. Although many are badly broken some can be easily distinguished amongst the general wreckage. The two masts of the vessel can still be seen as they stretch out away from the wreck. The seabed all around is littered with wreckage as is the area towards the bows.

At the stern section it is easy to locate the twin rudders with the propeller shafts above. Although not quite as impressive as the Markgraf's they provide a convenient reference point with which to navigate the wreck. Along the starboard side, part of the hull has been removed to expose the inner parts. Divers can appreciate how part of the boat was built by fining along this section and peering inside. It is straightforward to traverse the length of the boat by travelling up this side.

The Kronprinz is not the deepest of the Scapa wrecks. With the keel at 12m she is more like a reef. It is easy to do a pleasant and leisurely decompression as you ascend up the sides of the boat. But good dive planning is essential to get the most from this wreck. The biggest problems are orientation, where to go and what to see. It's also easy to get carried away and extend your diving time. The Kronprinz is a big wreck and it takes many dives to get to know her.

The Markgraf – Dreadnought Battleship - Koenig class

History: Ordered in August 1911 the Markgraf was built in the Weser Yard in Bremen. She was launched on 4th June 1913 and completed on 1st Oct 1914. The Markgraf was part of the 3rd Battleship Squadron. She saw action at Jutland, being hit many times in her vanguard position by the British Queen Elizabeth battleships. Her captain was shot by British marines during the great scuttle and his grave can be seen in the Lyness naval cemetery. She sank around 4.30pm on 21st June 1919.

Diving info: The Markgraf lies on her port side at 58.53.31 : 3.09.55. The seabed is around 45 metres, with a least depth of around 24 metres. This is the deepest German battleship. Like all the battleships she is virtually upside down so to get underneath her means getting to the gunwales at around 38 metres. Depending on the shot position, the diver lands on the upturned hull and looks over the side into 20 metres of gloom and darkness. It is important to ensure that you are on the right side! Off you go, skydiving down the side of the hull. If the shot is amidships then you should see the 6 inch guns pointing out as you approach the gunwales at 38 metres. This gives a useful reference point as the direction that the guns are pointing will show you where you are on the wreck. Amidships, the gun barrels point out 90 degrees to the hull, whereas towards the bows the guns point towards the bows. So you can hang in the water above the gun barrels and navigate yourself accordingly. Below you it is dark as the decks run sharply under the hull.

As you descend towards the unseen sea bed at around 45 metres the underneath of the wreck reveals itself as a dark, imposing cave. Your torch beam just seems to go nowhere. To venture into this cave takes previous dive planning and some courage. But once inside it's not so bad. You can see the green of the outside as the bulk of the 25000 ton ship lies above you. It is possible to swim underneath most of the wreck. Just follow the coal brick road. In the middle you will come across part of the amidships crane. One diver goes above and the other underneath. Somewhere in the darkness of the cave lies one of the 12 inch gun turrets, but it takes adventurous diving to find it.

There are 2 enormous rudders on the stern that are worth visiting. The hull is largely intact and well fitted with thick slabs of armour plating, some of which have peeled away. Some blasting damage can be seen near the bows. The bows themselves tip over sharply into the darkness.

The Markgraf is an exciting and challenging dive. Its depth and position are such that good dive planning is essential. The sea bed is dark and silty and so on a dull day this wreck can be gloomy and quite intimidating. It is a cleaner wreck than the other battleships with less obvious damage done by salvage work.

Diving Notes from Grif: Ok as this is a return trip I might as well add in some of my own personal views on the majestic wrecks above. First off the Germans sure knew how to build large and impressive battleships. In 2007 I found the wreck of the Brummer to be absolutely stunning and I really enjoyed penetrating large sections of this wreck. The Markgraf must get special mention as in our 2007 trip we ended up with two divers being taken away by ambulance and one diver getting emergency decompression chamber treatment in the middle of the night after our dive on this massive and foreboding wreck. I am particularly looking forward to returning to the Markgraf and any of the block ships. The block ships are not German battle ships but rather ships sunk in strategic positions around the access points to Scapa Flow. They were sunk with the intention of “blocking” U-boat access to the inner waters of the Flow. In particular the Tabarka was a absolutely stunning wreck dive in 2007 really looking forward to our return.

Hopefully if there is a half decent internet connection on the Island I will be updating this site with daily trip reports during the week of what will prove to be both stunning and challenging wreck diving from the 20th to 27th September in Scapa Flow, Scotland.

Some great photos of the German High Seas Fleet in their glory days in the following YouTube video…

Below is a very interesting video of the British salvaging some of the scuttled German High Seas WWI fleet… obviously they could not get them all out of the water… the remaining battleships are the target of our dive trip… as named and listed above. However the footage here does give you the sense of the sheer size & scale of the ships awaiting us on the sea bed of Scapa Flow. I think we can safely say that they don't make them like they used to! :)

Donegal – August 2009 - Diving Trip Report

2009-09-05T16:10:00.001+01:00

Technorati Tags: First4Scuba,Michael Griffin,Scuba Diving,Wreck Diving,Technical Diving,Carrigart,Mevagh dive centre,RMS Laurentic,Grif

Carrigart; 22nd to 23rd August 2009.

