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Monday, July 23, 2001 Some news: The engine was planned to come ashore tomorrow at 10 AM (hightide) behind the Mariner's Museum, but we just found out that the engineers underestimated the weight of the engine and they don't have the necessary equipment to support the engine on its delivery to the beach. It will probably be delayed a few days until they remedy the situation. Last night the Navy excavated the turret a few feet and uncovered the wheels of one of the gun carriages, confirming that at least one of the guns are, in fact, still in the turret. The Navy had an episode of "capture the flag" yesterday as well: the surface-supplied guys had been flying a pirate flag off their stage which the saturation divers grew fond of. While the surface supplied guys were'nt paying attention, the sat guys stole the flag and attached it to the chamber. The surface supplied guys noticed it and the next evolution had the surface supplied guys attackig the sat diver to regain the flag. Apparently it was a mess of umbilicals and divers rolling around on the bottom... Today's Report: The Cape Fear motored out today with a bottom team of 7 divers eager to work a bit more in the engine room spaces. It was a sloppy ride out and we eventually arrived on site under dark gray skies with scattered rain and lightning. After we got permission from the barge and Navy ops, we splashed our team who finned to the bottom. We had a negligible current, which again would wreak havoc on our decompression due to the large barge lumbering overhead. I approached the bottom and spied the wreck in the dim light off in the distance. We were off to the starboard side and had to kick over, joining the saturation bell which was on its last leg before extraction. The pulsing strobes on the sat bell guided us in as we all set into work with our assigned tasks. I guided our camera guy to several flagged artifacts, spotlighting them with my light and then placing a scale in front of the objects. We were working just aft of the engine spaces where we were finding a lot of supplies such as lanterns and bronze bearing blocks. After snapping off the necessary shots, we set to work and excavated more material off the site to the quarantine area. The lone saturation diver was working on the armor belt with the hydroblaster and it was insanely loud on the bottom. As we all set about working amidst the wreck, we soon reduced the visibility to nil; I had to stop digging and fanning to rise up 10 feet to check on the rest of the team and monitor my time and gas. Dropping back down into the cloud, I was totally enveloped in darkness and groped about the bottom pulling out debris, occasionally stopping when I felt something interesting. The team efficiently moved off more debris as we continued to clear the designated transect. At 23 minutes we secured the bottom gear and began to clear the area at 25 minutes. Swimming off the wreck, we soon came across the old NOAA subsurface buoy. The initial bag shot by another team member had a leak in it, so I attached the secondary/message bag and shot it to notify our surface support. Unfortunately, the mild surface current was opposite to the usual dominating current and we found ourselves back under the barge. The bags got snagged on one of the many moooring lines, so we abandoned the initial line to the support divers as we drifted off to eventually shoot another bag on the other side of the barge. We can't wait until the Navy pulls anchor on Wednesday! Decompression was uneventful, though we could tell that the seas were building and recovery turned out to be a hoot. Details: In response to several questions (particularly from the SUB-ARCH list), I am including some information on the actual diving operations. Bottom divers use NOAA Trimix I (18% Oxygen, 50% Helium, 32% Nitrogen) on the wreck, and decompression gasses of Nitrox 36% (from 110-30 feet) and 100% Oxygen (20-0 feet). For the standard 25 minute bottom time, our total run time generated by Bill Hamilton (including decompression) is 109 minutes. I personally would dive different gasses and a different schedule, but this is the current protocol. Things are changing and hopefully the use of more efficient gasses (particularly the use of 50/50) and dive profiles will be implemented. As an aside, the US Navy now employs 50/50 Heliox instead of other gasses for decompression, though they start it at 90 feet due to the advantages of com links, ffms, and surface supplied gasses. We leave the dock at 8 AM for our trip to the wreck site which approximates 2 hours. The Cape Fear (our dive platform) motors into position, currently in close proximity to a very large barge, for the divers to be deployed to the wreck. Divers are waiting on the back swim platform until the command of "Dive, Dive, Dive" is given, whereupon the team splashes and works to the bottom. The team has the advantage of a visual reference of the various lines and Navy umbilicals that go to the wreck if we have good visibility. Once on the wreck, we are working around the Navy divers who have some interesting toys that could ruin our day. Our favorite is their "hydroblaster" which shoots water in a 20,000 psi jet that can cut through steel (or flesh) if you are in close proximity to it. Yikes. The barge overhead consistently blocks a lot of ambient light, and always produces a large amount of noise; the wreck is a *very* loud dive. Bottom conditions are highly variable, though lately it has been quite pleasant. Bottom temperatures have run around 66-73 degrees, and the visibility (when we are not working) has been around 60-80 feet. However, on other legs we have found zero-low vis, chilly (51 degrees) bottom temps and high current. Once we do our dive, we drift off to conduct our inwater decompression, currently complicated by the barge and numerous mooring lines. The team shoots a lift bag, followed by a second message liftbag which confirms the teams safety to the boat. Support divers then splash to join the team for decompression, each with extra decompression gas. We also have stand-by divers and a zodiac deployed to monitor operations. After recovery, we secure our gear, have an initial debrief, and then head for the dock, while filling out the necessary diver info forms and mapping information. We then unload all of our gear which is carried to the USCG station for mixing in anticipation of the following days dive. We are usually done around 5 PM and then we sometimes meet for an evening pre-brief for the next day's dive. As a last note, the divers -- who come from extremely diverse backgrounds and as far away as Wisconsin and Florida -- on this Phase are all volunteer divers giving up their time and energy to this expedition. I hope this helps. I am headed home to Florida tomorrow, whereupon I mix for our upcoming trip to KW -- I think I need a vacation from my vacation! I plan to have lots of cool pics from our Doria trip, the Monitor Expedition, and KW on the AUE website next week. Cheers, Michael C. Barnette Association of Underwater Explorers Because it's there...somewhere...maybe. http://www.mikey.net/aue _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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