I just called my Mom to try it out and she laughed at me. I’ll have to let it tether and walk around with it on my head talking on it like its a giant iPhone.

Now if it only had iOS 4…

Little Cayman Diving – HD – 2010 from Brandon Bianchi on Vimeo.

The trip began January 21 at the Monterey “International” Airport, departing for LAX at 4:20PM. I was a little worried about the weather delaying things since the worst winter storm of the season just happened to be blowing through this day. Our flight did have to do a little 20 minute holding pattern before we began our ascent, but otherwise we made it to LAX fine. Had a long layover but I spent it in the Admirals Club working and enjoying the rain and lightning anyway so it wasn’t too bad. My flight to Miami was not impacted by the weather and I really dont remember much about it since I managed to sleep from the taxi way in LA to the descent at Miami. Had another bit of a lay over but it wasn’t so bad again as I got some food and then left for Grand Cayman. Once there I literally ran to the grocery store that’s about a mile or mile and a half from the airport to grab some meat and other needed food stuffs that Bruce had asked me to pickup. Food on Little Cayman is not only expensive but VERY limited. Back to the airport with lots of Steak and a few other items in tow and by the time I got through security I had about a 10 minute wait before my flight boarded. There was a great friendly bunch of people on the flight to Little Cayman and once we landed I learned the aircraft has to cross the islands main road to make it to the “airport”. Which by the way, was a single building and also happened to be the fire department and post office for the island. Off to Bruce’s house where I got settled in, fixed the oven with parts I brought, had a few beers, and some good NY steaks. Then off to bed semi-early for an early morning of diving.

Since this was 4 full days of diving totaling 8 dives with an average dive time of 78 minutes I won’t detail every dive. However, I will detail my impression, sights, and opinions on the whole experience. We began the days at 6:30am because if the winds were not in our favor we would have to head over to one of the boat operators to go out with them for the day. Thankfully we were very luck and the winds as well as swells were in our favor every day. Every day (but the day I left) the winds were out of the South to South East which meant that our North side diving spots were all protected by the island.  Also the weather couldn’t have been any more perfect, a little rain in the late afternoons and early mornings and otherwise perfect 80F sunny days.

Onto the diving! Basically in the morning we would use the compressor to fill or finish filling any of the remaining tanks, load up the truck, and get our wetsuits on. Off we would drive to one of the North side sites and once there we would gear up. Mostly the entries for all the dives were the same, short walk down a white sandy beach into the water (a few were a bit longer walks sometimes through some heavier growth). Once in the water there was maybe a 400-500 foot walk out to waste deep water (most of the time avoiding underwater coral heads etc.) then fin up and swim out another 300-500 feet. Generally our swim would be to one of the marked dive sites, which were marked by a white float and mooring line. The sites can be seen in the image below:

I think I have managed to accurately represent all the sites we managed to dive. Even though we only did 8 dives in some we would swim as many as six or seven different sites. Bruce managed to tour me through almost the entire north side of the island.

I have to say for sore diving the beginning of these dives was generally breath taking. Some of my favorites all started with swim throughs. The coolest was this small hole in the top of the reef that didn’t really even look as if a diver would fit. However, once in the hole it just opened up. There were various sponges and generally fish hiding out in the upper crevices. As you swam out of the opening straight ahead was what seemed like an endless bottomless blue. Looking behind you there was an amazing sheer wall teeming with life. There was all kinds of hard and soft corals, sea fans, and schools upon schools of fish.

I totally couldn’t believe the vast variety of life that I managed to see in my short time there. While swimming in the more shallow waters of the reefs we managed to see in the distance two reef sharks swimming by. In a little deeper waters not only did I find two resting nurse shards, but a large (6 foot or so) barracuda, as well as a 8 or 9 foot green moray eel. Again in a slightly more shallow part of the reef we saw two different turtles which were going about their business as if we weren’t even there, also there were quite a few lobster in this semi-deep range. However, by far I think the coolest animal that we encountered were the grouper. There were two and they seem to most commonly be known as Benji and Minnie Mae. These grouper obviously were VERY friendly to divers, as they almost insisted on getting petted by us. It was the strangest thing, as they were almost acting as if they were at a cleaning station when we were petting them. Even after petting them they continued to follow us for a very long portion of our dive.

It was absolutely beautiful, every dive. I just couldn’t get over the 100+ foot vis we had every day, but there just something about being able to look off 70, 80, 120 feet and seeing hundreds of all kinds of fish from tangs, angels, dottiebacks, and LOTS of damsels, as well as at least two different kinds of trigger fish. I couldn’t get over how peaceful all the bustling life around me seemed to make me feel. I have to say I wish I had more time there, because id love to do even more dives w/out my camera. When you dive with a camera its tough to focus on everything around you instead of that thing your trying to get a picture of. However, I certainly didn’t want to miss getting good pictures to share with my friends and family. If you are interested in seeing the whole set, please visit this link.

All in all this was a very successful trip, and I am glad that James and I did our homework. As last year James had found that even using an AL80 like Bruce, he could not keep up with Bruce’s .3 SAC rate. What we ended up doing to be able to achieve the sometimes 93 minute dives on an AL80 with an average trip depth of 45 FSW was take an extra 20 cuft of gas along with us on the dives. Also we had to go through our desat and no fly times to make sure we had our timings right for being able to safely return home. Since we had our own compressor there wasn’t really any way to mix nitrox. Every dive was done with just compressed air, so we did managed to build up quite a bit of nitrogen saturation. To be honest id never seen my computer tell me I needed 33+ hours for desat. I have to also admit I am impressed that no matter how tempting it may have been we never hit any deco obligations. Hopefully this explains why in the photos and videos you see James with a second small 23cuft tank strapped to him, and me with my 40cuft pony at my side.

