On What A Knight

Hi everyone. Thought I would do a little write up of my very first night dive at stony cove.
Met in the car park and buddied up. The plan was to take in a couple of the sights, safety stop and exit. We did a good brief with the instructor pointing out the dangers of diving and light etiquette. So far so good with the nerves firmly under control.

Entry was rather interesting having to kinda fall/step/get thrown backwards due to the step on the slipway but no biggie. My buddy and I being the first 2 in we just floated for a while (must be a 60's hippy reference there somewhere lol).

Ok now for the dive. I had a little trouble getting under for some reason. I was diving a drysuit with 10Kg's in intergrated weight pockets. 6Kg's in front and 4 at the back. I have recently dived Capernwray with the same weight setup and it seemed to be just right but this night did seem a little underweighted. I did get down to 6m however and things seemed ok, enjoying watching a little crayfish in my torch beam untill I put some air in the dry suit. I have a sholder dump and had it about a 1/4 closed as at Caperwray I had it fully open (This is my 4th dive in a dry suit). Just as we are about to set off to the first checkpoint of the wessex helicopter I find myself drifting up slowly by my feet. My buddy comes to my rescue as I am trying to get horizontal again and between us and the instructor we get sorted. and away we go with only the smallest amount of air in the dry suit. Now we drop down over a shelf to the helicopter and the groups has a little get together no make sure we are all there.

Things are now getting a little squished in the suit so I pop some more air in to get a little more comfortable and I seem to have things trimmed out nicly. We start off for the next checkpoint whch was the bus and about 1/2 there im drifting up feet first again. This time I pretty much get myself back horizontal by somersaulting around and pressing the shoulder dump as it dosent appear to be auto dumping. Buddy is right by me and gives a steadying hand on the last little bit. Now my foot has come out of my left boot, but as there is no air left in the dry suit I can fin onto the next checkpoint as it feels fine (a bit weird though). Get to the checkpoint fine have a look around and a bit of a pause so the group is altogether once more. At this point I open up the dump valve on the suit all the way and am using my BCD for buoyancy.

Now comes the best part of the dive. I did concider calling the dive at this point but 1 am not cold, 2 I am comfortable although a little squished, 3 I can move and swim fine and my buddy seems happy and we both have plenty of air left. We now swim to one of the wrecks (I forget which one) but seeing the bows appear out of the night is a sight that is beyond description and reminds me why I do this sport (dont forget im a newb ). We go up and over (wow) and head up towards the shelf for the safety stop.

Ok we get there and I decide to try and get my boot back on so that I can get out of the water easier as we we just going to be sitting there anyway. We are on a shelf at around 5.5m and my plan was to kneel, pop a bit of air in the suit then raise my left leg and pull the boot back on. I close my shoulder dump about 1/4 of the way again and give the briefest of puffs, try to get the air in the leg but once again i am drifting slowly up by mt feet. This time I am on the surface before I get horizontal after just over 1/2 of the safety stop. I inflate and lay face down looking at my buddy who looks up and asks if I am OK. I signal back ok but remain face down keeping an eye on him untill he surfaces. I think the instructor though I was in trouble as he comes up just after my buddy, swims over and put even more air in my BCD untill it burps out the safety valves. I calmly tell him I am fine and we swim out and exit the water. At least I managed to get my foot back in the boot on the surface.

Back on dry land the boss instructor asked how I got on and we have a chat. I concluded that I realy enjoyed the dive. It was a great learning experiance and would happly do another night dive. I was realy upset at myself for blowing the safety stop as I could have waited untill I got on the surface to sort the boot issue out. As a result of this I decide not to do the 2nd dive and to give my buddy a chance to have a stress free dive. I am confident that should I find myself in the situation feet up again I can get horizontal. I also think I was under weighted and another couple of KG's was needed. I also think I need to get the shoulder dump looked at as 1 it didnt seem to dump air and 2 when I got out my left arm was soaked as it was from Capernwray. Lastly I was pleased that I didnt panic as this is the first dive I have been on where things didnt go according to plan and I was unsure how I was going to react when things did go belly up (or feet up as the case may be lol)

I would also like to thank my dive buddy as this was the first dive we had done together and he was brillant. I belive he is a DM and I have done a couple of dives with his wife who is also a DM (she did my nav skills at Capernwray for my AOW)

So any comments on what I did wrong will be greatly apprecated as this is a learning curve and you gentilbeings have more experiance than me

Happy Diving
BK

Dry suit diving is a challenge.

Those shoulder dump valves never seem to want to dump, do they? You've got to really think far ahead in managing the air in your dry suit, especially during the ascent. I ended up replacing my Apeks dump valve with a Si Tech valve because I was so unhappy with the dump valve's performance. In the end, there wasn't much difference between the two valves and I've learned to just think ahead, start dumping sooner.

In general, the air in your dry suit is easier to manage if there's not much air in there to manage. I dress really warm inside of the dry suit and then use less air for inflation.

The soaked arm may in fact be from your wrist gasket. A lot of people have prominent wrist flexor tendons, and when they bend their wrist it forms little gaps in the skin and water flows into the sleeve. I know at least one person who wears a very thin dry glove at all times to prevent such leaks.

It's a big challenge, keep trying!

I must admit I did find it easier with no air in the suit although it was a little squished at 20m. I will keep on trying though and thanks for your comments Harry. I should mention that the suit was 2nd hand although the valves were new. My buddy did mention it might be a good idea to get a cuff dump fitted as well. This would help me improve my control untill I get better with the shoulder dump.

BlueKnight:

I must admit I did find it easier with no air in the suit although it was a little squished at 20m. I will keep on trying though and thanks for your comments Harry. I should mention that the suit was 2nd hand although the valves were new. My buddy did mention it might be a good idea to get a cuff dump fitted as well. This would help me improve my control untill I get better with the shoulder dump.

Click to expand...

20m is pretty deep! Generally, I don't start putting air in my drysuit until I'm down to 6m. I remember what the "squeeze" feels like at 6m. Then I keep just enough air in my drysuit to keep that "6m squeeze" feeling no matter how deep I am.

I tried going to 20m once without any air in my drysuit and it was pretty painful.

I was surprised it wasnt as bad as expected. It also helped to keep the fins tight on my left leg as my foot was 1/2 out of the boot. I could still move around ok but a bit stiff. Also I felt quite warm. The water temp was down to 10 degrees C but with a nice thermal undies set, thick undersuit and booties it was nice and toasty. Apparenty I can get some little straps that go on the boots to help keep them on in this situation.

Sounds like on the previous dive you were weighted okay but, maybe alittle apprehensive with the night dive so increased resp./ anxiety may have caused some bouy. issues, even if it felt like you were calm, we are all human and stressors i.e. new enviroment(night dive,drysuit) may have affected you.

Maybe keep this in mind when weighting for future dives where you may be trying something new or even a strenuous dive, I personally hated my drysuit till about the 10 th dive, now is never a problem, keep at it and soon it will become second nature.......

Thanks for the tip Bane. It didnt occur to me that stress may affect the weight we need to carry. Cause for some pool experimentation methinks