Ok…. so I said in my previous post with the YouTube link of our dives in Donegal that I would get to this trip report up within a day or two… unfortunately a bad head cold and a chest infection put paid to that optimism. So… eventually I got the time to get down to business… here follows the delayed recall of the First4Scuba club dive trip to Carrigart, Co. Donegal and the RMS Laurentic as well as some other very nice scenic dives.

Friday evening the 21st of August 2009 I left work and headed straight for the shores of Donegal having packed the car with my twinsets and deco bottles etc. that morning. GPS gave me a 5 hour drive time and after 4 hours I rolled into the Mevagh Dive centre B&B car park at 11pm that evening. I put my “beat the sat nav” miracle down to an error on the navigational device rather than breaking any rules of the road… ahem! I immediately bump into fellow First4Scuba diver P.J, we catch up for a few minutes, then hit the hay… it was a long drive!

Alarm clock set for 8am.

Beep Beep Beep… 8am… Ch*i$t! Saturday morning the 22nd had begun!

We roll up and out after a healthy serving of scrambled eggs and toast and meet up with the rest of our dive team. This weekend saw a small line up of divers, but while we did not have the usual quantity there was certainly good quality… Myself, P.J. (sea monkey) Doran, Damien (flash) Joyce and Chris (shooter) Jones all met up at 9am at the dive centre and immediately begin to ask the question “are we diving the Laurentic?”

A simple question but it took almost 30 minutes before we received a clear and unambiguous answer to it… the skipper turned up in his Lamborghini tractor (yes I was shocked too… Lamborghini tractor!) to hitch up the “Mevagh 1” dive boat and bring it down to the quay. He jovially announced as he hopped out of the tractor cabin “aye boys were on the Laurentic alright!” Happy Days!

We proceed down to the quay side just outside of the village of Carrigart and begin to get our gear together and down to the waters edge. Unfortunately as I was in a twinset my set-up did take a little longer to assemble – I could not put it together earlier as I needed to know which twinset I was going to use… my Trimix 21/35 or my Eanx 32%. Clearly if we were going for the Laurentic with max depth 40m I would only be using the Trimix. So running a little behind the rest of the team I finally get myself on board the “Mevagh 1” and we head out to sea. It was a fairly bumpy ride as there was a good bit of swell. I personally love this (although it can be hard on the spine and spleen!)… there were however a few very green faces on the way out to the resting place of the White Star liner the RMS Laurentic. On board the dive boat there was a second group of divers joining us on this dive and amongst them I met a fellow tech diver “Decky” who was also using a twinset with Trimix and deco cylinders for the dive. We discussed the possibility of meeting on the shot line on the wreck and extending our dive, the main reason for this was that we were both diving with single tank divers and rather than finish the dive on the single limit we could join up and gain the maximum advantage of our twinsets and deco gases and run a 30 to 35 minute dive. We decided to see how things unfolded and if we did happen to meet up on the dive we could review it… I think that although the ‘desire’ was there to have an extended dive, we were both still a little unsure of leaving our single tank divers even if it was on the bottom of the shot line!

After 45 minutes of diving discussions and many spine compressing wave formations we pull up alongside the buoy of the Laurentic. Our dive team went in first and we all began to descend the shot line. P.J. was my buddy with the two cameramen Damien and Chris buddied together. P.J. went down the shot like a bat out of hell, I was a little slower as my left ear was being a little difficult with my equalisation requests… eventually it got back in line and we ended up as a group hovering over the wreck right above one of its 4inch gun. The scale of this wreck is simply huge. It is broken up quite a bit, but still in relatively large ‘chunks’… not small tiny bits and bobs like the HMS Drake or the Lennox and other such ‘wreckage’ sites around the coast. We stayed within visual contact and roamed a medium distance from the shot line… there was loads to see and the size of the artefacts and features were fantastic. I enjoyed this dive immensely (the Trimix kept my head nice and clear) and we maxed out at around 38 meters. P.J. found a fair supply of fishing tackle within the groves and portholes of the wreckage. While Chris and Damien took some great shots, Damien Joyce kindly sent me a few he had taken of me on the Laurentic and I have attached them within this report… thanks Damien! On the downside there was a strong “swell” effect running across the wreckage, I remember clearly seeing a knotted cluster of rope on the gunwale “blowing” vigorously in it. I think this caused the cameramen a little frustration as it stirred a lot of particulates and also frustrated them in getting good stable “set up” positions for their shots.

As I was the only diver on trimix and the rest of the dive team diving on air with no deco gas; our runtime was limited to roughly 12 minutes. The 12 minutes passed very quickly and it was not long before Chris and Damien began to ascend the shot line with P.J. and I in close pursuit. I was carrying a 7ltr 100% O2 deco bottle which I used at the 6m stop just to help the off gassing… I could have stayed down longer, but as I never solo dive I was happy to come up the shot line with my dive buddy. At the 15meter stop Decky went past us with his dive team. We both knew that our plan to meet on the shot line was a non runner and he proceeded with his descent while I continued with our ascent. Deco / safety stops went flawlessly and we all gathered back on board the dive boat. With everyone safely back on board we turned around and set course for the quay side to allow the single tank divers switch over their cylinders for a second dive. The trip back in was even ‘rougher’ than the trip out and unfortunately one poor diver in the other team was “heaving the chuck wagon” for most of the trip back off of the stern starboard side of the Mevagh 1… not pleasant for the poor chap.

