Me and Sarge picked up all the tanks from the shop on Friday and the van felt heavy on the way home. 3 twinset, 2 ally 80's & 4 ally 7's all fully blown.
We meet early on Saturday morning and started the 2 1/2 hour drive to Dotty. We arrived after a stop for breakfast, 2 flooded roads and one land slide, considering the harsh weather there were already several cars there. Sarge and Geoff started to set there stages up while I sat in the back of the van with the kettle on. The rain started to ease up a little so we dropped all the stages down to the waters edge, followed by the twins and drinks. Now on one of the last trips to NDAC Geoff managed to put a hole in his dry gloves and I'm sure I told him to bin them things! This time instead of them being BRIGHT ORANGE they were black, I'm sure he was trying to make them look like wet gloves :)
Me and Geoff were in the water waiting for the old git to sort his stages out when Geoff very quietly announced that he had once again ripped the "not so dry, dry gloves" so he gave me the ally 80's to hold while he went back up the killer hill to get his wet gloves, several trips latter he manged to get into the back of the van and get his gloves....... So finally we started off and dropped into the black depths of Dorothea.........
The general plan was to get to the Nome garden find the lander and get to the bottom of that with a max depth of 80m and then come back up find the arch and then up through the 20m tunnel and back to the entry point. As Sarge has spent a good few years diving Dotty we decided that he would lead and me and Geoff would follow like puppy dogs..... puppy see, puppy do.......
The gimp got us lost!
We started off good, dropping down towards the white van then we should of gone right following the cable's, at this stage Gimp 2 (Sarge) decided to see what was left of the white van....... Well i can now tell you. NAFF ALL. We manged to get to the far left side of Dotty were the forest used to be. We manged to follow the wall all the way round at about 50m with a max depth of 77m reached. Now many of you will be thinking whats gimps, but we had the twins blown to 245bar with the stages blown to 220bar so we had more gas than we need and could ascend any time if we needed to. Soooo after many gestures given we decided to carry on. The viz was outstanding 30/40m its just so dark down there. At depth the cold did not really hit us, the lowest temp reading was about 9deg's. After a very short time a depth we started our ascent. Once we hit about the 45m mark the light came back and the water started to warm back up to about 11deg's we ended up with about an hours worth of deco to do which was not to bad. Normally we do most of the deep dives in the sea so there's only the other gimps to look at but this time we were in the forest and its a very nice environment to spend time in being in the middle of trees under water is a very strange feeling. The deco went well no problems, the last stop was for about 25mins which went very fast. We found the slate wall that runs the back end of the quarry and the top of that is about 4.5m so I dumped all the gas from my suit and laid there listening to music.
Me and Geoff were in the water waiting for the old git to sort his stages out when Geoff very quietly announced that he had once again ripped the "not so dry, dry gloves" so he gave me the ally 80's to hold while he went back up the killer hill to get his wet gloves, several trips latter he manged to get into the back of the van and get his gloves....... So finally we started off and dropped into the black depths of Dorothea.........
The general plan was to get to the Nome garden find the lander and get to the bottom of that with a max depth of 80m and then come back up find the arch and then up through the 20m tunnel and back to the entry point. As Sarge has spent a good few years diving Dotty we decided that he would lead and me and Geoff would follow like puppy dogs..... puppy see, puppy do.......
The gimp got us lost!
We started off good, dropping down towards the white van then we should of gone right following the cable's, at this stage Gimp 2 (Sarge) decided to see what was left of the white van....... Well i can now tell you. NAFF ALL. We manged to get to the far left side of Dotty were the forest used to be. We manged to follow the wall all the way round at about 50m with a max depth of 77m reached. Now many of you will be thinking whats gimps, but we had the twins blown to 245bar with the stages blown to 220bar so we had more gas than we need and could ascend any time if we needed to. Soooo after many gestures given we decided to carry on. The viz was outstanding 30/40m its just so dark down there. At depth the cold did not really hit us, the lowest temp reading was about 9deg's. After a very short time a depth we started our ascent. Once we hit about the 45m mark the light came back and the water started to warm back up to about 11deg's we ended up with about an hours worth of deco to do which was not to bad. Normally we do most of the deep dives in the sea so there's only the other gimps to look at but this time we were in the forest and its a very nice environment to spend time in being in the middle of trees under water is a very strange feeling. The deco went well no problems, the last stop was for about 25mins which went very fast. We found the slate wall that runs the back end of the quarry and the top of that is about 4.5m so I dumped all the gas from my suit and laid there listening to music.
Once we surfaced it came to light how far round someone had led us....... But with happy faces and some good banter we started the surface swim back round to the entry point.
We have not had much time for Dorothea this year with all the sea dives but next year with the ccr units we will be spending a lot more time there.
Many thanks to Geoff and Sarge for a good day!