Malta 2015 Holiday - Day 5

Getting going

Today Rob and I would be diving the Um El Faroud. So again we were up at 7am, we had breakfast at the apartment of coffee, toast and a cereal before we left for Techwise.

The usual process of gas analysis and labeling and we were done, there were two trucks were heading to Zurrieq. One was full of Dutchies :)

You can read the report of our dive here.

Post-dive

With Rob's computer failing we decided to skip the second dive and just chill in the cafe and have some lunch and discuss the dive - it's definitely a GUE thing, although I'm seeing it more in other tech agencies too, to conduct a debrief to discuss what went well and what didn't. We both had a chicken fillet burger and mellowed out.

Roger then joined us to tell us that they had failed to find the wreck, not surprised really, if Alan hadn't redirected me we never would have.

We left Zurrieq to head back to Techwise, where we dekitted and discussed the plans for the next day which is to dive the Gozo wrecks. Trimix for the twins is ordered and we are requested to be at Techwise tomorrow at 8am.

We retreated to Huggins for a deco beer, or two, and then headed home. On the way I bought a light pink rose from Interflora as a surprise for Charlotte. She is after all supposed to be on holiday with me!

Getting back to the apartment, we had dinner and just relaxed on the sofas watching the video of today again. Watching it back you can clearly see Rob poking his computer to make it work!

Malta 2015 Holiday - Day 4

Getting started

Another 7am start for Rob and I as we did the usual walk to Techwise but stopped by the coffee shop next to the Vivaldi hotel to get coffee and rolls for breakfast. Alan arrived as we walked out so got a lift the last of the way.

Arriving at the dive centre we find that Gozo is being struck by southerly winds which means the wrecks are no longer an option. We would be taken to the Inland Sea and Blue Hole to perform a long range circuit. Rob and I weren't thrilled by the concept of a reef dive because we really love to get deep inside the rusty stuff. Whilst I know it's a nice dive, Rob and I didn't think it was worth it so we decided to not dive today and unloaded the twinsets and stages.

We retired to the Black Bull to have breakfast. Whilst there we worked out how we could repair the Anderson connector on my HID light battery and how I can safely and reliably carry the GoPro.

Returning to Divewise, Rob and I managed to solder to negative lead back on to the connector plate and a nervous test and the light sparked straight up! I also found a bolt snap and zip ties so managed to secure that onto the case, now I can clip off the GoPro when not needed.

Returning home after the rain subdued to have a cheese and crackers for lunch. The evening was spent lazily watching TV and relaxing. So hardly a thrilling read of a day, but every now and then, a lazy day like this is never a bad thing!

Dive report: Hellespont

About the wreck

A paddle steamer converted to a minesweeper for WW2. The first mine it found blew out a massive chunk of the bow.

Dive report

Using the Techwise RIB from St Paul's bay it was a 15 minute ride out but with a bit of chop. This time I had managed to get into my wetsuit completely before we departed. At the five minute warning I started to get into my rig. I was kitting up next to Alan, who didn't start getting into his JJCCR until much after but was ready and straddling the tube of the RIB for a sideways entry.

Rob and I back-rolled in, and descended down the shot, just like on the Imperial Eagle it felt like the first few metres were hard to drop through, but after that we accelerated our descent and after nearly 3 mins we arrived onto the bow of the wreck.

At some point during the descent, my DSMB unravelled. So upon arriving at the bottom I had Rob help me do a rapid re-roll and stowed it on my butt d-ring. The clarity that the trimix was giving us meant that we quickly worked together with no communication required other than Rob pointing out the problem.

I then dropped into the forward bow compartment to look around, I found a lobster pot before exiting.

We then proceeded down the starboard side. Oddly enough Rob and I noticed some brief flashes of light, we assumed someone has a strobe.

Looking into the bow

We moved around to the starboard side past what we think would have been the bridge. Underneath this structure is the massive engine. The engine and the structure are still reasonably intact, probably because they are made of iron perhaps?

Looking in to the engine

Moving further aft along the starboard edge, looking left I can see a boiler laying perhaps 50' feet away. There is no debris between the main ship structure and the boiler which says to me that the boiler came apart from the ship at the surface. If the wreck has crumbled as it sank, I would expect a large debris field around it.

