Chronicle of an older diver

I’ve never been on a diving trip to Brockville where I haven’t dived the Kinghorn at least once. It’s about 135′ long, with lots of openings in the deck through which to swim. Inside, it’s quite dark, and if you stir it up the black silt will reduce the visibility fast. If you’re careful though, and it’s a bright day, it’s easy enough to see around inside although a light is definitely needed.

This time I was helping the advanced wreck diving class. This wasn’t a technical class, as the students were all in regular scuba gear, but the instructors and divemasters were all decked out in their technical finery, including a bunch of extra tanks that were left lying on the deck to give us extra time and safety margins.

The exercise was the same one that we did on the Gaskin, with 4 buddy teams of students arriving one at a time, with each pair ascending, switching tanks and coming back down to do it again in reduced visibility. The pairs were separated and each under supervision would lay a penetration line through the wreck and then find their way back out with it while reeling it in. Again we used air enriched with Oxygen to keep our students from incurring decompression obligations and to reduce ours to a minimum.

At first I t tried to follow the divers through the wreck, but keeping out of their way in some of the tighter spaces was hard, and I felt like I was getting in the way. So after that I stayed just above the deck ready to enter if needed. The only real assistance I had to give was to one student who went through his air to quickly (I can report his air consumption has improved dramatically with more experience and he’ll soon be a divemaster). He was down to 300 psi so I gave him my long hose reg and took him up to the safety stop.

So I ended up making two dives after all.