Wreck diving with Narked-At-50

M. V. Clutha

I spent the weekend 8-9 February on the river Clyde's estuary (that's the river than runs through Glasgow, Scotland) with Steve who organises Narked-At-50, plus Andy and Cheryl who organised the Leeds Uni dive club and who introduced me to this group, plus several other divers. Our dive boat was the M.V. Clutha ("Spirit of the Clyde"), skippered by Capt. Elaine, who can be contacted on http://clyde-diving.co.uk , the dive boat is illustrated opposite. We were scheduled to do 4 dives and the first was in 133 feet of water at ca. 50 degrees Fahrenheit. I had 2x12 litre steel tanks independently backmounted, since Steve suggested sidemounts were not what people were expecting on this trip. I got down the shotline and found my left reg. was objecting to the cold and the depth by leaking gently but rather steadily. I went back up the shotline and the leak had stopped by the time I got to the top. Back down again and the leak restarted just the same as before. I decided not to continue, because this wasn't a familiar situation as a cavedive might have been. Back up the shotline. This yoyo business led to a neglect of my drysuit's inflator, resulting in a squeeze, and since it also leaked (as per fairly usual) things were quite cold at the end of the dive. I skipped the afternoon dive (after 5 hours had passed I was more or less warmed up) and swapped regs that evening so as to eliminate the fault for the following day. On the Sunday we hit a wreck at a similar depth to yesterday, and this time I got down without a leaking reg and had time to look around the immediate vicinity of the shotline before the computer announced I now needed deco.

My thoughts about deco in this situation was as follows; to begin with it's cold. But more significantly it involves a skill which, as a cavediver, I have rarely practised. If I am coming out of a cave and need to do deco, what I do is find a rock at the correct depth and grab hold of it, and there I stay until I move up to the next depth. And so on. But here, we were in open sea, so the way to do deco was either (a) hold on to the correct bit of the shotline or (b), if not on the shotline - if ascending to ones own surface marker buoy - one really needs to control ones buoyancy so as to hang at the correct depth. You can stay a little negative maybe and hang on to the buoyant SMB line, but you can't use the SMB line to make you LESS buoyant. All this, possibly with a swell running at the shallow deco depth. That's not quite so easy. In either of these cases, the thing to fear - and the thing I am unpractised at avoiding - is letting the buoyancy of the drysuit get out of hand so one shoots to the surface uncontrollably. Where's a solid rock to hang on to???? It isn't there, you're not in a cave. So you see, cavediving does not always make things more dangerous. It's EASIER to decompress safely in a cave because of all the nice rocks to hang onto, and if all else fails the ceiling that prevents you from rising too far too quickly. But in the sea, you can shoot to the surface if you make a mistake. If large amounts of deco are thereby blown away, you can expect a severe bend, possibly fatal. Many, many such accidents have happened, especially when the diver has lost contact with the shotline.

And what was your decision, Charles? Quite simple, and demonstrates that in spite of any reputation for solo cavediving I am like all sensible people a complete coward (as Pippin in the Lord of the Rings puts it "save perhaps now and again by necessity"). I decided that as soon as my computer told me I had deco, I would begin to ascend so as to practise the feel of decompressing on the shotline before doing it with a really SERIOUS amount of deco.

So up I went and that very short couple of minutes looking around was the substance of my second dive. from which however I emerged warm and comfortable due to having not squeezed and partially flooded my drysuit. And I was getting to know th feel of toodling up and down the shotline, a sensation as alien to my usual style of diving as it is familiar to nearly all other Brits who scuba dive.

By my third dive I was happy to have a few minutes of deco and still explore so I did, toodling up to the bow section of a wreck at ca. 100 feet for our more relaxing afternooon dive, and exploring a bit of the forward hold. Returning up the shotline I had about 5 minutes of deco left when I got up to the 10' mark, which was cold because I had dug my own hole, leaving a wrinkle in the right wrist seal of my drysuit so it promptly leaked again.

All in all a good weekend.