A quick look down and I noticed a few holes in the deck, not through damage, these are intended / designed. Looking down I see a ladder running down from the deck into a hold: I can see large black lumps down there. This is a coal bunker.

Coal bunker

Just after (heading to stern) these hatches is the starboard shaft that would drive the massive paddle wheels.

A quick look at the bottom timer: we are at 9 minutes runtime and I'm at a depth of 38.5m. I'm not feeling it though, my head is at the equivalent of just 26m thanks to the 25% helium content in my twinset meaning I'm breathing less nitrogen, which in turn is reducing the impact of nitrogen narcosis. Basically,  this means my mental faculties are completely intact, whereas without the helium my brain power would be equivalent to having a big night on the town! Oh ... and it's 22 degrees at nearly 40m!

Bottom Timer: 38.5m

Heading further aft we see that the deck area which would have masts or other structures with rigging on is a mess ... heavy cables are strewn across the deck. Heading further aft, we come to a wall of fish. There is a tight school of fish running about 0.5 to 1.5m from the sea-bottom, and then looking upwards there sea is just filled with hundreds of fish everywhere. This is paradise!

Beautiful water with fish everywhere

We slowly swim around following the hull of the ship, the wreckage is incredible, but still very intact which allows for a good peer into the various holes. Following the port side of the ship along, we come to the the cavernous opening on the side of the ship where the mine exploded. Unlike the Titanic which could have stayed afloat with some relatively simple design changes, there was no way this could have stayed afloat: the ship have basically been opened from keel to deck. The water would have poured in.

Mine Damage

We met Chris Ryan here who took a few pictures of Rob and I. We had a good look in here, you can see the boilers up close and there is probably room to get in, it would be tight, one man at a time but could be done. I was sorely tempted but thought I'd give it a miss. I ascended up towards the deck so that Rob could get in there and have a look about.

Whilst I was manoeuvring myself, I stumbled across Alan on his JJ and a bottle of red wine! As you do ...

Alans wine bottle ...

I'm above Rob right now, so I'm using my light to put some extra light in the holes so he can have a look about. A quick OK of our lights is all that's needed to double-check on each other (we don't even need to look at each other during this - as long as we can see the spot of the other persons light, we know they are OK and can communicate using it).

Swimming forward once again to where we first landed on the wreck, I'm swimming over the boilers looking down on Rob and then drop down to be beside him. On my right I see a structure with what I think is the boilers visible.

Rob is now swimming forward to the bow section that I swam into when we first landed - I see him stretch out his left arm to 'hug' his stage closer to his body, that means he's going in. I'm swimming close behind-left so that I can record and light up as he's in.

Rob is going in

Rob's now moved all the way to the bow section now, there is room in there for us to both be in there which would make some nice close-up but dark shots. I decide to follow him in through the hole he swam through to my right.

Prior to writing this next section, I want to say something: there is no macho-ness applied to this. Everything I say is exactly what happened, how I thought and how I felt.

So I'm now moving to the hole so that I can follow Rob in ... OK I'm lined up with the hole, lets get some forward momentum.... aaaand kick ... aaaand kick ... and we are moving and now half under the decking. Carrying a stage creates the metaphorical shit-ton of drag, so you quickly slow down between kicks. I went to give my next kick but it gives me zero forward momentum. Eh? OK kick again ... zilch. What's going on. (watching the video I shot, you see that I go forward a little bit, but then as though I'm on an elastic rope I get pulled back).

Rob is in there, but I'm stuck

Ah I must be caught on something, let's do a wriggle and back kick a little. OK lets drop a few inches and try going forward ... nope nadda inch. Lets wriggle again, but this time roll a little one way then the other. Kick ... nope not an inch. OK the wreck gods aren't letting me in, let's back up to film Rob coming out (he's now turned around and looking my way).

Back kick ... and back kick ... and back kick ... nothing! Then it dawns on me: I'm trapped while my buddy is in an overhead environment. Bugger. I look sheepishly at Rob and just point upwards towards my manifold. There's NO point me wriggling about, getting stressed trying to reach behind me and work out what's going on - he can see what's going on infinitely better than I can. So I'll let him sort it out.

