The Dive That Was

This is going to be my account of a recent dive that occurred in Thunder Bay in Alpena. For my sake, I am going to try to record all of the details now so that I can recall this later if need be. Don't expect too many pictures no stock photos are available. Of course I will not mention any names as to protect all parties involved :P.
So this Saturday the 7th was to be spent diving Thunder Bay in Alpena. We were going to explore two wrecks, the first was the one of the most importance and intrigue on the trip The New Orleans.

The New Orleans is a wreck that was was sunk in 1906 after striking another boat. The intriguing part of this shipwreck was that it is practically unknown. The name occurs here and there in diving books, but few people seem to have dove (within my social circle). We thought that diving this wreck would be interesting because it might be a pile of wood and it might be fully intact. Secondly, because it wasn't frequented the depth reports were all over the board. Some pages suggested the wreck lay in as much as 200 feet of water, while others suggested as shallow as 60 feet of water lay above this boat.

As we pulled up to the site, the first diver entered the water. With a technical background, this diver was well qualified to moor the down line to the shipwreck. We all watched from the surface as he descended down through the glassy water down what seemed like 60 or 70 feet before he disappeared into the darkness. Within a few minutes he was back at the surface. At that point he requested that someone join him in the water to ease his nerves a bit. "I've just got those monsters in the back of my head". Little did we know that we should have caught that as a warning sign. My buddy suited up and dropped in within three minutes. The two descended down to depths and then signaled by shooting a water bottle to the surface that everything was moored and ready for the remaining divers. As my buddy was already at the bottom, I was then paired with the tech's buddy. The plan was for us to trade back into our normal pairs at the bottom of the line and then proceed with the dive. At this time period the second flag went off, my buddy wrote on the tech's tablet "are you sure about that line", and the two went back and double checked it. The line was secure.

So the two of us proceeded down the line and reached the area where the down line was moored. The interesting thing was that the captain had actually managed to snag the down line into an existing buoy and its line that had sank. As I was going down the line I gave it a quick glance, and then actually did a double take. Sure enough, the two lines were well snarled together. They weren't going anywhere. So just like good divers, the plan was doable and still valid so we went with the plan. We swapped buddies. So now back with my normal buddy, we began swimming the perimeter of the deck. We reached the forward rail on the starboard side. As we discussed my buddy signaled that he would stay at the rail as I went over the side to get some more depth, he already had reached his max depth and in order to not build up his deco time. I came up and felt very groggy we started swimming away and I remember thinking "Oh yea I am diving on a shipwreck, this place is weird". We continued diving at a relaxed slow pace around the front of the bow which was very intact and than looped back around the forward port railing back towards the mast and our ascent line.

Over with the other pair of divers they were repeating the exact same procedure, except they both re-descended to 130. At this point the dive buddy realized that something was wrong with the tech diver and they start ascending in the water. He snapped out of the narcosis haze about 10 feet above the deck and he realized that he had already accumulated so much bottom time that he had to call their dive immediately for him to even have a chance of being able to completely deco on his remaining gas.

Meanwhile, over in my group I recieved the signal that we needed to ascend because my buddy was nearing deco. "UP Five" he signaled, and we quickly rose trying to escape from the deco envelope. "UP FIVE" again he signaled we ascended to see the other two divers Zooming past us. "Follow Them" my buddy signaled. So we started kicking after them, "FASTER!!!" he signaled and we kicked as fast as we could. They reached the down line about ten feet before we did. As we started panning up the line in pursuit of them we realized the line was really loose. We kept working up the line until eventually we found the end in our hands. We had been disconnected from the boat. The up line was no longer in place, and we had to get up fast because the deco envelope was closing in on everyone.

Before I knew fully what was going on the tech diver had deployed his lift bag and reel. We shot up the line, my computer was alerting "Too Fast!" so was someone else's, however the beeps seemed insignificant compared to the other serious situation that was afoot. Rather than getting separated from the group and being forced to free ascend with nothing for bearing. Or trying to blow my own lift bag and having to worry about entanglement between the two. We all traveled as a pod up the line as the tech made his deco stops. The speed of travel was actually enough to get me a ceiling warning for 4 minutes.

So I am sitting in my stop waiting for this warning to clear, and the tech diver looks over to my buddy and flashes "How much air do you have?", and he responded "500psi". The tech said "Switch to pony" and he did.  The tech looking ever more frantic looked over to my rig. Apparently he tried to signal "I am low on air", but I didn't catch it. So the next sign he flashed was "I am out of air". He said "Immediately my eyes filled my goggles" I rushed to deploy my pony. I wiped the regulator free of its restraints and charged the system by turning it on and whipped it over to him. He responded with the "give it to me" hand signal and I dismounted the pony from my rig and he took the handle and took it to do his remaining deco stops.

Eventually everyone made it out of the water and onto the boat. He popped up found his dive buddy and gave her a huge kiss (they are dating), then he came over to me in his full rig and in mine and gave me the biggest warmest hug I think i'eve ever received. I don't think that I did anything special, I just did what I was trained to do and had the right equipment at the right place at the right time.

 I came to find out that when he signaled out of air he had 262 psi of pressure remaining of his back gas and apparently the Poseidon regulators that he was diving are known to free flow at pressures less than 200psi due to their design. He gave me quite a bit of credit for "Saving him" but I think I need to assert the fact that I really didn't do anything except carry the equipment and share it at the right time. However, I can say that my pony bottle has officially paid its self off on this dive.