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Well, I had my good old Dacor down to 220 without any problems and heard rumors that it was good to 300. Well, this is not the case. I just got off a trip to the Billy Mitchell fleets with VBtech crew and found out exactly how deep a dacor/apollo can go. We did the U-140 first thing in the morning after cruising to the BM fleet all night to do the U-140, U-17 and the Ostfriedland. JT and I jumped in, he with his modified Dacor (JT foamed in the air cavity around the battery) and me with my unit. The only thing I'd done to mine was the trigger mod, which allows you to stop the scooter while at depth. Oh, I have to mention that while JT did a fine foam job he neglected to do the trigger mod. Everything went fine on the way down. Vis was very limited and by the time we hit 250 it was essentially a night dive. The anchor had snagged on a large piece of fishing net and as I approached 260 I noticed that the Dacor was feeling rather front heavy. Then the motor died. "Oh, crap, I flooded it" I thought, as the Dacor has a sensor which shuts off the motor when water enters the battery chamber. "No big deal, I'll just drop it on the sand and send it up with a lift bag after the dive". As I finned away I heard a large "THWOMP". Oh, shit, I thought, There goes the motor compartment bulkhead. In the meantime JT's Dacor switch had stuck in the "on" position and he motioned me over to help him with that. His game bag had snagged in the prop housing and I worked on that while he got the trigger up. We finally go that squared away checked out the sub, which is in amazing condition, the outer hull, conning tower and periscopes are all intact. We headed back a bit early to send up my scooter. I attached the lift bag and exhaled into it. Let me tell you a flooded Dacor is a real dead weight flooded and it would not budge. JT attempted to add some air and at that point the pissed-off Dacor decided to came back to life, like Dracula arising from the grave. All I can figure is that salt water got into the on/off relay in the engine compartment and caused it to turn on. Well here are, JT, me, a liftbag and the goddamn Dacor at 270' in a championship wrestling match. With JT's help we got the carabiner snapped onto the anchor chain, and we attempted to send it up the line. It got stuck on the shackle and it occurred to me that it was probably not a good idea to send a pissed off, flooded Dacor racing up the anchor line as there were people decoing up there. And we were over our plan. So I tapped JT and gave him the "fuck this, we are out here" sign and we left the Dacor and it's lift bag to do loops around the anchor line. On the surface I figured the Dacor would come up with the hook but due to the rough seas and the fact that we had to bring up that fishing net we had snagged on the sub caused the Dacor and the chain to part company. I figure the carabiner had bent out as there was no trace of it or the scooter/liftbag at all. Oh, well, easy come, easy go... So, things I learned on this trip: 1. Whoever said that the Dacor is good to 300 is FOS. 2. Foaming in the airspace in the Dacor can work but only if you do the trigger mod at the same time. 3. Don't take a scooter on a 270' muck dive to begin with. 4. Slobitus is really disgusting to look at. Jim ------------------------------------------------------------------- Learn About Trimix at http://www.cisatlantic.com/trimix/ -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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