The Avro Arrow Models October 28, 2009
Posted by deepstop in Diving Books and Films, Shipwrecks, Technical Diving.Tags: Adventure, Avro, Avro Arrow, Diving, Lake Ontario, Outdoors, rocket, SCUBA, Scuba Diving, Sea Hunters, Shipwreck, Sport, Supergun, Training, Trimix, Wreck Diving
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I just watched, not for the first time, a Sea Hunters episode from 2005 on a search for several models of the famous Canadian fighter aircraft, the Avro Arrow, in Lake Ontario. In this episode, the crew took their boat from Port Dover in Lake Erie to Point Petre in Prince Edward County in Lake Ontario, where during the mid-to late 50s Avro Aircraft Limited shot models of their aircraft into the lake at supersonic speeds, on the nose of a rocket.
They didn’t find it. They found an unidentified sailboat from the mid 19th century in great condition at a depth of 200′. They also found a rocket which they believed to be a Canadair rocket booster used to test the Velvet Glove Missile, which was being designed as armament for the Arrow. This booster was designed in part by Gerald Bull, a Canadian engineer who was assassinated (reputedly by the Mossad) while working on Project Babylon, a supergun for the Iraqi government.
The show then rambled on into a rather pointless expedition off the Virginia coast where the visibility was so back they could only feel the object they were trying to investigate.
Despite the squirrely storyline, the Sea Hunters is my favourite underwater TV show. It’s short on the wonders of the ocean environment and long on hard core diving and exploration (not that I’m against the environment, sharks or pretty fish, it just gets repetitive after a while). In Lake Ontario they were diving surface supplied trimix with a hardhat and ship to diver voice communications, running sidescan sonar, and a ROV. What could be more fun than that?
Brockville 2009 & my Shearwater Pursuit October 1, 2009
Posted by deepstop in Dive Log, Shipwrecks, Technical Diving.Tags: St. Lawrence River, Decompression, Nitrox, Shipwreck, SCUBA, Diving, Scuba Diving, Dive Computer, Brockville, Enriched Air, Wreck Diving, Scuba Equipment, Technical Diving, Shearwater Pursuit, Adventure, Sport
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The deep drift dive from the Lillie Parsons to the James B. King was a good test of my recently acquired Shearwater Pursuit SPOT. I have to say it performed admirably, calculating and tracking my deco schedule as it should. The first stop it asked for was at 80′, which is about what I’d expect, but it cleared before I got there and so my first was at 70′. I had a bit of trouble finding a good handhold in the current there, and made an unplanned excursion to 68′ for a few moments, but as these are deep stops with very low gradient factors it was of no concern. The US Navy tables show 30′ as the first stop even on a square dive profile to 5′ deeper than my maximum depth. You can see in the graph from my logging program the jump in inspired Oxygen that occurs part way through the 40′ stop, when I switched my computer after switching gases.
As the stops got shallower and longer, the gradient factors get higher and maintaining stop depth becomes critical. I’d planned to switch to my deco gas (curiously 71% 02 because someone topped off my 80% tank by mistake) at 30′, but changed my mind and used it on the 40′ stop as well, as the deco MOD of the mix was within limits.
As I mentioned before from now on if I’m only carrying one deco gas, it will be EAN50, as the penalty is low and it is a good backup at greater depths than EAN80. My next tank acquisition will likely be something smaller like an AL30 for pure O2, if I feel the need to carry something else for longer dives.
Deco stops being based on exponential models often work out close to a Fibonacci sequence, where the length of the next stop is approximately the sum of the current stop and the one before. So if your 30′ stop is 5 minutes, and your 20′ stop is 8 minutes, then the 10′ stop is likely to be around 13 minutes. This was certainly true with this dive, after adjusting for the gas switch, which shortens everything. I use this principle to memorize a deco schedule that closely approximates my plan, so if I have nothing else (which should never happen, of course) I can have something close to a reasonable decompression. All it requires is for me to remember the first two stops.
Finally, I’ve mentioned the importance of a slow ascent from the last stop, where the gradient factor is highest, and you can see from the graph that I spent a full minute ascending the final 10 feet.
