S.S. Tuggerah - Off Marley Point, Sydney.

This was my first deep dive on my CC 'TopGun' rebreather, and only my fourth ever dive on it. The dive was off local charter boat 'Cape Bailey'. I was keen to do as many deep dives as I could because I intend taking my breather to dive a wreck in 75 - 90m in Tasmania in a few weeks and wanted to get some time up on it.

After prebreathing to warm up the loop for 5 - 10 mins and doing all my predive checks I entered the water. I flushed through with O2 at the surface then began my descent adding diluent as I went. I descended slowly at first not knowing how the unit would equalise with a fast descent but after about 15m I realised I could descend as fast as I liked. Upon reaching the bottom I sat on top of the boiler for a few minutes to adjust my PO2. There was a moderate current on the bottom and it was quite strong at the stern of the wreck as is usual.

The first thing I noticed was that my two 'safety divers' - 'dive buddies' Max and Lesley had dissappeared. Oh well they had obviously gotten tired of waiting for me as I had taken a while to get to the bottom and Max isn't known for his patientce. They later said they had looked for me but couldn't find me , probably because there were no bubbles. The visibility was about 15 - 20m.

The first thing I noticed was the lack of any narcosis. Hey this majestic wreck was really just a pile of scrap! ;) Actually it was quite interesting to take in the full layout of the wreck in such clarity. I noticed may small details that had eluded me on air. I swam around the stern then headed towards the bow. In front of the boilers I stopped for a few minutes to take in the view. Wow! The wreck is absolutely covered in fish life, mostly thousands of nannygai and a few bream, snapper and an occassional king fish was darting into the large school to feed. Looking back at the boilers it struck me how the wreck looked like it does in photographs, it always looks different because of the absence of narcosis when seen through the camera.

A lesson learned.

As I ascended and dumped gas through my nose I began to get blurred vision. "AARGH!!! The scrubber must be flooded and i'm about to pass out from CO2" I thought. But it was just steam fogging up my mask ;)

I flushed through with O2 at 6m although it is just about impossible to get a PO2 of 1.6 because some diluent stays in the loop. I tried fully inflating the loop then removing the diluent hose and pushing the add button to see if I could force the water out but only bubbles came out. I assumed I had cleared all the water but it still gurgled when I added diluent. I completed my deco without incident.

Back on the boat it still gurgled though I couldn'nt hear any water sloshing around inside. It wasn't untill I got home and opened the bag that I found what had happened. A false alarm, there was no water in the bag at all but the bottom plastic plate on the apex drysuit add valve had come off. This meant that any gas I added was injected directly onto the bag material and for some reason it makes the bag gurgle exactly like it would if there was water in it. I was happy it had not leaked but not impressed that I had had to cut my bottom time short. Oh well, better to be safe than sorry.

Another thing that seemed strange was the steam coming from the mouthpiece after the dive. It was like a kettle on full boil. I was concerned until I found out this is fairly normal, these things do get extremely hot and any condensation is burnt off as steam. I played 'Thomas the Tank Engine' for a while to the shock of the other divers on the boat who all thought I must be lucky to still be alive.

It was great to do this dive CC after doing it so many times on air OC before. One of three successful RB dives done today by the AARG. Rod and Suzie having dived a reef in 45m on the Gold Coast today as well, Suzies first deep CC dive also.

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Last updated 1998 by Scott Leimroth ©