Aug
30.Aug.2009 – The Barge
Yea I haven’t been keeping up but ill put in a quick one for yesterday’s dive.
As part of my PADI Wreck Diver class yesterday we hit the barge at Breakwater. I was quite excited about this dive as it had been attempted in the past but either never made it to the water or never made it to the barge. I was really hoping this would be the day, and it was…
After dropping with my Instructor to use his reel and a half circle pattern to find the line to the barge we shot up an SMB so the other students could descend to the line out. Before the dive I had been concerned that there could be a lot of sea nettles as I had heard that there was a large number the prior day at Hopkins Deep. Unfortunately, the same was true for today at the barge. After quite a bit of dodging and poking of nettles out of the way, we finally made it to the barge. Sadly we only had about 5 foot of visibility, so it wasn’t all that spectacular. Plus if you werent paying attention to what was directly in front of your face you were going to get stung.
At about 40/50 minutes of bottom time we decided it was time to head back. UGH, more nettles! This time the tide/current was on its way out, so they all were slowly moving out to sea. For whatever reason they were all swimming into this current thusly all their tentacles were trailing them and were also the first part of them you would see. After many close calls, I got it, smack dab across the right side of my lips. A few minutes later, again on the cheek. I was cussing at them through the regulator, I doubt they understood. Finally just before reaching the point where they cleared up, I managed to get one right across the forehead. I was not a happy camper at this point. We continued on our way back, despite all being stung numerous times. Finally I hit 1100 psi (had been down 20 min longer than my buddies to help find the line) and I signaled it was time to ascend and do our stops. Right at the end of the last stop either Cliff of Jeff noticed I had fishing line tangled on my manifold. They quickly cleared it and we completed our dive.
At the surface we were all complaining about the stupid nettles. I managed to get stung again by a residual tentacle that had managed to get attached to my hood. Smack dab on my cheek, next to the one on my lip. UGH! I had wanted to save air as we were supposed to have a second dive do so some reel and other drills. The instructors decided with the viz how it was there was no point, so I called it a day.
(Ill update this later its all from memory)
IIRC…
Dive 115: 65 fsw @ 76 minutes, with 52F water. 5 foot visibility, far too many sea nettles and EAN32.