Brockville 2009, Lillie Parsons to John B. King September 30, 2009
Posted by deepstop in Dive Log, Shipwrecks, Technical Diving.Tags: St. Lawrence River, Decompression, Shipwreck, Drift Diving, SCUBA, Diving, Scuba Diving, Brockville, Wreck Diving, Technical Diving, Adventure, Outdoors, Sport
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As usual, the 4 technical divers on the boat sat out the dive on the Daryaw. September 7th 2009, Labour Day Monday, was a fine sunny day, and buoy leading down to the Daryaw was crowded with dive boats. Captain Lawrence deftly swung his craft around between two of these to back himself on the buoy much to the delight of all who were watching. We checked our equipment and waited for the divers the return. One pair returned rather quickly due to a leaky mouthpiece which was quickly fixed so they could salvage some of their dive.
Once everyone was back on board we took our time getting down to the Lillie Parsons, and once in position the four of us, Brad, his Tec Deep Student Chris, Rich and I strode off the stern in a near simultaneous negative entry like the day before, quickly heading down to the shelf at 45′ or so for a fast bubble check. Before continuing, I spotted Rich’s deco reg hanging loose and went over to help him put it back under its bungee, but he waved me off and just clipped the second stage to something near the neck of the deco tank, and on we went.
The descent was fairly rapid, taking 2 1/2 minutes to go from 50′ to 175′. Once my eyes were adjusted to the light, the visibility was pretty good, and I made a point of looking far and wide to take in the full landscape, rather than letting the narcosis narrow my field of vision. I felt great (naturally) and really enjoyed looking around for things on the bottom, although I didn’t find much.
The four of us stayed together, with Brad leading, Chris very close to him, Rich behind him and me behind Rich. We had been concerned with Chris’ air consumption as his SAC check the day before showed an alarming rate of consumption, but we thought that might have been due to the current. So we planned the dive for 20 minutes bottom time, which we thought wouldn’t be enough time to make it all the way to the John B. King. Sure enough, when 20 minutes were almost up, Brad signalled Rich and I to ask if we wanted to continue to 25 minutes, and as I had 2000 psi remaining I was happy to comply.
Along the way, there’s a large anchor leaning up against the wall, which I always hold on to for a second or to, then letting go. I had been told about a second anchor which I’d not seen in the 3 previous dives, but not long afterward there it was. It was about 1/2 the size of the first one and away from the wall out in the river a bit. I then picked up some large china object which I hoped to examine a bit later. It was large enough that I had to a fair bit of air to my BC. I was also holding on to a metal ring about 3″ in diameter that I’d found, but it was so encrusted I couldn’t identify it.
Right on the 25 minute mark, we reached the King. By that time, we’d lost sight of Chris and Brad. I’d been looking for him, and caught a flash from his light briefly, but that was it. At least I knew we weren’t far behind. The bottom had become shallower by that time – around 155 to 160′, requiring me to dump a little air. Rich and I made our way up to 130 feet at which point there was a bit a traverse to do while exposed to the current. I could see Rich was having trouble holding on, which was probably because of the extra drag from his dry suit, and had to pull him onto a good handhold at one point. By this time I’d dropped the China object and the metal ring to concentrate on the dive.
To be continued…
Brockville 2009, Lillie Parsons Drift Dive September 25, 2009
Posted by deepstop in Dive Log, Shipwrecks, Technical Diving.Tags: Adventure, Brockville, Dive Computer, Diving, Drift Diving, Enriched Air, Nitrox, Outdoors, SCUBA, Scuba Diving, Shearwater Pursuit, Shipwreck, Sport, St. Lawrence River, Technical Diving, Wreck Diving
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Drifting in the current underwater is one of the most fun and exciting things to do in the St. Lawrence (assuming you are wearing functioning Scuba gear, of course). The most common form that this dive takes is a quick trip round to a small bay on Sparrow Island, against which the Lille lies upside-down in about 50 feet of water. The customary procedure is to let go of the wreck, making your depth about 40′ and stay close to the wall where soon you will drift on to a rope, which on that day reached down to 54′, as measured by one of our party. I tried this one a little over 2 years ago, and it was a fun dive.
That same weekend, as the culmination of my technical diving course, we dropped over the wall on which the Lillie lies to a depth of 165′, where we drifted almost all the way to the wreck of the John B. King. I’ve done the same dive 3 times since, and made it all the way to the King on those occasions.
This time, we tried the middle route, drifting at around 100′ until the terrain rose under us, finally climbing with help from the current onto the downstream side of Stovin Island. The current was quick, the water warm, and equipped with our doubles partially emptied of their Nitrox 32 from the previous dive (mine were at 1800 PSI) we had plenty of gas on hand.
