17/10/2005 - Dive # 17 - the Dredge 15/10/05

I conquered my fear this weekend and did my first ocean dive from a boat.  I was pretty scared but I paid for the equipment hire in advance - to discourage me from chickening out.

I was late signing up for the boat and the first trip was already full, so I put my name down for the second trip.  The club usually runs 2 boats but our new one has only just arrived and wasn't fitted out so the plan was to meet the boat at the ramp, where they would pick us up after they had dropped off the first boatload.

Before I went to sleep the night before I silently willed it to be blowing and raining when I woke up.

Of coure it was a stunning day when I awoke - only a slight breeze and warm and sunny.  You couldn't really ask for a better day to be out on the water.  I disconnected my overactive imagination for the day and packed all my gear up and headed to the boat ramp to be picked up.

The boat came in right on time and we swapped over gear and divers.  Only 2 of us were actually picked up, as 4 of the others from the first dive stayed on for 2nd dive.  Besides, it was such a nice day, I'm sure they didn't really want to be on dry land.

We headed out and had barely left the harbour when we were frantically waved down by another speedboat.  I feared they had recognised the dive boat and were going to warn us of shark sighting or worse.  It turned out their motor wouldn't start, and they just wanted a tow back to the ramp.  They didn't have marine radio so they couldn't call the Coast Guard (even though they were almost in earshot).  There was some muttering...  couldn't it wait till we'd finished our dive?... why didn't they  be wave down someone who was heading in not out?..but we obliged.  They didn't even offer us a carton of beer!

We anchored up and Dave being a legend put us right on the boat.  The Dredge sits upright in about 20m of water. It's was an easy wreck to dive for someone who's not "wreck certfied" - it's is quite open with a couple of eays swim-through's and if you're adventurous you can penetrate easily into the hold.  Unfortunately the vis left much to be desired and there wasn't much life to be seen.  The current was also running quite hard so the best place to be was inside the wreck!!  After skirting the circumference and going over timthe deck a few times, we were getting close to our no-deco limits and I was starting to feel the cold.  Plus my bottom timer/depth gauge was out of battery, so it was time to end the dive.

I stuffed up on the safety stop, relying on my buddy's hand signals I surfaced after only about 1 1/2 min. Although it was a pretty average dive I was pretty stoked to have overcome my fears of getting back into the water. 

A word of thanks to everyone in the club who have been nothing but supportive and encouraging to dive with.