So let's recap the situation: I'm about 40m underwater, I've been down for 20 minutes, I've got a limited gas supply and accruing a decompression obligation that is growing at a rate of about 1 minute per minute on the bottom, my buddy is in front of me and I'm trapped. What am I thinking? Basically, in one word: meh. I decided to just stop kicking and rest and let him sort me out. I'm not panicked because I'm just thinking this is going to be such a simple problem to solve that Rob will do it in seconds.

He swims out a hole next to me (smaller than he swam in through), I feel that he's above me holding on to my manifold and pushing me about, I then get a big tug backwards and I'm moving! Job done, let's carry on with this dive.

I wanted to caveat this section because I didn't want to dramatise this to make it sound like I'm such a hero. I'm absolutely not, this comes down to two things, I've had some fantastic technical diver training and probably even better, I trust my buddy implicitly. Rob and I have a good laugh about this now. This whole process probably lasted no more than a minute in reality.

So I'm out the hole and free, Rob asks if I'm OK.. yup! I gesture to swim out of this area and on to the decking so off we go. What I didn't realise during the entrapment, Alan was hovering above watching what's going on, once I'm on deck he asks me if I'm OK - aye absolutely fine was what I wanted to say. He then sneakily (but not sneakily enough) checked my gauges, he was wondering if had I panicked and burned through a load of gas.

Reaching the stern, we swam off the ship and dropped down to have a look at the propellers ... And we couldn't see any .... Umm ..? Oh wait its a paddle steamer isn't it! What you can see is a honking big rudder though!

Looking up, I just see the peaceful blue light coming through and a gorgeous silhouette of the ship. This is fantastic. My favourite dive so far! Rob flashes his light in front of me to get my attention: we are going to start swimming around the ship. Interestingly, the seabed here isn't sandy, it's large rocks.

Swimming around the wreck, I'm filming looking upwards to get a nice silhouette against the beautiful blue light coming down. As we come further around the wreck, I get a quite frankly million-dollar shot of Chris and Allan starting their ascent, the wreck and Rob.

Rob and I continue our circuit of the hull, Alan has moved the shotline (which is actually a ScubaPro weightbelt with about 30kg on it!) to be outside the wreck just forward of the paddlewheel shaft. I get a nice shot looking up and then another as I slowly ascend up and look down the shaft (that phrase is going to get this post x-rated isn't it?).

We are now crossing over the wreck width-ways. Ahead of us are two square hatches and coming out of the far one is a 'conveyor belt' of fish which is quite cute.

Conveyor of fish (lower-middle)

We are now at 25 minutes bottom time, we decided to head over to see a boiler that has fallen away from the wreck. It was still very much intact and looking inside you can see some coal that hasn't been consumed.

Returning to the main ship we worked our way forward towards the shotline and at 31 minutes we called the dive and started our ascent.

Injecting some gas into the wing to get moving upwards we ascended nearly 20 metres before settling at 21m Rob switched to his 50% bottle first, then I switched. I had modified the profile slightly to give us three minutes at 21m, then stops every 3m. The ascent from 21 to 9 flew by because the stops were only two minutes each, so by the time you get settled it's time to move off again.

By 15m the wreck became a haze and by 12 it was no longer visible, but what we could see was the surface rippling above us with speckles where the rain was pouring. It turns out that the flashes of light were in fact lightning.

The 6m stop was 10 minutes, and there was only a minor swell so we just relaxed and reflected on the wonderful dive we had.

Once the mandatory deco at 6m was complete, we did a 1m/min ascent with a slow drift upwards.

Gas in 200 - 80 in twins, 170-70 in al80.

Video

From the GoPro I've assembled a short video on our dive on the Hellespont.

Hellespont from Chris Armstrong on Vimeo.

Malta 2015 Holiday - Day 3

Getting started

An early rise again for Rob and I, we walked to Techwise but stopped by the coffee shop next to the Vivaldi hotel, on Steve's recommendation of great coffee, to get coffee and rolls for breakfast.

Just like yesterday quick analysis of gas and we headed to the marina in Spinola Bay. This morning it had rained, heavily, and Maltese roads are not designed for the heavy rains so the final descent to the pier was fairly treacherous and the truck slide for a good stretch of it.

At the pier, the kit was taken off the truck and then loaded onto the rib, with only four divers there was much more space on the boat compared to yesterday and also being prepared and knowing what to expect with a rib took away a lot of stress.