Unlike every other time I’ve been on the Lillie, we dropped off the back of the boat just upstream of the wreck negatively buoyant, and mustered on the shelf right next to end of the mast. On all previous occasions, we drifted on the surface to the island, then submerged to swim upstream then over a ledge to the wreck. This method was a lot faster, although we saw even less of the wreck than we usually do.
The only hitch was that we didn’t realise we were on the downstream side of the island, and we even moved to the south side into a small cove so we could wait in a sheltered spot for our boat, which was looking for us on the North side of the island. At one point we were discussing why the boat was taking so long, trying to estimate the time it would take to pick up the non-technical divers who had only gone as far as the rope. I head a boat that sounded just like ours, and someone remarked it was on the wrong side of the island. It was then I noticed that the late afternoon Sun was over the island, which meant we were facing upriver to the west.
Quickly we moved out of our little cove and into the inter-island channel, where we were soon spotted. As soon as I saw acknowledgment from the boat I stopped waving and gave a big OK sign, which they returned, and we were soon picked up and on our way for the Sunday Night pot luck dinner.
Total dive time was 24 minutes. Here’s the computer log. Lillie Drift 20090906
Brockville 2009, Muscallonge September 24, 2009
Posted by deepstop in Dive Log, Shipwrecks, Training.Tags: Adventure, Brockville, Dive Training, Divemaster, Diving, Outdoors, SCUBA, Scuba Diving, Scuba Equipment, Scuba Instructor, Scuba Training, Shipwreck, Sport, St. Lawrence River, Training, Wreck Diving
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This wreck is right in front of the town of Brockville, not that far from shore. The line down from the buoy is at a very shallow angle, making for a long pull against the current, which wasn’t so bad at the beginning of the dive, on September 6th, 2009.
This time I had a student, Shannon, who was getting some dives in for her advanced open water course. The dive is reasonable simple, colour comparison, gauge comparison, optional tour and safety stop. We picked an area to do the drills in a reasonably current free area, and got through them quickly, after some confusion about the signals (asking for air left vs. depth). During this confusion I noticed Shannon with a big smile behind the regulator mouthpiece, and was unsure if she was amused by the confusion, confused by narcosis at 90′, or a bit of both. Eventually we got through everything and we all (including Rory, DM in training) had lots of air so we toured around the wreck for a while.
It’s really broken up, but has a fair amount of machinery to look at. During the dive, the current picked up dramatically and I was grateful for the line along the bottom that lead to the buoy line, otherwise we would have had an interesting struggle to catch it in a free ascent. It was definitely a dive that required good handholds in the exposed places.
The bottom time was short, only 20 minutes, but Shannon used very little air so I was pleased with her gas consumption and composure at depth. My own consumption was 1100 PSI but I was diving my doubles, so she did better than me.
Brockville 2009, Kinghorn September 18, 2009
Posted by deepstop in Dive Log, Shipwrecks, Training.Tags: Adventure, Brockville, Dive Computer, Dive Training, Diving, Outdoors, SCUBA, Scuba Diving, Scuba Training, Shipwreck, Sport, St. Lawrence River, Technical Diving, Training, Wreck Diving
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Being about the 8th time I’ve had the pleasure of diving this wreck, there’s not much of a story to this dive. Shannon, my advanced open water student, did her Nitrox dive, and I’d already been through the knowledge review and the measurement of the contents of her tank. As she had a Nitrox compatible computer (my Apeks Quantum) I didn’t have to directly supervise the dive, so I went down separately but kept an eye on things from time to time while there.
Brad was still training Chris for the Tec Deep course, and he was doing drills and dropping and picking up stage bottles just like I’d done two years earlier. Not anticipating the need to do any decompression on the dive, I left my little bottle of deco gas on the deck near the bow and swam drifted to the stern along the port side, meeting up with Shannon and Rory along the way.
The light was fairly dim and I saw Brad and Chris head up after only a few minutes as they’d done what they’d set out to do. I went inside the wreck for a minute and the water was very clear, but as everyone was leaving I didn’t think it prudent to hang around. I hadn’t seen Rory and Shannon head up so I took a tour around the wreck alone to make sure everyone was gone and then headed up myself with only a safety stop to do. At 22 minutes this was about the shortest dive I’ve ever done on the Kinghorn, reaching a depth of 89 feet.
