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Despite 6' seas, lighting and nearly constant rain we made it out to the Ethel C yesterday. I really have to give kudos to the foredeck squad of Becky, Robin, Ike and anybody else who got to have the fun of trying to hook a 190' wreck in the middle of the night in those conditions. I think it took them 3 tries and the Miss Lindsey has no winch. Everybody had a great time on this visually spectacular wreck in spite of the stormy conditions. The Miss Lindsey is an ideal tech dive boat with a covered after deck and comfortable accommodations below, plenty of rack space. Of course grumbling about rain when you are going diving is a bit oxymoronic. This has been a frustrating dive season for me. Due to a death in the family I had to miss a couple of prime dives, including the 'doria trip. Family comes first. The weather was not cooperating either, with blowout after blowout. So I was really looking forward to this dive. I spent a couple of evenings going over my gear to make sure everything was strac and ready to go. I wanted nothing to screw up this trip. The gas supply was fine, I was still loaded with a 15/55 mix for the 'doria trip and I planned to do 2 dives with an air top. So with JT's tilliating email about all the stuff the narced-out NE divers were leaving on the wreck, I loaded up the truck and headed out to the boat. The plan was to leave at 9pm and then hit the water at 6am the next morning. Capt JT went down and check the hook. He sent up a styrofoam cup to indicate a good hook and the pool was declared "open." While we have all read posts about apparently perfect, flawless techdives, over and over, I tend to agree with Capt JT that dives should be described warts and all so others may learn. As anybody will who really techdives will tell you that a perfect dive is the exception rather than the rule. Screwups both major and minor happen, gear fails, this is part of the game. And what you need is the ability to think under stress and make fast, and hopefully correct, decisions and survive the dive. If you have the experience and frame of mind, problems are just dealt with and you get back to dive again. In my case I had a slight case of "brass fever". While I have lots of momentos of my various dives, that what I like to do - find stuff, I have never brought back a porthole. My interest in getting a porthole stemmed from a trip I made with JT and Rick Atkins when Rick brought back a porthole from the Ostfriedland (380'). The sight of that piece of history really gave me a charge. Now the Ethel C does not have the heritage connected with Ricks spectacular find, it at least promised the possibility of a porthole, which is good enough for me. JT had run a charter out to the Ethel C a couple of weeks ago and mentioned that the charter had some good luck with artifacts. A particular team was working on a porthole back by the stern, they were diving on air and could not finish the job. Apparently a crowbar and a fin were left behind so there was a bit of a struggle. Why people still do stupid stuff like diving 190' wrecks on air is beyond me. Anyway I got geared up and planned to do a scooter tour of the wreck and see what was going on back at the stern (we were anchored at the bow). This is an awesome wreck, the prominent wheelhouse structure and the towering masts are something to see. Vis was about 20-30'' on the bottom and pitch dark. I cruised aft checking out the prop and huge rudder and came around the starboard side. Coming over the poop I looked down and, by golly, there was a perfect, pristine porthole! I could see that it had been worked on. All the bolts were broke off except one. I could see why they were having trouble, the last bolt was at the bottom where the bulkhead had folded over and was very hard to get to. Needless to say I was quite excited at this sight. I dropped down and pulled out a set of vice grips and a pipe wrench and started to work on the bolt. I clipped the vicegrips on the far side and started turning the nut. I could move the nut about 1/16" with each reposition of my pipe wrench. The silt started to stir up and I was having a bit of a problem keeping my legs down. I had too much air in my drysuit and was too excited to realize it, so I spent a lot of effort and huffed a lot of my back gas wrestling with the last damn bolt. I glanced at my bottom timer and had to do a double-take. It said 45 minutes! Now I have been diving a long time and there was no way in hell I had spent 45 minutes at 185ft at that point. I don't know what happened but for some reason the Uwatec bottom timer said 45 mins. I figured I had spent about 15 mins on the bolt. So I dug in my right thigh pocket and pulled out my Nitek3 which I have in gauge mode to record my dives. It said 20 minutes, which made a whole hell of a lot more sense. But this was my turn time, I should have dropped what I was doing and headed back to the anchor line. I did not because here I had a perfect porthole just a couple of threads away from being mine. Brass Fever. So I redoubled my efforts an with a final tug it popped free! I whipped out my lift bag strapped it on and got it floating. At this point I took a look at my air gauge and had another shock. I was well into my last third of back gas. Brass fever had struck again, I was so busy huffing and puffing with the porthole I did not consider my gas consumption, which is usually quite predictable. Well, I did not have enough time to get back to the anchor line so I made the decision to let the bag go up on the reel and then use the bag and line to do my deco. Up went the bag & porthole and when it finished reeling out I looped the line around a piece of structure and followed the line up. My intention was to unreel going up, and when I got to the surface cut the line at the bag and then reel the line up. I was so low on back gas that I abandoned the gear bag and tools, they were not worth the time to collect. Well, the line was at 185' there was a current running and my reel holds 400', so you do the math. When I ran out of line at about 100' all I could do is tie the line off and cut it from the reel. I don't like leaving a bunch of line draped on a wreck but I did not have much of a choice at this point. Now you may ask why I kept the line attached to the wreck. Well, we were not planning on doing a drift deco and I made the mistake of not going over with the crew what the lift bag drill-of-the-day was. After deco was done, which, by the way, is not much fun in a current with nothing but a tiny string to hold on to, I popped to the surface and flagged the boat. The boat had it's act together, they had run the chase boat back to my bag and run a line line back to the boat. I appreciated this because if the current had snapped the cave line I would have had a long trip back. I scootered over to the boat and got up on the stern platform, JT was reeling in my bag. I had forgot to cut it loose from the wreck so JT sent me back to cut the line. The porthole was hoisted onto the deck and much admired by all. I was a happy camper, I have my porthole and it's a beauty. But it was not one of my better dives, that's for sure. There are lessons to be learned here; 1. There is nothing down there worth dying for, even a stupid porthole. 2. If you are planning on salvage, you need to get together with the crew beforehand and have a distinct plan that all agree on. This is my fault, not the crew's. 3. Brass Fever is real and it clouds good judgement. I cannot imagine what it would been like on air, I probably would have died, been one of those "found floating with regulator out of his mouth, dead of a heart attack." statistics. 4. If you are huffing and puffing with excitement or exertion you are probably using more gas than usual and need to account for this. I did not do a second dive that day because I did not have enough mix left over to air top to a decent EAD and there was no way I was going to do a 185' dive on air. I really wanted to do the second dive, but at this point I needed to prove to myself that I had at least a little bit of common sense. Plus my primary reel was now empty... ; ) I am glad that I did not bother to try to make it back to the anchor line. I am also glad that I had a backup bottom timer. I wish I knew what happened with the Uwatec, I've never heard of this sort of thing with a bottom timer product. I need a bigger reel if I expect to use the loop technique, I should have figured this one out on the bottom, but all it meant was an empty reel and feeling a little foolish. While I finally got my porthole (it's out soaking in vinegar now) I did not feel "good" about the dive. While I did not panic at any time, there was too much stress involved with the Brass Fever to make it a "good" dive. I have learned some lessons, I hope that this post will help a diver or two out in the future. 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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