You can read the dive report here.

Literally at the moment I sat down on the bench, my light-mounted GoPro fell off!! Luckily Chris spotted it, if that adhesive had failed just minutes earlier I would have been a very grumpy man!!

Returning back to Spinola Bay, Viv came to collect us. We contemplated diving the Blenheim Bomber, but the wreck is so small that we didn't think it was worth the effort so decided against it and went back to clean up the gear and discuss plans for the next day.

The plan was that we will dive the Karwella and Cominoland on the south coast of Gozo. Chris Ryan, Julie, Rob and I went to Huggins for lunch and a pint or three before finally heading home.

Getting home it was a quick shower and clean up as Rob and I would be heading out to Sliema to meet up with my friend Vasi. We had dinner and cocktails at Texmex, before Vasi have us a lift back to St Julian's.



We took a detour into Saddles bar and ended up having several pints of Guiness and a few JD and coke while we watched some guys play table football. We also noticed that the JD in our JD and coke wasn't JD! We decided to not kick up a fuss and just left.

Dive report: P29

About the Wreck

The ship was scuttled on 14 August, 2007, at Cirkewwa, just off the north-west coast, near the ferry terminal. Also known as the Boltenhagen, P29 was an East German minesweeper before being commissioned by the Maltese Navy in 1996 as a patrol boat. 

The wreck is about 170m offshore, between Cirkewwa Point and Lantern Point, near the popular Rozi wreck. (from Divernet).

Patrol boat P29 was a Kondor I Class former Minesweeper and Patrol Boat that was scuttled as a dive site in 2007 off Ċirkewwa, Malta. It was built by Peenewerft shipyard to patrol the river banks between the East and West Germany and then was also used as a minesweeper for the East German Navy under the name Boltenhagen.

It was purchased by Malta in 1992 along with its sister ships P30 (formerly Ueckermuende) and P31 (formerly Pasewalk), and was used to secure the Maltese coast against smuggling and border control operations. It was sunk as an attraction for divers on 14 August 2007 to serve as a diving site. The P29 is 51 metres long and lies at a depth of around 35 metres but the entire dive may be done at 25 meters. (from Wikipedia).

The image below shows the underwater terrain about the wreck. According to the sketch, we used "route 1", which is probably the shortest and easiest to get to the wreck (from Malta.com)

Schematic

Dive Report

Entering at Susie's pool, Rob and I switched onto our stage which for me contained around 110 bar of 50%. From there we swam out at 10m, staying behind and above Steve who is guiding us to the wreck. With Steve at 25-30m, the bubbles of his exhale created a beautiful curtain that stretched right up from the depths to the surface above us.

Curtain of bubbles from Steve

Once the wreck becomes visible, I indicate to Rob that we should switch on to back gas (as breathing 50% at 30m+ when on the wreck would expose us to extremely high levels of oxygen, whereas we've got trimix in the twinset on our back with far less oxygen (about 25% vs. 50%), both switched and comfortable, we then descended onto the wreck. Congregating at the stern, we made sure the team was settled (now consisting of Chris Ryan, Rob and I), before setting off to swim along the port side.

In the number 1 position, I swam forward (there were many doors and windows at the rear of the superstructure, but we wanted to swim forward first), as I swam forward I gently ascended up the side of the super structure to be level with the bridge, most of the instruments were removed here, but the console and windows were still in place. The massive amount of fish swimming around the wreck is beautiful! The wreck is also covered in plantlife which is thriving.

Schools of fish on the wreck

Stopping at the top of the superstructure, I look back and I can see the light from Rob is stable so I continue onwards to the bow, descending as I go, just in front of the super structure is the gun. This gun has been placed as the patrol boat isn't normally equipped with a gun like this, regardless it still makes for a great photo opportunity! Just in front of the gun, I see an open hatch leading down into the bow - if only I had a full twinset then I'd feel like I could explore more!

I swam along the gun then circled around to head along the starboard side. I had got to the entry door when I looked behind me to see that Rob and Chris were not behind me, they were still at the gun taking pictures.

Rob at the gun

With the team re-assembled, we entered the hatch on the starboard side. Turning right and then descending into the next room (there were actually holes cut into the floor of the compartment that we just entered, but they looked a little cosy to swim through and my team is still coming through the hatch above me and might not see me descending again).

