The 'S.S.Tuggerah', Watamolla, Sydney.

After this dive I began to realise the truth in the statement Rich Pyle often makes about the fact that on CC you don't need to do anything in a hurry.

We set out from the Port Hacking River and a stiff South West wind picked up. Once we anchored on the wreck I proceeded to pre-breathe the unit to warm up the scrubber, however one of the displays appeared to have gone down. It was reading .02 instead of .21 like the others. I didn't relish the thought of pulling the scrubber apart on the small 4.7m tinny we were in however I wanted to find out what the problem was so I had to.

The batteries were fine but when I checked the sensors a wire had come loose from one of them which was easily fixed. Pulling the back plate off and the scrubber apart was actually quite easy even in the small boat and the whole exercise only took about 5 mins. I pre-breathed the loop for 5 mins then geared up and entered the water. There wass a slight current and the water was very murky down to 21m with an algeal bloom. I got to the bottom and felt quite relaxed. In fact this dive was the easiest I've done as I am becoming more familiar with the unit and diving it. I waited for my 'buddy' to arrive and tied off the anchor.

After looking around the wreck for about 15 mins my buddy signalled he was going up. On the single 11Ltr tank he had the dive was ending for him because of gas consumption. I casually looked around the wreck for another 5 mins. The lack of narcosis when using heliox is great on deep dives in poor vis.Even though the vis was poor I was very relaxed and aware of everything. I was confident with the surroundings and swam off from the anchor and the wreck at one stage. My buddy on the other had was narced and not confident in finding the anchor under the combined effects of the narcosis and poor vis so had stayed near it.

I came back to the anchor at 20 mins and had planned to stay longer. The thought of doing a long deco in murky water and all alone didn't really do it for me so I decided to ascend. It dawned on me that I had hours if I needed and could take all the time in the world untieing it and ascending. One thing was obvious, with a CCR you don't need to do anything in a hurry. At my 21 m stop I was directly below the brown line of the halocline and the separation of the water layers was a strange sight.

The breather was easily removed in the water which is the only way to get back into the small boat. I was glad I had a shutoff mouthpiece ;)

After the dive the wind had dropped and the sea was very calm however a strong current had picked up. We fished the wreck and had a large seal only metres from the boat toying or fighting with what looked to be a large sea snake. He eventually killed it and started throwing it around but when we saw it up close it appeared to be one of the large serpent eels that inhabit the sand around the wreck. We also had a school of about 20 dolphins go lesiurely past us. To top it all off I caught a Dolphin Fish about 10 seconds after I threw in my line. It just goes to show, with a CCR everything comes easy. ;)

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Last updated 1998 by Scott Leimroth ©