After a 2 hour surface interval we agreed (between both dive teams) to try the drift dive the skipper had proposed as a second dive. When I say both dive teams it was just Decky who joined us… the rest of his group had to head off. So it was down to us 5 brave souls to face the horror of a laid back easy drift dive in a max depth of 20 meters. The skipper dropped us in and myself and P.J. buddied up once more. The current was awesome and the drift dive was thrilling. I sent up my Halcyon CC 1m smb as soon as we got down and we quite literally “flew” along the seabed. I probably only kicked around 10 times in a full 50 minute dive. Chris, Damien and Decky were slightly in front of us and we were all ripping along nicely when suddenly my smb put on the breaks… I gave P.J. the signal to carry on with the other 3 lads as I was going to go up my line to see what was going on… he “ok/ed” and went on. I was throwing some choice expletives into my regulator at this stage as it felt as if my line was snagged in a lobster pot buoy or something that was not yielding… it quite simply “stopped”. I began to ascend slowly and look back up my line… I began to notice a large dark shadow above me intersecting my line… as I got closer I was surprised to see a huge lump of kelp. It almost looked like the size of a household Christmas tree and it was well wrapped up in my line. I was still trying to figure out why is had ‘halted’ my progress rather than acted as a ‘sail’ and accelerated it, but then as I got closer I noticed that the current was much milder near the surface… I must have been in a lower faster current while this kelp tree was in a much slower moving zone in the water column… thus giving the ‘breaking’ effect. Despite my scientific fascination I began to untangle the kelp from my line. I was not in any hurry to cut it. With the line tensioned up and my spool tied down with a double ender I began to swim around the tree to ‘unwind’ the line. Luckily in a matter of a minute I was clear of it and I swam off to the side and began to get back to the drift dive. Unfortunately now I was alone, but my smb was up and the max depth was around 12 meters so I settled back into the dive and began to let the current whip me along once more. I am not a solo diver and would not advocate it… but in this circumstance I felt that I could continue as I had a twinset on my back with 120 bar of 21/35 and I was diving from an 11L stage bottle with 32% Eanx. I felt the dive was safe and I had plenty of redundancy if required so I opted to continue. I did not start the dive solo… circumstances had changed… but giving the situation I felt it was within reasonable limits to proceed with the dive solo. After 45 minutes I began to surface and upon breaking the surface I was amazed to see I had drifted quite a surprising distance… the skipper said (if I recall correctly) “hey boy you did get far didn't you!” when I got back on the boat. The rest of the boys were aboard and smiling broadly… we all agreed that that was a cool dive!

Unfortunately this brought day one’s diving to a close and after getting back to shore, returning to the dive centre we all agreed to meet up later at around 8pm that evening. Myself and P.J. washed down our gear, got a serious attack of the munchies and even went for a short snooze after welcome hot showers! 8 pm and we rolled up to the “singing pub” which is a great little establishment somewhere on the outskirts of Carrigart on the road to somewhere else… it is owned by Chris’s parents in law. P.J. and I partake of their finest fish dishes and after a lovely meal we meet up with Chris and Damien for some evening diving chat at the bar. 11:30pm it was lights out back at the Mevagh B&B and the sweet boon of sleep descended on us with high hopes for a return trip in the morning to the Laurentic.

Alarm clock set for 8am.

Beep Beep Beep… 8am… Jesus Ch*i$t on a stick! Sunday morning the 23nd had begun!

Despite the comfort of a warm plate of scrambled eggs and toast the wind did not seem like it was going to “settle” down. This time we kind of knew before waiting for the Lamborghini tractor that we were not going to be returning to the Laurentic today. I setup my 32% twinset and this time around I am one of the first divers onboard the dive boat and ready to go without delay.

The skipper was in good form as we set off for some nice laid back scenic dives. Today it was just our dive team plus one other diver… John who was from the UK and just visiting the North for a holiday. Nice guy and a good recreational diver who buddied up with myself and P.J.

Both the morning and afternoon dives were good… good life and great fun. I have to say I normally don't get hugely excited about fish and wall dives in Ireland, but today the diving was great. It was around 3:30pm when we all went our separate ways and headed for home.

I think its fair to say that we all enjoyed the weekend in Carrigart with the Mevagh Dive centre and I personally look forward to our return visit next year… there sure is a lot of the Laurentic left to be seen :)

Thanks to my dive buddy P.J. and Chris and Damien for providing fun and entertainment during our Donegal adventure.

In my previous post I have already uploaded a YouTube video of the dives in Donegal… but here it is again:

Next dive trip commences on 18th September to Scotland and the scuttled German WWI High Seas Fleet resting on the seabed in Scapa Flow. For further information.

Donegal – Dive Trip – YouTube Video

2009-08-24T16:06:00.001+01:00

Technorati Tags: RMS Laurentic,First4Scuba,Michael Griffin,Grif,Scuba Diving,Donegal,Mevagh dive centre,Carrigart,Wreck Diving

Just back from a great diving weekend in Donegal and happy to report that despite some very poor weather we did manage to descend on the wreck of the RMS Laurentic. I have put a quick YouTube video together to show the highlights of the weekend. I will of course write up a trip report shortly (next day or two!).

