“Sacrificial Trip”
“Sometimes you end up making equipment sacrifices, I’ve been on trips where divers have lost equipment, including a scooter! This trip ended up being a sacrificial trip..”
Woke up to a beautiful Friday morning and the first dive of the trip was to be the USS Vammen, a amazing wreck sitting in 335 fsw. Andrew, Dan and Myself were going to be the first team in.
We use a shot line for these deep wrecks, its simply a large float ball tied to about 400 feet of line with 10 feet of chain on the end, shackled to a very heavy weight, while the Sand Dollar slowly drifts over the target, when the wreck comes into view on the depth finder, we drop the shot.
Andrew, Dan and Myself descend down the shot, I unshackle the chain from the shot and proceed to drag it to the wreck about 10 feet away, not as easy as you would think, dragging a chain and 400 feet of rope in 330 feet of water was a lot harder than I had expected, Dan said it was funny watching me walk across the ocean floor, yanking this chain along with me.
I finally get the shot line shackled into the wreck and we proceed with our dive, due to the depth, we limit bottom time to 25 minutes, which unfortunately goes by quickly. The Decompression obligation unfortunately is not quick, with about 120 minutes of deco required before we can get back on the boat, a small price to pay to dive this amazing wreck.
Once back on the surface we learn of the first Sacrifice of the trip, Andrew had flooded his underwater SLR camera housing..
The rest of the teams complete their dives without incident and we head into a cove for the night.
Saturday morning brought us another beautiful day, with the USS Burns in 270 fsw being are target wreck for the day.
USS Burns, photo by Craig Schechter
Andrew, Dan, Jimmy and Myself would be the first team today, we descend and the tie in goes a lot smoother than yesterday. I had a objective this dive, I wanted to penetrate into the wreck,Dan planned to accompany me, Jimmy and Andrew would spend the dive exploring the outside of the wreck. I was able to find a suitable entry point at the stern of the wreck, that lead into what turned out to be a munitions preparation area. The penetration reminded of how dangerous real wrecks can be, everything I touched produced a cloud of rust dust and wanted to collapse, definitely need to be cautious. Deco was uneventful as usual, I was glad to be out of the water and ready to eat.
Andrew, Carrie and Myself decided to do another short dive later that day, we would be limiting this to 20 minutes of bottom time, with a total runtime of 90 minutes. Andrew wanted to penetrate and video the spot I had done on the first dive, Carrie and Myself would just enjoy the outside, I always like to see the ship propellers, they are such an awesome site, also scoped out a couple more penetration opportunities for the next time.
Now came my Sacrifice, once we reach the boat ladders, we hand up our deco bottles, to avoid straining ourselves climbing the ladder with all that equipment, well I dropped one of my AL80 deco tanks, I tried as hard as I could, but it was just out of my reach, it sucked to watch it slowly descend into the abyss. Andrew also made another Sacrifice, he lost his GoPro in the wreck, so that was camera number two for Andrew.
We had been hearing reports of a big North swell coming in Sunday morning, and decided that we should make the run back to Catalina, to avoid a long bumpy boat ride back from San Clemente Island, If the predictions turned out wrong, we could hit a couple of the 200 foot targets around Catalina. Sunday morning we awoke to rain and wind chop in the marina, not good. The seas were already bigger than they had predicted, so we scrapped any dive plans and headed back to San Pedro in 4 to 6 foot swells, I was glad we made the decision to leave San Clemente the night before.
I always enjoy these Deep Trimix Wreck Trips, and already have plans for the next time we get to dive these amazing wrecks.
If you are certified for these depths and want to join us for one of these awesome trips, give me a call at El Mar Diving Center (480)833-2971
David