The first compartment

In this room, I turned left to head towards the stern, this next room in particular still has gauges mounted on the wall, some kind of instrumentation room. I did a quick 180 to check on the guys behind me, I see two torches, neither moving rapidly so all is well. Continuing on I suddenly have a dawning realistion: I'm doing the exact same route as I did two years ago, but this time I have trimix in my twinset which is making everything clearer - this journey through the ship certainly feels longer than last time. Leaving the room with the gauges, there is a very short corridor which leads further aft and ultimately exits into a compartment that is a largish cargo hold at the stern. 

Gauges

Once in this cargo hold, I waited so that I could see the entire team in this compartment. This compartment felt very different from what I remembered of my previous dive - again proves how valuable the trimix I'm breathing is - even at 34m things are exceptionally different from how I remember! Chris was following close behind and took a picture of Rob as he swam through.

Cargo room

I ascended up what appeared to be an elevator shaft into the outside world. Chris followed me with Rob ascending third. I think that I was stressed because I felt like my breathing was elevated for the entire dive, so I took a few moments to rest on this ledge while Chris took pictures of Rob coming up.

Ascending up

At this point I was down to about 80 bar so thumbed the dive on gas reserves, minimum gas had been set at 60 bar so I didn't think with my current state there was any point exploring anywhere safely as I would quickly burn through that last 20 bar and then into our safety reserves.

Getting ready to leave the wreck, I remembered that we arrived from the back-right corner of the ship, when I pointed in that direction (supported by my compass) Chris disagreed with me and pointed straight off the stern ... He's been here several times so clearly knows more than I do.

Swimming along we passed above the anchor so I knew we were on the right way back even though it didn't seem right by my bearings.

The anchor

Rob and I then did a switch onto our stages with 50% in at 21m on the fly (but still a team switch).

We swam back to Cirkewwa, looked in on the Madonna statute located in an alcove just below Susie's pool before finally ascending up into Susie pool where Chris took a picture of us he then found a fish very similar to the lethal stone fish.

Madonna statue

After completing deco we exited and came home to Techwise where we met Julie.

Video

During the dive I was carrying a GoPro Hero (the photos above are simply stills from the video), I have assembled a small video about our dive which is below.

P29 from Chris Armstrong on Vimeo.

Dive report: Imperial Eagle

About the wreck

When first launched in 1938 until 1947 she was named "New Royal Lady”, then in 1948 as "Royal Lady" and thereafter until 1958 as "Crested Eagle"  Built by J. Crown & Sons Ltd, in Sunderland England and powered by two oil engines manufactured by Crossley Bros. Ltd.  Imperial Eagle made its maiden voyage between Malta & Gozo on 1/6/1958.

At 45 metres long it had accommodation for 70 passengers and room for 10 cars. It remained on the Mgarr to Marfa route until March 1968. After 1968 she was used to transport cargo and animals from Gozo to Valletta. She also served for storage. In Malta she was owned by Sunny & Maria Pisani a family from Gozo, and was sold to the local Diving community on 28/11/1995 to scuttle her as an attraction for divers. The Imperial Eagle was scuttled 500 metres off Qawra Point on 19/7/1999.

Dive report

My initial doubts in my confidence were magnified initially because the first 3m was very difficult to descend through and had a strong current until about 6m. During this period I was thinking "I roughly know my weighting, but threw on an extra 2kg to be safe, was I still wrong? I feel like I'm neutral at the start of the dive, what state will I be in at the end with 30 minutes of deco to do!"

My concerns were quickly belayed, once I got past 6m I started to drop like a rock and I was injecting a good volume of gas into my wing which reassured me because it implied I was over-weighted, so the initial difficulty of descending was because the suit was soaking up the water because it was dry to begin with and the air was working its way out.

The shot line is permenant to a massive cube of concrete and it landed us right next to the statue which we used as a reference and got settled. OK-ing each other to confirm that we were both happy, Rob reset his computer to give us an accurate bottom-time (to exclude the descent time) and average depth (to exclude the time spent during the descent at shallower depths which would be artificially pulling up the average) and I started to ascend up the front of the statue to shoot an initial bit of video of this iconic feature. We followed the right arm as instructed but it hit the reef wall head on, I chose to go left at the wall, but that was wrong, so we only got on the wreck by about 10 minutes in.

