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Day One
Team 1 Leigh, Gana, Alexey. Deep support Neil, Terry, Andre. Shallow support John, Victor
Team 2 Jimmy, Per.
Surface support ME !!!
The project starts today and I am rather excited about getting to see inside this cave that I spent days sitting outside on the last project. But today is not the day that is going to happen! Being the only girl on this project someone has to keep these boys in order, so I volunteered to be surface support for the first day. Support doesnt mean I have to give a shoulder to cry on or even be nice at all it means organising the boat and trying to stop Leigh doing 3 hour briefings which on the whole go "sweet as sweet as, cool cool, sweet as"
So... we arrive at Ocean Tec at 7 am to make sure everything is already on the boat and head down the jetty. On the boat are masses of tanks, all with different mixes of gas in them so its kind of difficult to do a tank count!!
Once we get to Jack Fish Alley (in the Ras Mohammed National Park), I head off to tie the mooring that only one of us has an idea where it is, and that's not me! All I know is its near the drop off and in 20 metres. By luck I find it. For anyone that has not tied a mooring before what we do is feed the line through a metal ring and stay at the bottom still feeding the line through for about 20 pulls, the line then floats up to the boat and they pick it up on the surface. As I turn around there is 20 metres of rope on the floor behind me, I have never tied with a negatively buoyant rope before, I think my words were "oh Bugger"
Next job is to get the station in (this is a bar at 6 metres and a bar at 9 meters for tanks to be hung on, so people can do deco stops on if they want to) Jimmy has carefully measured the rope so that the bars sit at the right depth. As they drop it in it looks like the bottom bar is at about 12 metres so I drop down to have a look and yes the 6 mtr bar is at 9 mtrs. John gets in the water snorkling to help me retie the station. That done, a shot line needs to go in so the boys can swim over to the gully where the caves are and drop there rather than waste time swimming under the water trying to find it. Jimmy has given me a reel with 55 mtrs of line on, so I can tie it off on the drop off and put a SMB on the surface. I drop down to 5 mtrs and the line literally explodes off the reel into a big ball of line, the reel has broken!! John swims back to get another one. I am told this has 45 mtrs of line- I reach 27!!! Tie it off then reel another line across the bottom to the boat so they can follow it back. this one makes it 10 mtrs short!! we are not doing to good at measuring today!
Jimmy and Per go off for their dive. At about 87mtrs Jimmys all singing all dancing kerby morgan reg decided its not a party animal anymore and wants to give it all up for another life. It feels like he has no air all of a sudden this is just at the moment that they had both enetered the cave. He changes to his back up, tried to sort the problem out but he couldnt get it to work again so they bin the dive and start their ascent.
Meanwhile I am on to my next job of putting tanks on the station. I wish someone had a photo of this, I had a twinset on my back, 3 tanks clipped to each side and one in each hand, 10 tanks total, look at me tec diver extordinare!! To a deep depth of 9 metres! So for now most of my jobs are done except still trying to get Leigh in the water, and keeping watch in case of any problems and timing the rest of the support team of Leigh, Gana and Alexey. Their support time are to go in at staggered times to meet them on the way up. It is agreed that the shallow support team and I will do a rotation shallow dive so Leighs team are not in the water alone at any time. This doesnt go to plan as I ended up doing a 120min dive whilst the rest were warm and cozy on the boat eating diner !
Day one over everyone is OK and just the tanks to be ordered for tomorrow. I will sleep well tonight!
DAY TWO:
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