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Everything is the same, only the tanks are smaller - aluminum 80 back and aluminum 40 deco.For cold it is 104's and drysuit and dry gloves, but you have to go to the giant stainless bolt snaps. You will find that with the wreck of a military ship, especially the older ones, the companionways and doors are very narrow. I would just do the dive with Bill Deans and make it a cakewalk, or the same for the Doria with Janet and Hank. They know the local situation. Ask Janet. One thing I can tell you that is in the mid summer, there is a horrible thermocline, so you may want to dive dry and use steels with dry gloves on the Wilkesbarre, or do like I do - only go when it is warm, which is paradoxically in the winter. That ship is in two pieces and was blown apart, so has wire everywhere at the open ends ( so does the Kendrick). The real fun of that dive is seeing a cruiser of that magnitude sitting on the sand, with all of the large fish around. Kendrick is a WW1 so is not as impressive, but has good sharks. The guns on the stern of the Wilkes are a sight, and the bow guns are laying in the sand along with all kinds of things that fell out of the overturned turrets. If you scooter the dive, it is a blast, since the two pieces are each 300 feet long and a couple hundred apart. The risks of the dive are the wire, and the fact that you are in the Gulf Stream 12 miles from shore. However, in the Keys, if you really screw up, you can either swim to the next lighthouse, or swim to the shore. They have a race around Key West every year , and one of my swiming buddies did it with his two kids, one 11 and one 14, so I know the big time tech divers could swim to shore - no problem. When I do either dive , Kendrik or Wilkes ( never done Doria) , I ) do it with Deans, 2) use the appropriate mix and carry a 40 of 50/50 and a 30 of oxygen, and keep the bottom time under 30 for the shallow one and 20 for the other to prevent big deco in open ocean and to prevent needing a third deco gas. Deans runs the dives properly and has all of the contingencies prepared for. I swam the deep one last time, but the Wilkes I always scooter. I just go down there once a year to see what Billy is up to. For any of the open water dives with deco you need a float of some kind, we keep them inside a piece of canvas that is attached to the backplate ( see Brownies Third Lung for this), so that the deflated float slides between your back and the plate, and is always there. It is attched to your front scooter ring with a bungee and bolt snap - you can not even see it or feel it. Use your cave-diving safety spool to deploy it - much safer than any reel. For penetration, it is essentially a cave dive - treat it that way in all respects. I always mix to the lowest possible depth of the dive, which is the sand, and at that point I use max 1.4 ppo2 and 130 aed. This will not require a travel gas or a deep deco gas - the back gas is adequate for both, and travelling is a cluster anyway ( see other posts ont his topic). Anything else here is generic wreck diving stuff. Glenn E Goettler wrote: > > George and Bill: if you could provide answers to the following scenarios, > maybe that would help get the message across to many of us as to how you > dive wrecks in openwater. > > 1) USS Wilkes-Barre: sand at 250', deck around 200'. you're just there > to look around the wreck, no penetration. > > 2) also on the Wilkes-Barre, but on this dive you're planning on doing > some serious penetration at around 220'. > > these are separate trips, first dives, not sequential. > in both cases, what exposure suit, main cylinder(s) and bottom gas, deco > cylinders and deco gas would you use? scooters, yes/no? how long is > planned bottom and deco time? what other gear would you take (reels, lift > bags, etc. small stuff)? > > what would you change (if anything) to do the same dives on the Andrea > Doria? > > i think most people know what you guys use and do in the caves, but > hopefully this'll help clear up the openwater confusion. thanks much for > your assistance. > -glenn -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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