Please also enjoy this roughly 15:30 minute video I put together of the dives. I know it’s a little long but it was the shortest I could manage to make it. You really should take the time to watch it, as I feel it does a much better job than I do at conveying the beauty of the dives.

Link to video with alternate audio here.

Avg Depth: 45 fsw, 103 max.
Water Temp: 81F
Gas: 21%
Avg Dive Time: 78 min, 93 max.
Total Dives: 8

All in all it was a very successful class, PADI’s new Rescue Class format is interesting, but it certainly makes for a shorter class. The old format really made for a long tiring day.

In the end Clara had a successful class, and I think learned some valuable lessons along the way. Possibly tomorrow ill have some time to get some pictures up from the shore portion of the class.

Jeff, Cliff and I were going to drive down the day before we were supposed to dive so that we all could be well rested and ready to dive. I am glad we did this because while it would have been possible to make it work out they picked me up at my house around 4/4:30 am and we didn’t get to San Diego until just about 1:00 pm. On the way down Cliff supplied us with the audio book of Shadow Divers to listen to. I must say thats a good book, and technically accurate.

The next afternoon we went down to the marina for our first two dives of the class. I had my scopolamine(sp?) patch on and was hoping that it would help prevent my sea sickness. Sadly, it was a fairly rough day and the patch only lasted so long. Our first dive we tied off to the mooring line off the comm tower IIRC and dropped down there. We did our swims around the Yukon looking at entry and exit points and making our “map” of the site. I was awestruck, this ship just looked so surreal covered in all the sea life! Its hard to imagine that before it was an artificial reef, it was a Canadian warship. Sadly since this was a class dive and we had probably 8-12 people in our group the dive was short. Shorter than I would have liked at least. Back on the boat I learned a valuable lesson. The moving of dive sites between surface intervals is key to reducing sea sickness. Sitting on the boat for 45 minutes to an hour while rocking and rolling in somewhat big seas is what makes you sicker. Which it did in the end, for me and some others. Even with the patch it wasn’t enough for me, and I had to sit out the second dive. I almost made it though… being that I was feeling like horrible, I wanted in the water badly. Well I rushed so much that I forgot my weight belt. When I got back on the boat to get it, the feeling of being in the double and strapped to the boat did me in. I ended up not making it back in that day.

Day two however I took some more preventative measures. Mainly eating more before going out on the boat as well as a new patch. This did prove to help, but I still sadly got sick on the SI. However these dives were even better than the day before since it was just buddy teams. My buddy and I on the first dive did some reel drills. We tied off and clipped the line off on various points outside the ship just to practice the had movements. After doing enough of that we spent the rest of the dive touring around the top side of the ship. There were all kinds of holes to peer into, plaques to read, and life to enjoy looking at and watching. I did notice on this dive while ascending something ive never known could happen. Bull Kelp that managed to grow probably 50-60 feet if not higher up. While around 35 fsw doing a stop I saw these huge bulbs and kelp trailing off them coming up from the ship. Thought that was very cool!

Dive two this day was the one that I was waiting for. While the SI was rough on me I was determined to make it back in as this was our penetration dive. We were the last of all the teams to do our penetration dive. I really wasn’t nervous about entering the ship, more anxious and excited than anything. Once in I had that same feeling I had from my first dive… WHOA! This is a whole other world! Even though we didn’t penetrate as far as we could have since we were all time limited so the instructors didnt get too high of a deco. obligation we still went in a decent way. 21w HID’s inside of wrecks are the only way to go also! I wasn’t the reel diver on this dive and I did have difficulties with the line. My buddy had been running them high over head and when id go through a bulkhead it got tangled on my manifold twice, but after the dive the instructor told me I managed and cleared the entanglement appropriately. I was sad when we were told we had to turn and head out, as I wanted to keep exploring.

Sadly on the third day the group had decided that they were going to take the hour and a half boat ride down to Mexico to dive and I decided against the trip. While I regret it now, I don’t know if id have gotten sick and I just didn’t want to be stuck with that far of a ride if I did. Since then I’ve done more research and have a whole regimen of things to do prior to stepping on the boat to try and eliminate the sea sickness all together. I have yet to test it though, but if it doesn’t work I’ve still got a few more options. I did get to hear about and see pictures from the dives though so it wasn’t a total loss.

In the end this was an amazing class, and a logistical feat that took many hours of careful planning and communication with the charter operator. Big kudos to Paul Miller and his staff of Instructors and assistants as well as Waterhorse Charters out of Mission Bay.

The thing I wasn’t excited about was diving in my wetsuit as my drysuit is still at DUI for repairs.

We swam out a little more than half way and decided it was time to drop. The wind waves were really making the swim feel like you weren’t moving. I wasn’t too sure on my lineups, but when we made it to the bottom and I went at 120 we hit the pipe in about 10 feet. SWEET! We swam out, and at the end swam at 0 until we hit the Metridium. Vis was interesting…  there were walls of “Stuff” that would just disappear as you swam out clearing things to about 20 foot vis in the end. The Metridium were mostly open and there were a decent number of larger rock fish hanging around. If you looked up you could always see roughly 20 Sea Nettles above you, but I noticed these looked quite large, much larger than the ones I saw back in August. Otherwise the usual suspects including some larger sea lemon’s, nice dive. Swam back along the pipe and then to about 12 fsw and up. I did get to see my first Mola today, but sadly it was dead and in the process of getting eaten by about 20 starfish.

Todd and I decided one was enough since he would need a fill, and we were both cold enough .

Dive #123: 54fsw for 42 minutes. Dove EAN30 since that’s what was in the HP 100. Vis was 20 feet +/- 15 feet depending on depth.