Brockville 2009, Ash Island Barge September 16, 2009
Posted by deepstop in Dive Log, Shipwrecks, Technical Diving, Training.Tags: Adventure, Brockville, Dive Training, Diving, Drift Diving, Enriched Air, Nitrox, Outdoors, SCUBA, Scuba Diving, Scuba Training, Shearwater Pursuit, Shipwreck, Sport, St. Lawrence River, Technical Diving, Training, Wreck Diving
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I arrived in Brockville at noon on Saturday, September 6th, having left around 8:30 in the morning from home, only stopping for gas and bathroom breaks. Traffic was heavy but not insane, and the police were out in force for the long weekend. I set my cruise control at 119kph on Highway 401, which has a speed limit of 100kph, and as usual didn’t have any problems. I passed a radar trap at this speed, and the cruiser pulled out and followed me. I pulled into a big gap between cars in the right lane, slowed down to the speed limit (which everyone else was going at that time) to make it easy for him to pull me over, but he went right by me.
Our departure was scheduled from Caiger’s resort at 2:30, with a plan to dive the Keystorm and the America. While we were waiting, we found out that our boat had hit a deadhead and bent one of its props. It meant that we didn’t leave until 4:30 and had to change our plan as the trip to US Customs and Immigration, the dives, and the trip home in the slow boat would have taken 5 hours.
So we decided to dive a fairly recently discovered wreck near the Thousand Islands Bridge called the Ash Island Barge. The dive started upriver on the shore of Ash Island followed by a drift along the bottom of the river to wreck. Brad was continuing training Chris for his technical diving certification and I followed along to help out. Brad led, then I followed behind Chris, noticing that he was a bit uncomfortable at the beginning of the dive and his body position was too head-high to be optimum.
He quickly settled down, though, and we enjoyed the drift dive along the bottom. The recreational divers were above us at about 90′ and even though they descended before us we quickly caught up with them in the faster current further away from the wall. The bottom of the river was white with Periwinkle shells which brightened up the scene considerably.
Once we hit the wreck, Brad put Chris through some drills, including a no-mask swim, and at the 22 minute mark we headed up, stopping to let Brad advise two of our recreational divers that their dive was over due to low air. Their rather unusual dive plan called for the diver with the higher capacity tank to share air with the other diver so they could maximize their dive time. In retrospect they agreed that this wasn’t the best idea, and in any case should have waited until the latter diver had more than 300 PSI remaining.
Chris was tasked with simulated deco, using the common practice of diving Nitrox on an air decompression schedule. Diving “real air” myself, I had some deco obligation which I hastened using EAN71 deco mix. Rich was missing when we got back on the boat, and we finally noticed his SMB on the other side of the channel. He’d drifted over there after losing sight of the other divers and missing the wreck.
Here’s the log from my Shearwater Pursuit for this dive. Maximum depth was 121′, and the water temperature a balmy 21C (70F), and highlight of highlight, I found a Thousand Island baseball cap in good condition on the bottom during the drift. All it has was some very small zebra mussels attached, evidence that it hadn’t been there for very long.
Daryaw Drift August 30, 2009
Posted by deepstop in Dive Log, Shipwrecks, Technical Diving.Tags: Adventure, Brockville, Decompression, Diving, Drift Diving, Enriched Air, Nitrox, Outdoors, SCUBA, Scuba Diving, Shipwreck, Sport, St. Lawrence River, Technical Diving, Wreck Diving
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We do this dive a lot, although this was only my second time. Explore the wreck for a while and then drift over the inverted hull then down the river for a kilometre or so. It’s a good opportunity to practice drift decompression using a delayed SMB, but lately I haven’t found the dive all that exciting and frankly I’d rather spend the time exploring the wreck a bit more.
On September 1st, 2008 Rich, Brad, Dave and I made it our first dive of the day. I spent most of the time on the wreck with Rich, and ascended into the large hold in the bow, but by that time the water was very turbid and I wasn’t able to see very much.
After that, we drifted over the hull and joined the others at the props for the river drift, decompressing on my EAN79 for 8 minutes before being picked up by the dive boat.
Tec Deep Graduation Dive August 29, 2009
Posted by deepstop in Dive Log, Shipwrecks, Technical Diving, Training.Tags: Adventure, Brockville, Decompression, Dive Computer, Dive Training, Divemaster, Diving, Drift Diving, Enriched Air, Nitrox, OMS, Outdoors, SCUBA, Scuba Diving, Scuba Equipment, Scuba Instructor, Scuba Training, Shipwreck, Sport, St. Lawrence River, Technical Diving, Training, Wreck Diving
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This time, it wasn’t my graduation, but Rich’s, on our only dive on Sunday August 31st, 2008. I’d done the same dive a year before as the culmination of the course, and now it was his turn. Brad was instructing like the year before, and Pete and Dave and I were along for the ride, although we were all acting as divemasters at the same time.