Photos below are courtesy of fellow First4Scuba diver Damien Joyce… thanks Damien for some excellent shots in ‘difficult’ conditions (very high surge on the wreck) pulling and pushing across the site.

Looking forward to the Laurentic a White Star Liner

2009-08-18T18:18:00.001+01:00

Technorati Tags: White Star Liner,Scuba Diving,Wreck Diving,Technical Diving,Gold recovery,Treasure,Shipwreck,Mevagh dive centre,RMS Laurentic,First4Scuba,Michael Griffin,Donegal,Carrigart,Grif

If the weather holds for this weekend myself and some of our dive team from First4Scuba are heading to Carrigart in Donegal to descend onto the wreck of the RMS Laurentic courtesy of the Mevagh dive centre.

The RMS Laurentic rests just at the 40 meter depth mark and so I am busy mixing my twinsets with Trimix 21/35 with 50% and 100% O2 deco bottles. Needless to say we are all really looking forward to this trip :)

The RMS Laurentic was a 550 feet long passenger liner, was owned by the White Star Company, and was a built by Harland and Wolff. In 1917 she left Buncrana bound for Halifax Nova Scotia she struck a mine at the mouth of Lough Swilly and sank. Part of her cargo was 43 tonnes of Gold bars and a huge quantity of silver coins. The Gold bars have all been recovered apart from 20 apparently still missing. The silver coins have never been found. The recovery of the gold bars has secured the RMS Laurentic a place in the history books… as the largest haul of gold ever recovered from a shipwreck. Estimated at over £250 million (sterling).

Laurentic is also the ship the infamous Dr. Crippen fled on to escape murder charges of his wife in England. A chase ensued by Scotland Yard and Dr. Crippen was captured while disembarking from the Laurentic.

Something for the weekend :)

The video below shows the current state of the RMS Laurentic… next week I hope to upload video/photos from our own dives. Enjoy.

Dry Suit - DUI TLS 350 – tear repair

2009-08-09T15:25:00.001+01:00

Technorati Tags: Scuba Diving,DUI,Dry Suit,TLS 350,Repair,Tear Aid,Type A,Trilaminate,Tear,Field Repair,Michael Griffin,Grif

At the end of March 2009 I had a very unfortunate incident at the end of a dive at Hook lighthouse where I ended up with 3 holes in my TLS 350 DUI Dry suit. One large hole and two smaller ones were scattered in an area roughly 4 inches long by 3 inches wide on the arm panel of my suit . Needless to say it was a pain in the rear especially as I was due to head of to Florida for my Cave 1 course in early May.

I had two real options:

Send it back to the dealer and hope they would get to do an emergency (fast) repair job in time for me to have the suit back in time.
or repair it myself.

As I was very nervous about sending my suit away due to the possible lead time to get it back I decided to investigate my “self repair” options.

This is when I found out about a product called “Tear Aid”. This product is a clear patch designed to repair tears, cuts etc in airtight, waterproof materials. It is apparently a durable, flexible, airtight, watertight, puncture-resistant, industrial-strength patch that protects against abrasion, moisture, saltwater and UV sunlight. It is recommended for the repair of rubber, neoprene, most plastics, nylon, stainless steel, aluminium, polyethylene, polypropylene and polyurethane. If properly applied the manufacturer says that the patch is 'cured' highly flexible and the repair is ready for use after 1 hour! Hard to beat such a claim... I decided that I would use it to try to repair my suit. I ordered the Tear Aid Type “A” for use on my TLS 350.

The process was very very simple:

I read the instructions – very simple!
I use an Alcohol wipe to prep both sides of the suit (internal and external area)... I do this because I decided to apply a patch on both sides - not because the instructions said to - but more to the fact that I am kind of built that way.
Then using a scissors to the long Tear Aid type A strip and cut it down to an appropriate size and 'round the corners'
I inserted a DVD cover inside the arm of the suit to flatten out the area I intend to apply the patch to.
Next peel off the paper backing from one edge of the prepared patch... With an exposed edge the patch is anchored to the suit
Then pull the rest of the backing off slowly, making sure to rub out any trapped air during the process.
Apply a lot of pressure and “rub” the patch onto the suit - force is encouraged in this process - rub out air pockets!

So twenty minutes later I had both patches in place.

Since March I have dived extensively including some very difficult entries in Ginnie Springs where our dry suit “squeeze” is quite aggressive while entering Devils Ear etc… not once has this repair given way. I have to say that I found this a very quick, easy to deploy and rock solid repair option for a TLS 350 dry suit. In fact the repair would have been dive able after one hour of curing time – so anytime I am heading away diving now I always bring a box of Tear Aid type A just in case as it is an ideal field repair option.

It really was a very fast and 100% effective repair for my suit. When I first applied the patches I was thinking that when the winter season comes I would send the suit off to get the damaged panel replaced, but to be honest I have such confidence now in the patch I don’t think I will.

Pictures of the process back in March 2009.

