owlbill
November 4th, 2008, 04:27 PM
So, marc g and I were offered a chance to get out to the Jodrey and so, of course, we said yes. We have been looking to explore this site as a training site for our technical courses.
We decided to run a somewhat conservative plan of 180' for 30 minutes using NAUI's Heliair mix (16/24) with EAN50 for deco instead of oxygen as it cut 20 minutes off our planned deco obligation. Made sense to us anyway.
Tanks were filled, gear was packed, we agreed on a departure time from Ottawa to arrive at Caiger's in Rockport for about 9am. Of course, I was late and then we were late, but the boat left with us, and only 7 minutes latet than planned. We headed for Alexandria Bay to meet with the US Customs officers and then off to the wreck site.
Once at the wreck site, the boat was anchored and tied in and we got a quick review of the route to the wreck from MikeP. It was agreed the he and his buddy would lead Marc and I to the wreck and then we would each (pair) go our separate ways and do our own dive plans. Mike and his buddy entered the water and waited for us. What we did not know was they were dealing with some equipment issues while Marc and I got in the water. Once Marc and I were in the water and down at 20 feet doing our checks, it was Marc's turn to have some problems with gear, which quickly turned into the "3 strike" rule and the dive was called off. Inflator connections, leaking burst discs and a leaking deco bottle valve were enough to say "not today". So, we fixed all but the leaking deco bottle valve and quickly made up a new and much more simple plan.
We would now go just to the wreck and back, max depth of about 140 with no planned deco so we could at least get familiar with how to....well.....get to the wreck and back. We aimed ourselves in the rough direction that MikeP had indicated and although we were drifting a bit more that decending, we came accross a yellow rope which lead down to the crows nest of the Jodrey. We could see the Mikes below us but it was already time to head back. We had told the boat captain that our new planned run time was only 30 minutes.
We made our way up the rock wall to 30ish feet of water and slowly made our way back to where the dive boat was tied up. It was actually rather nice to not have all the other dives in the same area at the same time as we could take all the time we wanted to get into the boat and get our gear off.
So, we never really go onto the wreck, but we did get to it. We will be going back for sure to explore this as a training ground for heliair courses. In the meantime, we will fix that leaking deco bottle valve and plan for the next time.
I think Marc also got some photos at the surface. Hopefully he will post them.
We decided to run a somewhat conservative plan of 180' for 30 minutes using NAUI's Heliair mix (16/24) with EAN50 for deco instead of oxygen as it cut 20 minutes off our planned deco obligation. Made sense to us anyway.
Tanks were filled, gear was packed, we agreed on a departure time from Ottawa to arrive at Caiger's in Rockport for about 9am. Of course, I was late and then we were late, but the boat left with us, and only 7 minutes latet than planned. We headed for Alexandria Bay to meet with the US Customs officers and then off to the wreck site.
Once at the wreck site, the boat was anchored and tied in and we got a quick review of the route to the wreck from MikeP. It was agreed the he and his buddy would lead Marc and I to the wreck and then we would each (pair) go our separate ways and do our own dive plans. Mike and his buddy entered the water and waited for us. What we did not know was they were dealing with some equipment issues while Marc and I got in the water. Once Marc and I were in the water and down at 20 feet doing our checks, it was Marc's turn to have some problems with gear, which quickly turned into the "3 strike" rule and the dive was called off. Inflator connections, leaking burst discs and a leaking deco bottle valve were enough to say "not today". So, we fixed all but the leaking deco bottle valve and quickly made up a new and much more simple plan.
We would now go just to the wreck and back, max depth of about 140 with no planned deco so we could at least get familiar with how to....well.....get to the wreck and back. We aimed ourselves in the rough direction that MikeP had indicated and although we were drifting a bit more that decending, we came accross a yellow rope which lead down to the crows nest of the Jodrey. We could see the Mikes below us but it was already time to head back. We had told the boat captain that our new planned run time was only 30 minutes.
We made our way up the rock wall to 30ish feet of water and slowly made our way back to where the dive boat was tied up. It was actually rather nice to not have all the other dives in the same area at the same time as we could take all the time we wanted to get into the boat and get our gear off.
So, we never really go onto the wreck, but we did get to it. We will be going back for sure to explore this as a training ground for heliair courses. In the meantime, we will fix that leaking deco bottle valve and plan for the next time.
I think Marc also got some photos at the surface. Hopefully he will post them.