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As an avid West Coast wreck diver, from time to time (fortunately not too often) I've encountered the following problem and suggestions from others as to how best to solve this would be appreciated: Yesterday conditions appeared great to dive a wreck serveral miles of the Santa Barbara, CA coast in 260fsw; I have the wreck location in my GPS (Differential signals are now available here so the accurracy and repeatablity are great and now better than loran). Trimix dive for 20-25 minutes to a max. of 240fsw was planned. We intended to explore the wheelhouse area or even the deck area which is well within that depth limit. =46ound the wreck, dropped the anchor with plenty of scope, suited up with the aid of a support diver (boy that's nice to have!) and down the line we went. At the surface visability was 20-25, but as we got deeper and the water temp hit 50=B0 the visability went down to between 5-10 feet. When we still hadn't seen the wreck and hit 240fsw on the line, we aborted the dive, did our deco, and were generally less than pleased with the diving. It also "hurts" that I'll have to waste alot of He since I don't have a Haskel and use HP tanks. I'll have to dump alot of gas to get it to the point where I can remix using the residual. After, that long explanation, my question essentially is what do others do to make sure that they "hit" the wreck dead on on these deep dives? My "Bruce/Plow" anchor does go down at about a 45=B0 angle and certainly doesn'= t drop straight down. The only thing I can think of is to do what I did in training in Hawaii--drop an anchor and chain, like a grappling hook, attached to a bouy and anchor the boat seperately; what do others do? Of course I could just repeat my buddies comment: "Let's move to Hawaii where the visability would have been so good it wouldn't have mattered!"\ Harold Gartner hgartner@ra*.or* CompuServe ID 71470,1423 6900 Via Alba Camarillo, California 805 482-9743
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