Leaving Jesus behind...

We arrived at the wreck hitting the bow head-on, both of the forward anchors are still attached an in place, and the anchor hoisting machinery still clearly visible, just behind the anchor hoists, there are two box-shafts with ladders down the side that lead down into the forward cargo area, but the decking was vacant in many areas which made for a much easier descent in. Rob gave me the OK and he led into the cargo hold.

Arriving at the wreck

Dropping in, we entered the cargo hold aft of our position (I didn't notice during the dive, only on watching it back later that there was a door leading forward), the hold was quite small, possibly only for storage, but it was very atmospheric having the blue-light streaming through the decking and through the port holes into the room. Amazingly, the individual rivets are still visible on the individual metal plating of the hull in here.

Just here, I get a small shiver of cool water running through my wetsuit - being inside the wreck, the water is 'stagnant' and not being replaced with warm seawater from outside as often, as a result the water here is probably 5 or so degrees cooler than the 'exterior' sea water (so a chilly 18 vs 23 degrees!!).

Completing our circuit of this room, probably no larger than 5m-by-5m, Rob communicates his intention to leave this room into the next and then ascend back onto the deck.

Leaving the forward room

Swimming along the port side of the wreck a few meters, we then re-enter the wreck into a room that is located below the wheel house, possibly a canteen given the size of it. We work our way slowly around the room in a clockwise direction until we face aft where we exit this room through a doorway on the starboard side into what could be an observation area as it is open and windowed all the way around. Again the decking here is vacant and only the metal structure is present.

Crossing to the port side, below us we can see another cargo hold but we do not enter it as it looks like a plain square room approximately 7-10m in length and the full width of the ship.

Possibly a canteen area.

Continuing aft on the port side, we pass a boxed off area that contains the smoke funnel running up from the bowels of the ship, below what would be knee-level if standing as a passenger on this ship, there are port-holes which indicates that this would be a room - Rob is ahead of me and is circling around to look through a hatch that leads into the room - I take a cheeky glance through a port-hole and see the top-half of a steam boiler.

Coming around to be beside Rob, who is now about shoulders-deep into the room before he back-fins away to allow me to have a look in while Rob moves around to an open hatch to cast his light in too. As I thought, its the engine room, there are two boilers orientated along the length of the ship, one port and the other starboard. There is a step-ladder to enter and it would be possible to get in, but it would be very difficult to helicopter turn in there without causing significant silting

Rob has to overcome his inner-wreck-ferret, it's just too tight!

It really is tight ...

We are now most of the way towards the stern, and start to head back along the starboard side on the main deck. Watching the video back, I did notice that there was a hatch on the floor - this could drop into another part of the engine room or a cargo hold. We come out through a window to be completely outside the wreck once again and then turn aft again to head around the rear of the ship. On the seabed we can see the massive ramps that were used to allow cars to drive on laying beside the ship as they are hinged to the deck.

Passing over the ramps, working our way both backwards and descending there are massive schools of fish swimming here. Dropping a further few metres we see the pair of propellers - each blade must have been nearly a meter long each.

Heading aft

We have now swum around the stern and are now heading along the port side heading towards the bow, we decide to move up to the top of the ship to see the wheelhouse (if it was still there) and the only indication of the wheel house - the ships-wheel. On the way we swim around the huge smoke stack - probably 4m in diameter and maybe 7m tall. Now that we are on top of the ship, we are now no longer shielded from the current which is currently running from starboard to port it isn't a problem, we are basically swimming diagonally and drifting forwards along the length of the deck.

Coming up onto the top deck

Arriving at the wheel, it stands in isolation - nothing remains of the wheelhouse other than a few pipes and cabling. Rob is hovering just to the left of the wheel, while I'm attempting to get into position to shoot some video with him in the background of the wheel and I see him taking his reg out ... the way he does it is slow and relaxed (whereas when we practise our drills we throw the reg away quickly) so I know nothing is wrong - that is confirmed when I see him doing an ear-to-ear grin! That's exactly how I'm feeling too dude - 40m down, 24 degree water, helium, 30m visibility - yeah everything is awesome right now!