Final Patch only looks shiny due to camera flash… its not like that in normal light… :)

Note: I have no commercial connection with Tear Aid, and I have not been solicited to express this opinion… I genuinely did find this a fantastic product and I ordered it at the time from DIR Direct in the UK.

From Shed to Gas Blending Station

2009-08-09T13:34:00.001+01:00

Technorati Tags: Scuba Diving,First4Scuba,Gas Blending,Mixed Gas Diving,Nitrox,Trimix,Gas Booster,Compressor,Michael Griffin,Grif,Bauer Junior II,Maximator Gas Booster

Important note: One should never ever attempt to blend diving gases without proper education, qualifications and safety protocols in place. One should also never ever dive any gas or gas mix without proper Scuba Diving education and training from a recognised agency.

Unfortunately due to illness I am stuck ‘onshore’ today while my club buddies head for what is likely to be a great dive at Hook Head, blast my sick stomach!

I thought I would take this opportunity to write up a brief report on a recent conversion of a common garden shed into a gas blending station. I had recently purchased a second hand Maximator Gas Booster pump and decided to install it along with my compressor and blending gases in the humble shed rather than in the house… for obvious safety reasons.

The shed began life just like any other common garden shed – it had become an oubliette for items that only saw use once in a blue moon... my gardening skills are at the same level as my ballet… non existent.

I proceeded to empty the shed and clean it out of all the “stuff” stuffed into it. Thankfully this went without too much difficulty and we found a suitable storage space for a few critical items at the back of the sovereign territory of the ‘Scuba Diving room’. This is a room in the house where I had previously stored the compressor along with all my other gear and got more than a little fed up having to go up three flights of stairs with my cylinders to get topped off… really what was I thinking!?!

With a nice clean empty shed its time to install electrics and lights – big thanks go out to Davey for doing the electrical work for me… great installation :)

Then its over to my good self to begin the conversion in earnest… my top priority was obviously to install a laptop with iTunes, so I could whistle while I worked. The other obvious reason to put in the laptop was to load my gas management software to instantly run my gas blending instructions when needed. Fire extinguisher and fire blanket also go in.

Next I installed the Gas Booster (centre left of picture below). This was tricky as the charge and fill whips had fixed orientations coming from the booster head. I decided to orientate it by fixing it to the side of the shed rather than resting on the floor… as this allows the whips run in fairly clean straight lines to the Gas storage cylinder, the drive gas and the receiving scuba cylinder without creating any major clutter in the shed while operating.

Then its time to run a test fill of a single tank… just to see if I am happy with the basic layout I had been planning.

After the test run I moved a few things around a little. The O2 and He are stored outside but within easy reach of the Gas Booster whip :)

So the system is up and running… at the moment I am not ‘banking’ any gas as I am only blending for myself. The method I am using is partial pressure blending with a Gas Booster to ensure maximum efficiency with gas usage. The Booster is rated for up to 300 bar and is 100% O2 compatible. I normally fill my steel twinset 12L cylinders to 240 bar and my Aluminium stage bottles to 200 bar.

To reach a desired mix I simply analyse the content of the cylinder I wish to fill (Analox Trimix analyser)… input the mix and it’s pressure (bar) into my gas blending software while also inputting my desired mix and intended pressure (bar). For Helium I usually use a 10% fudge factor to allow for the density offset. Then its simply a matter of following the instructions from the software. I also ensure to always use tape on the cylinder I am blending in and note the addition of any gas into the cylinder by hand. I also make sure the cardinal rules are always followed “Never dive a gas mix that you have not analysed yourself – and always mark your cylinder with the appropriate MOD”.

I think it was George Irvine from WKPP who said “the only way you are going to kill a smart person is by breathing the wrong gas”… so it is vital that at all stages you make a record on the tape placed on the cylinder during the blending process… logging the gas you have put into the cylinder at each stage. Never allow yourself to get distracted from this basic safety protocol. Despite using a computer to blend, you must log it on the cylinder itself and the cylinder must also always be analysed before diving it. Never guess what's in a cylinder… always analyse and label it.

I usually use the gas booster to facilitate the blending process by boosting of a specific level of He and O2 in pressure (bar) into the cylinder and then top the mix off with air from my compressor. This means I never have to “dump” gas out of my cylinders before blending and so I am saving all my gas… always important when dealing with expensive Helium. The booster also means that I can drain down the storage tanks to 5 bar… rather than handing back He cylinders with 60 to 80 bar back to BOC… that was heartbreakingly expensive.

The Gas Booster is run utilising compressed air… I use my old Fabre 15L single cylinders with an Aqualung Legend first stage to supply the drive gas to the booster.

I use a two stage filtration process on my compressor (Bauer Junior II) with a personal filter installed on the fill whip (supplied from Undersea UK). As I am partial pressure blending I do everything possible to ensure to avoid Hydrocarbon build-up inside my cylinders and I annually have all my cylinders tested and O2 cleaned. I also use a water bin when filling any cylinder to facilitate efficient cooling while blending… this helps the efficiency of the fill.

