BlackTip at 250 on the Clark

[stuartv]

Scuba John Baker, our friend David, and I dived the E M Clark yesterday. it's a tanker that was sunk off the coast of Hatteras, North Carolina, by a U-boat in 1942.

500' long, laying on its side. The bottom is about 250fsw. Top of the wreck was just a bit deeper than 190.

We all took scooters - me with my BlackTip with the Tech tube on it.

We had just over 25 minutes on the bottom and then did drift deco for a total run time of 99 minutes.

My BT was flawless and with the firmware from @benjammin17 it was a serious pleasure to drive. There was some current. Having the cruise control option was great - especially when I wanted to switch to driving with my left hand so I could pinch my nose to equalize my sinuses. In particular, that was helpful during descent where we were driving out scooters to the bottom to get down quickly. But, sometimes it was nice to be able to switch hands just because.

Also, having it where the slow speeds don't migrate back up to speed 3 was nice. We were able to scooter around inside the wreck. Having it restart on speed 1, instead of speed 3 was very handy. At the end of the dive, we unhooked and drifted next to the anchor line from the boat. There was just enough difference in drift speed between me and the boat that I would use speed 1 to stay with the anchor line as we drifted. Again, having it restart on speed 1 if I shut off for a minute was nice.

Thanks, @benjammin17 for making that firmware!

I had DeWalt 12 Ah batteries. We were on the trigger for most of the dive and a lot of the deco. I pressed the little battery meter button on each of the batteries this morning and they still showed as full (3 segments of 3!

This is a short video that John shot of our dive. I'm the main one shown and the only diver with a BlackTip. John and David had a Magnus and a Suex.

 

[crofrog]

That's awesome it is really pretty amazing how much life you get out of the batteries I have 2 blacktip techs with 9ah batteries, and I did 2, 1 hour dives with them this weekend with probably about 90 minutes on the trigger at speeds 1 to 5 and they came out with 2 bars on the battery pretty amazing.

 

[johndiver999]

That looked like a cool wreck, nice video.

 

[GDHLEWIS]

Looked like a sweet dive

 

[stuartv]

Yes, the Clark is an awesome dive! That was my second time on it and I want to go back. There seems to be some good opportunities for penetration to places like the engine room. The forward part of the ship has large holes giving lightzone access into the hold areas, and swimming to where the forward blast hole (from a torpedo hit) is easy.

I have been very, very fortunate to hit it last year and this year on days when the weather and sea conditions were just perfect. This year, there was so little current, we were actually able to anchor into the wreck, instead of having to hot drop. That was really nice!

 

[stuartv]

That's awesome it is really pretty amazing how much life you get out of the batteries I have 2 blacktip techs with 9ah batteries, and I did 2, 1 hour dives with them this weekend with probably about 90 minutes on the trigger at speeds 1 to 5 and they came out with 2 bars on the battery pretty amazing.

Yep. Ever since Dive-X came out with the first version of the "quiet" firmware, it has seemed like the runtime was a decent amount longer than their specs say. I'm kinda surprised that haven't re-tested and changed the specs they publish. They claim 123 minutes (IIRC) running on speed 3 with DeWalt 12s. I think it has more like 3 hours at speed 3. I bought a 4-bay charger when I bought mine because I was sure I'd want to have 2 sets of batteries. But, I have never killed one pair of 12s in a day, so I never have bought a 2nd set.

 

[crofrog]

Yep. Ever since Dive-X came out with the first version of the "quiet" firmware, it has seemed like the runtime was a decent amount longer than their specs say. I'm kinda surprised that haven't re-tested and changed the specs they publish. They claim 123 minutes (IIRC) running on speed 3 with DeWalt 12s. I think it has more like 3 hours at speed 3. I bought a 4-bay charger when I bought mine because I was sure I'd want to have 2 sets of batteries. But, I have never killed one pair of 12s in a day, so I never have bought a 2nd set.

I did the same with the batteries and then ended up buying a second dpv for my wife. I agree with your assessment of the run time. I'm pretty new to the blacktip, so I only have used the one firmware, but they seem to exceed their published times in unrigorous testing.

 

[Six Feet Under]

I managed to knock two bars off my set of 10aH Dewalt batteries the other day in the Rainbow River here in Florida (first real use, other than testing it out at the local swimming hole to make sure it worked upon arrival).

Scootered upriver from KP Hole to the red dot, with a stop at the campground swim area to secure the dive flag to the float with some cave line. Then we did a 74 minute bottom time dive at the sandy spot, of which half the time we were probably on the trigger at varying speeds, and then scootered back to the KP Hole.
Roughly a 1 mile round trip, not including the bottom time, half of which was in HEAVY flow and we weren't exactly going slow on the way back, either.

I was impressed to have not killed the batteries on or before the ride back to the park where we got in the water, to be honest. I'm kind of wishing I had a second set of batteries right now (as we're about to go on a 3-day trip to West Palm/Boca/Ft. Lauderdale to go shore diving), but I guess I could always order them tomorrow and have them delivered from Amazon to our hotel.