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No one likes to talk about their screw ups, but here goes in the hopes that I can get some good advice on how to avoid the problem in the future: Yesterday a friend and I decided to dive the wreck of the USS Moody about 8 miles off San Pedro light at Los Angeles Harbor; we located the stern section of the wreck and had a great dive to 141fsw for about 20 minutes. I did the deco on 80% O2, but as per the schedule called for on my Monitor II; my buddy did his deco per his Phoenix on air. We both had been diving airusing 120 cu. ft. tanks. Of course he was out of the water before I. After a surface interval of 2hrs and 15 min we went on our second and last dive of the day to 123fsw on a newly discovered wreck in the same general area. I was on Nitrox I (32% O2) for the dive and my buddy was again on air. Unlike the first dive the anchor line was close to the wreck but not within eyesite from the wreck although the wreck could be spotted from the anchor line. We didn't take a compass reading before leaving the anchor line, but it was only a few kick strokes away from the wreck. Of course we couldn't find the anchor line when it was time to return. To make matters worse my buddy was lower on air than we'd like given the deco penalty that was yet to be paid. We decided after one attempt to find the anchor line to make the ascent and do the deco "in the clear". This was troubling as there is often a current running on the surface to 30' in this area. Likewise the area is in the traffic lanes for LA Harbor and boats pass near by frequently. By the time by computer said I had 20 minutes left of deco time at 10fsw and his Phoenix was down to a 3fsw ceiling, we decided that we would have to asend in the hopes that we could swim back to the anchor line within 4 minutes and complete the deco or at least not drift too far away from the boat. In short we decided that we had to risk a chamber ride rather than being run over by the Catalina Express or some tanker or ending up too far from the boat. The choice worked out OK and we spent some time on surface O2 as a precaution. However, I'm left with some thoughts and questions: 1. What can one do besides using a reel to make sure that he gets back to the anchor line? Any other methods used frequently. (Of course a compass reading would have also been helpful but it seemed so close) 2. What choice would you have made? Would you keep to the deco schedule and risk the shipping traffic and current? ( No one else was on the boat to see a "diver below" lift bag) 3. And yes, we should have stuck closer to the rule of thirds so that we could have spent more time looking for the line. The reality is that we didn't really think about how much deco time we'd be spending on this dive taking into consideration the first dive and hence had to change our plan as we noticed the computers doing their job for us. This wasn't smart either. 4. Lastly, when I figured my profile out with the exact bottom times and giving credit for the orginal O2 deco as well as the use of Nitrox, my profile wasn't all the bad as the Monitor II would suggest because it's not taking into consideration either of these factors and is a fairly conservative computer on square profile dives. The Phoenix seems very liberal however and my all odds my buddy should have been "bent". Harold Gartner 6900 Via Alba Camarillo, California 93012 home: (805) 482-9743 office: (213) 487-6240 CompuServe ID# 71470,1423 Internet: halg@ce*.ne*
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