Finally the shed is suitable for this task as it has two doors… it therefore always allows a ‘safe’ exit route in case of emergency. Ideally I would have liked this to be a “concrete” structure… but we can’t always get what we want :) For the moment this system is running very successfully. I also installed a motion sensor alarm and have it linked to the house alarm system – call me paranoid :)

See an earlier related post on this blog regarding “a brief overview of Partial Pressure blending”

Update from Sergio – My Cave 1 dive buddy.

2009-08-04T12:09:00.001+01:00

Technorati Tags: GUE,Cave Diving,Ginnie Springs,Florida,High Springs,Devils Ear

Sergio and Peter my GUE Cave 1 dive buddies went cave diving back at Ginnie springs this past weekend… To confess my jealousy is fairly easy… I am very jealous!

Sergio kindly sent me on a link to a video he took on exiting the cave. With the flow so high in Ginnie it is a very tough job to stay nice and still and video at the same time as the flow is shooting you out and obviously you have got to manoeuvre through the restrictions etc!

So I say “well done Sergio!” really good job!

We are planning a cave trip to Florida together again in early January 2010 so I have to wait a little longer to get my cave diving fix (need it so bad!).

Video taken by Sergio on exit from Ginnie Springs – heading back to Devils Ear entrance – very cool at the end where you can see the spring water mix with the river tannin water!

Antrim – July 2009 - “MOD” Epilogue

2009-08-02T14:55:00.001+01:00

Technorati Tags: First 4 Scuba,Diving,Scuba Diving,Antrim,Ballycastle,Wreck Diving,Aquaholics,Rathlin Island,Lochgarry,HMS Drake,PPO2,Oxygen Toxicity,Michael Griffin,Grif

I though this message chain from a fellow diver on one of my message boards might be interesting to our dive team… as it raises an interesting point that some people might find surprising….

The messages are in first to last order.

================================================================

Hi Mike

Did I seen you on the Loughgarry today?

Chris

=================================================================

Hi Chris,

Yep I was on the wreck on Saturday morning... vis was poor though... I obviously missed you!!

Where were you hiding out?

Mike.

================================================================

There was a rib with 2 guys on it in DUI suits. One was me.

I didn't dive the Loughgarry, I have been diving on the NW wall earlier in the morning. Beautiful dive, well worth it if you are up again.

The Loughgarry was eventful though, one of our divers surfaced, shouted "I've missed stops and I need more air" then goes under. We had to lower a CCR bailout bottle full of 80% and then wet notes with "MOD 9m" in big letters. I only let out 6m of line just in case. He surfaced and asks "What does MOD 9 minutes mean?" OMG!!!

Well done with Cave 1. Do you not have any photos?

Chris

===============================================================

That got me thinking – does everyone know what MOD is?

Maximum Operating Depth of “x” meters.

Simply put this is the absolute maximum depth you should breath the gas contained in the cylinder. It has nothing to do with time!

The MOD is normally down to the interplay between the % of Oxygen present in the gas and its partial pressure at depth.

For a deco gas the “resting” Partial Pressure of Oxygen (PPO2) should never exceed 1.6, a “working” PPO2 of 1.4 should never be exceeded.

Breathing a decompression or any diving gas for that matter, deeper than it’s stated MOD “X” will expose the diver to significant risk of Oxygen Toxicity which unfortunately results in either a convulsion or a possible black out. In either case unless you are very lucky to have a highly attendant dive buddy it could result in a “Death by Drowning” certificate from your local coroner.

So how does one work out the MOD of a gas mix?

You need to know two things:

The % of Oxygen in the gas mix. Always make sure to use a good quality O2 analyser and ensure that you have analysed the gas yourself – no short cuts! Do not take anyone else's “word” for what's in a cylinder you are going to dive.
Your target PPO2 – accepted maximums are: Deco = 1.6 (resting) / Working = 1.4

You now divide the intended PPO2 by the decimal percentage of the analysed gas mix.

This number is in Atmospheres Absolute (ATA) which includes the one atmosphere at sea level. To convert this to a maximum depth you must take away the 1 atmosphere for sea level and multiply the remaining number by 10 in order to convert it to meters depth rather than pressure. (remember each 10 meters of depth = 1 atmosphere)

This is best demonstrated by a simple working up of an example, the variables in this example are as follows:

Desired maximum working PPO2 of 1.4
Analysed gas mix with confirmed 32% O2
What is this mixes MOD?

Answer = 32% Nitrox mix has a MOD of 33meters (I am rounding back the .7 for conservatism)

So if you see any cylinder with a MOD “x” sticker this means that it is not to be breathed below this depth.

Finally divers may notice that some cylinders are labelled with just a depth… for example my 50% O2 deco mix just has a “21” sticker on it on both sides. There is no “MOD” prefix.

This means the same thing… therefore any cylinder that just carries a depth number is to be treated exactly as an MOD and that number is the maximum operating depth for that cylinder – do not breath off of it at a deeper depth.

It is industry recognised that you should never exceed the following PPO2 levels:

Deco (resting) PPO2 of 1.6 maximum
Diving / working PPO2 1.4 maximum
Many people recommend using a PPO2 of 1.2 or 1.3 for Working dive gases as an extra safety precaution.

Exceeding these PPO2 guidelines leaves a diver in a high risk category for a possible Oxygen Toxicity convulsion.

