Nice flat calm conditions on Friday as the three boats set off for the Ines with 10 of us aboard, 9 rebreathers and me
On reaching the site, which is 16km offshore in one of the largest ship parking spots in the world, we dropped the shot and the first divers got ready to go. The plan as always is the first two divers go down and attach the shot line to the prop area and send up the shot with a lift bag.
After around 10 minutes we started to become concerned as to why no lift bag appeared and from our GPS we noticed that we and the buoy had moved off the wreck, we were drifting!
Our plan for the next wave of divers to follow did not happen and we waited until Angus and Marcin surfaced to find out what had happened.
Apparently the shot line was too short, and had not reached the bottom (72m). Initially Angus had tried to pull the line against the current to the Ines that was out of sight due to poor visibility but found it difficult even when Marcin joined in and even with both of them swimming against the current they eventually gave up and decided to ascend.
After surfacing and knowing what had happened, we prepared a second shot line and restarted the dive plan. This time with Stephen and Sultan it worked and once the shot was retrieved the first boat was tied on and the rest of us started to get ready.
Wisam and I were last in and we met the others on their way up.
When we arrived it was like a night dive, and I was clueless as to where we were since the line was not attached to the usual area, in fact it was near the stern on the starboard side, but the visibility was so bad, perhaps the worst I have experienced on 20+ dives on this wreck.
After 25 mins I signalled to Wisam to ascend and fortunately from his experience he knew where to locate the line and we began our ascent.
We had a total run time of 91 mins after starting our ascent at 26 minutes and my TTS when switching to 100% was also 26 mins, which although seems a long time, passed fairly quickly.
