Dive Log 20 & 21: Diving My First Wreck and More Than Doubling My Previous Depth

95’ sunken “Jay Scutti” tugboat and Oakland Ledges
off Fort Lauderdale, FL
21 July 2016

Boat scuba dive: max depths 75’ and 33’

I was actually kind of nervous as the boat motored to a stop. Day 2 of my Scuba Dive Open Water Review Course, and my first deep dive ever.

Even though I got my PADI Open Water C card last August, I had never scuba dived off a boat.

The peppy blonde dive master dove down to wrap the anchor chain onto the sunken boat resting upright on the ocean sand bottom 75 feet below.

When she came back up, the captain gave the rules and said “alright everybody in the pool”.

I tried to remember everything from Day 1 of my crash review course yesterday.

I did the giant stride off the back of the boat, holding my right hand over the regulator in my mouth. And I was in.

My head bobbed below the magnified surface, and came back up.

My dive instructor signaled for me to follow him down the rope.

We had to hold onto the rope so the current wouldn’t push us away from the boat below.

The visibility today was excellent – 60 feet.

I pre-equalized, and repeatedly equalized every few feet hoping I would not have a depth pressure problem, which would mean I’d either have to abort my dive or face injury to my middle ear.

My dive instructor had told me not to concern myself with feeling rushed by others coming down the rope, to focus on safety, so that is what I did. And I wasn’t having a problem.

The hulk of the boat appeared down there and loomed larger as we got farther down the rope.

Then we let go and swam to it.

I sunk for a moment to the sand bottom and looked at my dive watch.

75 feet.

I would have smiled if I didn’t have that big ass regulator in my mouth.

I checked my air. I was sucking air – dive lingo for somebody who uses up air quickly.

For a moment I looked around. The boat captain has said we were in the Great Mojave Desert. Aside from the dead but now living boat, nothing but sand bottom as far as you could see.

I lifted up to practice horizontal buoyancy and began swimming alongside the wreck.

The entire ship was encrusted with life. Schools of small fish flitted through.

Looking inside the cabin, which felt exactly like looking in the doorway of an old abandoned house out on the plains or desert, I almost expected to get a whiff of cooler, dank air. Fish were chilling.

Cool blue light shafted through the windows, which were just open squares now, glass panes long since removed.

Watch your air watch your air watch your air.

I did watch my air, but still I sucked it down and the captain had demanded that we be at the surface with a minimum of 500 psi left in our tanks.

As you end any scuba dive and ascend, providing you did not go past your No Decompression Limit, you have to do a normal safety stop of at least 3 minutes at a depth of between 20 feet and 15 feet.

This is so all the nitrogen your body has absorbed at depth pressure below has time to off-gas out of your bloodstream.

(Freedivers don’t have to do this because we are not breathing compressed air, and can simply shoot back up to the surface.) Scuba – you gotta be careful.

I did make a mistake.

My air ran out quicker than even I expected, and in order to save enough to be at the surface with 500 psi, my instructor motioned for me to breathe off his alternate air source until we got back up.

Yes I need to be careful. I’ll get better at lowering my air consumption. Bottom time is limited as it is, and it goes quickly!

I stared down at the sunken boat.

The freediver in me yearned to get good enough so I can reach that depth on one breath!

But scuba is def cool. You can stay under a lot longer. Just gotta be careful.

Remember your body has become hooked up to artificial life support mechanisms, with their own mathematical configurations that must be followed exactly, all of which changes everything should anything go wrong.

Earlier I’d had to work through an itch on my eye, which I could not scratch.

Again I thought of Mars. When they go, they’ll have to be inside that compressed life support system forever and ever, with no exposure of any of their body to the elements ever.
I thought: would it be like diving underwater forever?

Least here, your body, your head, your skin, can touch the water.

 

*   *   *

 

After we got on board, the captain took the boat over to the Oakland Ledges, and we did a reef dive to 33 feet.

This is what you call a 2-tank dive. We had been at the dock by 8 a.m., and were back at the marina shortly after noon.

I actually saw a few baby staghorn corals growing up from the bottom. This is very good because with the massive die-off of staghorns, I was assuming that we were just going to have to try to hold onto whatever adults were still alive.