** Never dive a breathing gas without appropriate training **

Antrim – July 2009 – Diving Trip Report

2009-08-02T14:40:00.001+01:00

Technorati Tags: First 4 Scuba,Scuba Diving,Antrim,Ballycastle,Wreck Diving,Aquaholics,Rathlin Island,Lochgarry,HMS Drake,Michael Griffin,Grif

Ballycastle, Antrim… 25th & 26th July.

If this was a Tom Waits song it would open with the line “a week late and a dollar short!”…

I had every intention of getting this trip report up as soon as I got back, but events dear boy, events!

This was my third annual trip to Ballycastle in the North of Ireland and I have always had a soft spot for it… and the wreck of the SS Lochgarry, not a huge or particularly difficult wreck dive but one I am fond of none the less.

My trip starts on Friday the 24th July and I head from Kilkenny to Antrim with a quick stop off to pick up Conor one of my dive buddies in Carlow and we road trip our way through a 4 hour drive over the boarder. We arrive into Ballycastle pick up the keys to the Aquaholics house from the local pub and settle in. By 11:00pm all the dive team were onsite: Colin, P.J, Marty, Conor and myself… a small but capable crew and of course our conversations turned to diving immediately.

An early night on Friday was more than a little offset by a very squeaky bunk bed with a ‘light sleeping’ dive buddy ‘on top’… he who shall remain ‘nameless!’ :)

Saturday morning after breakfast we head down to the quay and meet up with the lads from Aquaholics and begin to load up their superb dive boat. Our plan for the day was fairly straight forward – get out to the Lochgarry for the first dive and then head for the North Wall for our afternoon dive subject to currents and weather of course. There was a little concern that the weather was going to change in the afternoon.

However it was in cracking blue skies and warm sunshine that we left port and headed for the resting place of the SS Lochgarry.

Historical Note: The Lochgarry sailed into one of the biggest gales ever to hit the North Channel between Scotland and Northern Island. The wind literally blew her onto the rocks of Rathlin Island, just off the coast of Antrim. She struck at Torr Point, just a mile east of Rue Point on Rathlin. She was driven so hard that it was all her skipper could do to put her astern and get a little way off the rocks before it was clear that she was sinking rapidly. There was no time for anything but to get the 59 crew into the lifeboats and make for shore. The first two boats with 30 aboard made it. The third hit a rock and capsized, drowning all 29 occupants. Huge waves made short work of the Lochgarry and in minutes she was blown over deeper water and sank.

The above map represents what this wreck looks like today resting at approx. 30 meters. For further information visit: http://www.divernet.com/Wrecks/wreck_tours/159479/wrecktour85_the_lochgarry.html

Upon arrival at the marker buoy for the Lochgarry there were two ribs already circling the dive site and we noticed that the current was running very strong, as the buoy was well below the water line. On the first entry Colin and Conor went in and unfortunately the current swept them away before they could even reach the buoy. The skipper followed them and they came back on board before we tried a more negative entry approach. This time we all jumped in on the second run as quickly as possible and headed straight for the shot line. The current was really racing and once we were settled on the decent I noticed just how bad the visibility was compared to other years. Usually I would have seen 15 meter visibility on the Lochgarry, but today it was down to probably 5 meters. Blast!

Eventually we all arrived on the port side deck around amidships and moved further port to the collapsed stern. The wreck provided some welcome shelter from the current and we then circled back and come along the gunwale of the starboard side heading for the bow. I always enjoy diving this wreck and I remembered clearly passing the point last year where myself and Micko went searching for a “missing” diver who ended up narked out of his mind going back up the shot line with divers from another boat! :) Myself and Colin eased up over the decks and arrived at the Bow. Colin posed for a very relaxing photo lying horizontal at the top of the bow – but the visibility was so poor my camera vetoed the motion!

Good fun was had by all on the ascent – as the current was still howling and I think we might have set a new world record for how many divers can you fit onto 3 inches of shot line :) The situation was made even more ‘compact’ when two rebreather divers came screaming up the shot line, one with his main loop out… this was obviously an emergency – so we tried to let them pass without interruption.

We surfaced as a group after all safety stops had been cleared and everyone got back onboard without any drama. It was a shame that the visibility was so poor as it was hard for the divers new to the wreck to take in the full majesty of the Lochgarry… however there was always Sunday!

After a surface interval involving a lovely big bag of hot chips at the quayside of Ballycastle we head back out to sea, but not the the North Wall as conditions had deteriorated and the tide was wrong. So we headed out towards the giants causeway and we dived just under the famous rope bridge that featured in some of the Tourism Ireland TV adverts. Nice spot by the way!

The dive site was nothing special – but it was a nice laid back dive with good life… I did manage to get some reasonable photos on this dive… three nice jelly fish shots and one very weird photo of P.J. where his eyes are in real sharp focus and the rest of the picture got a little fuzzy… strange effect. We all got out of the dive happy but a little underwhelmed.

That evening we braved dinner at the Restaurant that might have given one of our dive buddies a hospital case of food poisoning last year… we knew the risks but braved it anyway. We had a good evening and a mighty portion of a superb cheesecake for dessert. All went well and no one has reported any bad side effects so far, so I reckon we got away with that piece of living dangerously :)

In bed by 11:30pm (we are obviously the wild ones in the club!).