Again the dive was from the Lillie Parsons to the James B. King along the bottom of the St. Lawrence. Brad and Dave shepherded Rich, while Pete and I stuck together for the most part. The lovely thing about the dive is the speed of the current, which is quite fast in the wide channel between the chain of 4 islands running from wreck to wreck and the Canadian north shore of the St. Lawrence. I noted in my log book that the current slowed between islands.
This time we made it to the wreck instead of having to do our decompression stops clinging to rocks. Despite this, some of the jumps from place to place on the wreck were a little exciting. At one point a short line attached to the wreck wrapped itself around my leg. As all good divers do, I think, I slowed myself right down and carefully rid myself of the hazard before proceeding.
Deco was being managed by my Apeks Quantums. This was the only dive trip where both of them were working and I preferred them to using tables, at least for this kind of diving. While the computers didn’t call for deep stops, we more or less them anyway as the climb up the King was relatively slow. Since the wreck sank after exploded it’s mostly a twisted mass of wreckage, so it takes a bit of time to move along it.
The maximum depth was a little deeper (for me, not Rich who was still a student and limited to 165′) at 178′ on this dive. I attribute that to a faster drop off the Lillie as the deepest part is at the beginning. When we’d ascended to 100′ I saw Rich deploying a lift bag. I thought to myself “What the *&@*&% is he doing?”. He was clearly having trouble with it, which is not surprising given the current we were in. Next thing I knew Brad took it from him, and let it go. That seemed pretty drastic but it did solve the immediate problem.
Later I found out that Brad had wanted Rich to deploy the bag as an exercise. I’d done the same the previous year while still drifting down the river. That was much more sensible as I didn’t have to fight the current. I also found out that it was Brad’s favourite reel, and he had taken it after he saw Rich having trouble, but had to let it go in the strong current.
Anyway, we continued onward and upward, and Pete and I were pretty well matched in our deco stops which officially started at 40′. At 30′ I switched over to my deco reg which was attached to an AL80 full of 79% O2. At 10′ Pete noticed that the cap had fallen off my OMS regulator, and he could see the diaphragm move in and out as I breathed. He pointed it out to me and I noticed the cap had come to rest on my gear, so I picked it up, switched over to my back gas (time for an air break anyway), replaced the cap (tightly this time) and resumed my deco. These days securing the caps is part of my pre-dive checks.
During the 20 minutes or so on deco at 10′, Pete was looking around a bit and found an old octagonal bottle. Apparently in the olden days bottles were shaped so that the blind could identify the nature of the contents to avoid accidental poisoning. This one had a slight blue tinge and is apparently quite valuable, but had slipped well down between some rocks for decades before we came along – or at least we think so.
All in all a great dive, except for the mishap with the lift bag. But at least that gave us the opportunity for and exciting dive and another story.
A Better Dive on the America August 28, 2009
Posted by deepstop in Dive Log, Shipwrecks.Tags: Adventure, Brockville, Diving, Outdoors, SCUBA, Scuba Diving, Shipwreck, Sport, St. Lawrence River, Wreck Diving
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After my embarrassment on the Keystorm, later that day on August 31st, 2008, I looked forward to a more positive experience on the other dive on the American side, which was on the America, using the air that remained in our doubles (1500 PSI for me). We didn’t take deco gas with us on this dive, so we planned to keep it within no decompression limits, or at least close.
Once again with Dave and Pete, we headed down the slightly complex sequence of lines to the wreck. If ever you dive there, make note of the layout of the lines, so you come up in the right place. We ended up going the wrong way near the end of dive, although we realized our mistake and backtracked. We almost did the same thing on the same wreck this year, but I had picked out a landmark at the intersection and chose the right path.
After penetrating the wreck a couple of times, and seeing the furnace, some white brick, and so forth (missing some machinery, that would have required me to look up, which I didn’t do), we followed a line out and away from the wreck on the opposite side from the entry point towards Singer Island. There was nothing much there.
Pete was cold and we were getting near our NDL so we headed back out after 37 minutes of bottom time. With a maximum depth of 76 feet and average considerably lower, we didn’t require any deco and I was back on the dive boat with 900 PSI still in the tanks.