Rob at the ships-wheel

Heading forward again, there is a little section of the railing of the wheel house left, but otherwise it is flat here, so we drop down onto the main deck near the bow. The current run time is 30 minutes, I have about 100 bar left, I instructed that we should make our way back to the shot line.

Just as I'm swimming over the bow, I get a flash (of light) from Rob, I look over and he's pointing down at something ... So I swim over and look down to see ... a perfectly pristine, upright, ceramic toilet!

And ... it's ... a ... toilet?!

We leave the wreck and following the reef back to the statue and shotline. At this depth, even though the water is very clear it is still cutting down on the available light which means that the flora is mostly a green colour (that is the colour of light in most abundance at this depth).

The journey back took far less time than I expected and after just a minute or two the statue was visible, (I called the dive at least 5, maybe 10 minutes early in hindsight) so rather than ascending straight away (and to make best use of the bottom time and gas we have) I decided that we would go back to the statue to take some more pictures of Rob in brilliant trim as usual.

Swimming back along the reef

By 34 minutes, I called the dive and we started our ascent. We switched to 50% at 21m. The ascent continued fairly quickly as the stops were only 3 minutes at 21m and 2 minutes every 3m, but by the time we arrived at 12-15m the currents had grown to a level which couldn't be compensated for with just gentle fining, so we grabbed onto the shot line to provide the support.

Deco at 15m, stunning!

By 6m the swells became an annoyance, I would regularly see my bottom timer reporting 4.8m ... 6.5m ... 6.0m .... 4.9m... Whilst simultaneously the ears had the pressure coming and going. None of this made the deco particularly bad, just something to manage.

For 34 minutes on the bottom, our total runtime was 60 minutes (there is something psychological about doing at least an hour so I dragged out the last few minutes :)). A maximum depth of 41.8m was achieved when we dropped right down to the propellers, but the average depth for the dive was around 36-38m.

Rob deco-ing out

Video

Below is the video that I made of our dive, shot using a GoPro Hero (the original one), edited and colour corrected using Da Vinci Resolve 11.3 (product wesbite). Hope you enjoy it!

Imperial Eagle from Chris Armstrong on Vimeo.

Malta 2015 Holiday - Day 2

Alarms are going off at 7am because Rob and I need to be at Techwise for 830 and because we haven't got anything in the house, we will stop somewhere for breakfast. Walking through Paceville, we stopped in at the Black Bull for breakfast and coffee before then wandering down to Techwise for 830.

Flying 1600 miles to eat the same food as home!

It was a straightforward morning of analysing gas, loading up the truck with (a lot) of cylinders!

And off we go to the marina to meet the boat.

Launching from the RIB

The rib arrived, we loaded up and took the 5-10 min ride out. I had to try on two wetsuits during the drive out. In the end I settled on a two piece wet suit to give me the comfort and thermal protection. It had been my initial plan that we would start with easier back-gas only dives and then build up to the trimix dives later, nothing like starting off the wrong way around! I have been diving about twice a month for quite a while so I felt reasonably good that I could jump straight in with this level of diving, I still had some apprehension though.

You can read the dive report here.

While waiting for the RIB to come get us, I couldn't resist doing the Richard Rawlings (Fast 'n' Loud / Gas Monkey Garage) "woo"!

Back on the boat, its time to chill!

Reflecting on an awesome dive!

Rob - serious!

Once we arrived back at the dock, we loaded up the truck and headed to Cirkewwa to dive the P29.

A beautiful day at Cirkewwa.

While we had lunch Steve 'scary' Sherry was decanting to refill our twinsets. Rob and I ended up with about 140 bar, so we would take our deco stages and breathe them on the way out to extend our range and preserve the back gas for when at depth on the wreck.

You can read the dive report here.

A rapid de kit and loading up the truck and we left to head back to Techwise. Whilst sorting out our gear we met Julie, Chris's wife. Discussing the plan for tomorrow, we would be diving the Hellespont, like the Imperial Eagle it was at 40m+ so we elected to use trimix with 50% for decompression again.

Retiring to Huggins for the mandatory deco, Rob and I had lunch and got to know Chris and Julie - a lovely couple! Rob and I retired home to the apartment where we watched the dive porn of today. I was still pretty tired so took an early night again, 8pm, to rest up for tomorrow.