Sunday morning we load our gear up and head back out to the Lochgarry. When we arrive at the marker buoy the current was clearly racing. After a little waiting the skipper gave us the all clear and as quickly as possible we entered the water. Colin and Conor headed down first, I was next but had been asked to go down last so I backed of the shot line to let Marty and P.J. go down ahead of me. Well this is where I was caught out… I am used to currents and have dealt with very high flow… so I thought I would be ‘ok’ holding my position slightly off of the shot line to allow a clear descent for the boys. However I did not take into account the time factor. Marty was (quite correctly) in no real rush descending and could not see me behind him floating in open water… so as the current was raging against me, I was starting to get worn down with the effort to hold my post. Eventually I had to make a decision… I was clearly no longer going to make it back to the shot line without serious exertion… my brain quickly worked out that the “juice was not worth the squeeze” and so I tried to signal P.J. using my torch on the back of Martins tank… but he did not notice it… I tried one more time to let them know that I was a goner… still no reaction…whoossshhh….. BYE….!!!!!!!

The current absolutely rocketed me down stream of the shot line and within seconds I was out of sight. I just stabilised my position, calmly deployed my smb from 6 meters and stayed their for 2 minutes while entertaining myself by throwing various expletives into my regulator mouth piece. When I surfaced our dive boat was a mere speck in the distance. I think the Loyal Watcher (very big live aboard dive boat from the UK) spotted me first and radioed it in to Aquaholics that one of their divers was heading for the south china sea! :) There was no drama however, I was very relaxed and philosophical about the whole misadventure… I think my exact quote to the skipper upon getting aboard was “next time the F*ck*rs can find me at the bottom of the shot line!” – but I said it jokingly and with lots of compassion for my fellow man! In truth I was undone by my own machismo – I would have been fine if the current was not so unforgiving or if the boys had been a bit more forthright in getting down the shot – but that's life and I was taught a lesson! Lesson learned!

When the rest of the team surfaced and were back on board we headed for the coffee shop on Rathlin Island. On our way to the Island Colin started to ‘punish’ his SPG – apparently it was stuck on 200 bar… obviously there was no way a 40 minute dive to approx 30 meters in twin 12L was going to leave any diver with 200 bar and Colin assumed it was “stuck”. I did mention that the centre post might be closed, but he felt that was a no go because one of the lads had checked it before he went in. That is until he turned it and the air in the full cylinder rushed into the empty one. Much humorous abuse was thrown in a few directions – but again this was a lesson learned for Colin. When you dive a twinset you have absolutely got to check yourself that your valves are open – I am so paranoid about it I will check them anytime I hit of off anything even when I am diving. Colin had a previous SPG that did ‘stick’ earlier this year so that is why he thought that this was the same failure.

We disembarked onto Rathlin Island and partook of their finest toasted sandwiches and coffee… had a great chat about diving in the south pacific and on the wreck of the President Coolidge in particular which is a wreck Colin has dived extensively (lucky boy!).

Back out to sea after lunch and we descended onto the “wreckage” of the HMS Drake… she was torpedoed by the German U-boat U-79 in 1917 and is now scattered over the seabed outside Rathlin Island. We pottered around the debris field which is very over grown with large kelp, but I enjoyed the dive and myself and P.J. surfaced 59 minutes later. That marked the last dive on our trip ‘North’. It was a great weekend with highly changeable weather, strong currents and poor visibility… but we all had fun and left happy.

Next year I hope the visibility is better! :)

With the visibility so poor on the wreck I am afraid I have to use a YouTube video taken by other divers to show off the SS Lochgarry… the particulates in the water during our dive was just too much for video.

My Pictures from Antrim 2009 trip….

Hook Head – July 2009 – Diving Trip Report

2009-07-18T00:16:00.001+01:00

Technorati Tags: Hook Head,Hook Lighthouse,PADI,First4Scuba,Diving,Scuba,Ireland,Michael Griffin,Grif,Wexford,Scuba Diving

July 18th 2009.

Well it looks like we have really got a good handle on diving at Hook head.

We checked all our usual sources... Hook webcam, magicseaweed and xcweather.

All indicators were coming together for good diving conditions - but the wind was howling in Kilkenny earlier today. I called Hook Lighthouse directly and Mathew my contact their looked out the window for me and said "it looks good"... So quick phone calls to Marty and Damien and we were a "GO" for our evening dive.

Arrived at the Hook around 7:30pm... Marty and Damien pulled in 5 minutes later and then at around 7:45 Andy pulled up - we kitted up and at 8:00 sharp we made our way into the unbelievably calm "swimming pool" water at the lighthouse entry point.

The tide was at low and moving up - but slowly.

We had a really cracking good dive. Superb vis and the life was simply thriving.... fish of all sorts in huge numbers everywhere.

Nice easy relaxed laid back dive... enjoyed by all. :)

Finland: The Comic Strip

2009-07-08T22:26:00.001+01:00

Technorati Tags: Scuba diving,First4scuba,Finland,Ice Diving,Michael Griffin,Grif,Technical Diving,Comic Strip,Comic

Note: comic strip reports are not to be taken seriously by anyone… and with that caveat: