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NOT Identified - Mysterious Wreck in 100 Metres
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Apr 22, 2025
Sometimes wrecks don't want to give up their secrets and this is one that will almost never certainly be identified! The Gasperados hunt for the missing USCG Tampa took us to a mark that was 50 miles North of Newquay, Cornwall in nearly 100 Metres (300 feet) of water. We might not have found the Tampa but we did learn a lot about old steam ship engines! *Highlights* 00:00 Introduction 02:33 The search for USCG Tampa 07:50 Decompression profile and Time To Surface (TTS) 17:39 A beautiful two cylinder steam engine 24:50 The joy of strobe 29:10 Come on Rick!!! 31:00 Decompression stops & diluent switching 36:10 Accelerating decompression *Thanks* Our skipper on this dive was the awesome Chris Lowe of Atlantic Diver - https://www.atlanticdiver.co.uk/ *Kit I Use* Note, some of these are affiliate links so help support making my videos:
View Video Transcript
0:00
hi this is Dom Robinson and welcome to my deep wck diver channel the thing about exploratory diving is you never
0:07
know what you're going to find So today we're going a really long way offshore
0:12
the weather is fantastic and we've got really high hopes that we're going to find something special what we end up
0:19
doing is learning a far more about old steamship engines than uh than we ever
0:24
thought we going to do not that I've got anything against them of course I was just hoping for something uh like a Bell
0:30
or whatever that would help us find it now this is the chart showing where we are and as you can see it's it's 50
0:37
miles out of new Kei and uh that's a long long way offshore um so when you go
0:44
this far offshore obviously you want to know a bit about the uh the wreck that you're diving and the only real source
0:50
of information comes from uh the UK hydrographic office uh published on recite and this is the data that we had
0:59
for Deep Off your Rex you can pretty much discount everything apart from the survey information the ukho just
1:06
basically guesses at the name of Rex so in this particular case the bit that we're looking at is uh the sort of ter
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the paragraph of text just above the bottom where it says that the uh the site was surveyed in uh 1980 by HMS for
1:24
and they established that the least depth was 82 M that's a chart datum um
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but most of it was about 92 M there was a small scour and there was a uh a wreck
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that was 40 m long and it at its highest point it stands 9 MERS above the seabed
1:40
so that's a really small wreck but it just so happens what we're looking for is a really small wreck so this could
1:47
fit the bill what we can probably say is it's not the wreck it's supposed to be because although UK think it is because
1:54
that's 82 M long so this doesn't fit very well with that so spoiler alert we
2:01
don't identify the wreck today and almost certainly no one ever will you'll
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see why if you stay tuned and uh and listen to the rest of my dive so even
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though we don't identify it it's still an interesting wreck from you know a bygone era and crucially for us it was a
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a strong possibility for a wreck that we spent quite a long time looking for so
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the US Coast Guard tamper was lost in 19 198 and it's a really important wreck
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for the for the US Coast Guard it's never been found we were looking for it and uh you know I reckon at some point
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we're going to find it but it's not today's dive so here we are on board Atlantic diver which is one of the very
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few deep diving boats still operating out of new in North Corall and uh the
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skipper Chris low has been doing this for a very long time pretty much all the wrecks in this area he put divers on for
2:59
the first time time and he's he's kind of he doesn't really do so much of it anymore so we're really lucky to uh to
3:05
have him as our Skipper um you can see him there on the right he's just kind of come out of the cabin out of the
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Wheelhouse just to make sure we're all okay now as is often the case this is
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rickon and myself we're we're diving together we're pretty much the last pair in the water on this dive I mean you can
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see looking out of the the side gate on the boat there just how great the conditions are you know it's really flat
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we're 40 odd miles offshore here so a really long way uh the gates not the widest so I'm taking real care to make
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sure I don't get uh I don't get anything caught in that is a risk when you go out with with the amount of gear that we've
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got but anyway you can see I'm in the water and uh and there's the shot behind me it's absolutely still you know Chris
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has got his bang on slack which is great and uh yeah and as you can see conditions in the water look really nice
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the viz is good it's it's blue um so this is this is kind of May um you know
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nice time of year to dive uh Sun's right above us so uh got really high hopes on this wreck it's 90 odd meters uh to the
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bottom and uh I'm just waiting for Rick to be ready and then we're going to uh we're going to scoot it down and get
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down as quickly as as we can there you go you can see the back of the boat Rick's obviously uh taking you know a
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bit of a while to get in for some reason but he's getting in I'm just chilling out on the surface uh waiting for him
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waiting for him to be ready and uh you know what a great day to be doing it it's just it's so nice when you get
4:31
conditions like this I mean you can look down uh you can see me looking down the shot there there's no current whatsoever
4:37
which is uh which is just brilliant and I mean that's what you kind of get when you've got a skipper that this is that
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is is experienced as someone like Chris he's been diving and fishing out of this
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area his entire life so um you know he knows it like the back of his hand he he
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knows all the tides he knows the conditions he knows the sea States and of course you know what knows is is is
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all the wrecks and he he knows for certain that nobody else has ever dived this so um you know that's that's really
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nice you know it's it's great to have that opportunity now as I'm coming down here you can see this Loop here now uh
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one of the uh the things that Chris does a bit differently to other Skippers is he puts the lazy shot in himself so he
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doesn't rely on the divers to do it um it goes in with his main shotline but what he doesn't like doing is putting my
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Kindle in at the same time so um because it's it's ended up wrapped around the shot a few times so he has a strict no
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Kindles policy um on the lazy shot so if you want one you've got to put it in yourself so clearly that's what I've
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just done there you saw it was probably about 12 M or so um so that's there for uh for when I come back up now as you
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can see I'm kind of I'm heading down I'm sorting out the uh the video lights on my scooter um i' I've unfolded the arms
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and all that sort of stuff and I've made sure that the uh that the GoPro is running uh as you can see down coming
6:03
down here the the visz is starting to drop a bit so one of the problems with diving in May is you sometimes get May
6:10
Bloom which is kind of like Plankton and stuff in the water now the Plankton blooms destroys the visibility and then
6:18
starts to die and drop down now this today I can't 100% remember but it's either at the beginning or the end of
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the plankt and Bloom probably I think the end um so this is that the planks
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are just starting to die off and drop down but what you often get is this kind of Green Layer so you can see at the
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moment I'm kind of in the Green Layer and uh and pretty shortly I'm going to pop out the bottom of it and then the
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viz will just kind of miraculously reappear yeah you can see I'm starting to get it in now and you can see the
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color of the water is changing from that kind of green color that it was um you know I guess from about 20 to 30 m and
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now it's it's starting to get blue again so it's um you know that's nice it means that we're going to get good viz on the
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bottom hopefully which is which is obviously what we want you probably also saw on the way down that I stuck my uh
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my tag on the lazy shot so uh Rick and myself are the last pair of divers in so
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we'll probably be the last pair up as well which means that when we get back up our our tags will be there we'll take
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them off we'll release the lazy shot and we will um obviously then drift in the current if there is any on the subject
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of uh of Deco I get quite a lot of questions from people asking me um about
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bottom times and how much Deco you need to do and all those kind of things so I thought I'd I'd do something bit
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different on this dive I thought I'd Break Up The Descent with uh a bit of a chat about um decompression profiles and
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this here is uh a screenshot or I guess a video grab from uh the the download of
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my dive computer onto uh on onto my computer and you can see there the uh
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the kind of little window that's moving around with the cursor that's got loads of information about the dive obviously
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the the main piece of information on there is is the depth and also the uh
8:07
the time on the dive I'm in I'm currently at and it'll also give me uh some information there about TTS now TTS
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stands for time to surface and that what that is is if I was to leave the bottom at exactly that point and Ascend within
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all the parameters the dive computer expects such as Ascent rate and doing the stops at the right depth that TT is
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the very quickest that I could get to the surface so it's it's a really important piece of information so I'm
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hoping you saw that when I hit the bottom it took me about 5 minutes to get down there and I had 18 minutes TTS so
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right at the start of the dive i' already got decompression you can now see here that I'm about uh another five
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minutes into my bottom time so I've spent uh 10 minutes the dive has been going on for 10 minutes and you can see
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there I've got 48 minutes uh TTS so that 5 minutes underwater at that depth
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has incurred 30 minutes of decompression the other interesting thing to point out is the app five information and
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basically what that's saying is if you stay at your current depth for another five minutes that's what your TTS will
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be so at the moment you can see it's uh about uh you know it adds probably about
9:21
25 30 minutes onto uh onto the TTS so uh
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that's something for you to be thinking about while while I'm on the dive because all the way through the dive
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this thing about TTS and how long I stay down and how much Deco I've got to do
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that is all going through my mind so uh what we're going to do now is carry on with a dive but then I'll pick up some
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more about the Deco profile uh when it comes to ascend so back with the dive
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here I am at 50 m just cleared my ears um and uh but yeah just kind of looking
9:56
around I'm probably having a quick look just to check Rick is still with me there he is you probably saw just above me so so that's good you know one of the
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nice things about diving with Rick is is that we understand each other really well we communicate well we work we work
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together we we've done loads and loads of diving um and and by and large we do like to stick together particularly um
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on the kind of deeper Dives this one's 90ish meters today so not super deep but
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certainly um you know if if you get a problem it's a long way back up so uh so
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here we go and you can see how good the visz is you see it start to see some strobes at the bottom there so um those
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strobes will probably be 8 to 10 m above the bottom I guess so I saw them about
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65 M so you know looking straight down there's easily 15 M uh in the water
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column there um and obviously uh you know positioning your strobe is an
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interesting thing if you haven't done so you you you probably want to see my uh my strobe video somebody asked me there
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what what depth you should put the strobes at and it's kind of personal preference really I mean those ones
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there are probably a bit higher than I would like but you can see somebody else has put theirs a bit further down and me
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I like mine probably 5 m above the wreck maybe 5 to 10 met above the wreck 5 to
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10 m above the bottom um but you know I guess it's it's uh you know is an
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individual preference so here we go you see there we're getting to about 90 M and uh I'm going to uh I think I can
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just start to see the bottom coming into now yeah there it is you can see the seabed and you can see the the weight
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Chris um doesn't uh doesn't particularly use a grapple that's a bit deeper than I
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I recall there you go it's uh uh you know 96 M at the moment so I guess this
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is probably nearly a 100 meter dive uh I think you know those strobes are you
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know I'd have probably preferred to put them up a bit higher really but anyway doesn't matter my my standard double
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strobe is on you can see there's the uh the weight on the bottom uh Spud weight
12:01
in the terminology rather than say a grapple now you can see it's not bang on the wreck but just in front of me there
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is um a bit of wreckage coming into view so it's it's just off the side I think as I came down I would have been able to
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see that you don't always see uh on the uh on the power lens you know you don't
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get much peripheral vision off off the power lens so I would have seen the wreck and I'd have seen uh probably some
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of the other divers on it I'd have seen their uh their torches and whatever so here I am coming in onto the side of the
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wreck now and uh I've just turned my main Beam on uh main torch is in my left
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hand I've obviously got the two video lights on the uh on the scooter and basically what I'm going to be doing now
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is trying to orientate myself also worth noting that at this point I don't know
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that this isn't the tamper so uh there's still a really high level of excitement
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that you know we've come out here all this way all that expense all that time
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I mean it takes takes I don't know 3 hours 4 hours to get out here um and
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we're kind of hoping against hope that it's going to be the tamper and uh just so you know what happened to the tamper
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tamper was a a US Coast Guard vessel came over to um to help out during the
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first world war so the US Navy the US Coast Guard were were all supporting um
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anti-submarine Patrols in the English Channel and uh you know Bristol Channel
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as this is here or I guess maybe Irish sea you might want to call it um so they're all supporting the war effort
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and the Tampa was escorting a convoy and for I think it needed to go and get some fuel so it it left the Convoy went off I
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think was heading towards Milford Haven to get some fuel and uh was never seen again 120 odd guys lost their lives um
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mixture of Americans uh some civilians some uh some Brits um and what's really
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sad is this was the 26th of September 1918 so so just over a month before the
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end of the war and it was uh the biggest American uh Naval loss not Navy I guess
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Coast Guard but you know the biggest American Maritime loss of the first world war um you know I guess a relative
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a point when the Americans weren't used to fighting uh in Wars overseas Wars and
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it made a really big impact on the US Coast Guard so to this day the US coast guards still have a vessel called tamper
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in service and um they they're really interested in the search that's going on
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for the tamper and they've um you know if we found it um they would they would be really interested so anyway so we
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know what to look for on the Tampa we know it's armed we know uh it's got some big winches we know uh it actually the
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Bell on it has got Miami written on it cuz that was its original name so we're looking for all of these things uh and
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as you can see see at the moment all the way through the the bottom phase of this dive what I've mainly been finding is a
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really broken wreck and it's really old as well you can just tell it by the how
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little is left of it and um obviously iron hold you can you can see that but
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there's basically uh very very little of this wreck left whilst I was telling you the story of the tamper uh went past a
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big pile of chain um so obviously I've been been to the bow I I know where that
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is didn't see any anchors um but uh don't always you know it's quite you can
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see the seab bed's quite muddy and you can see here I'm back at the uh at the boiler um another clear confirmation
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that this isn't the agila which is uh which is what the ukho thinks it is uh the agila has got two boilers there's
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clearly only one here and it's um you know it's relatively small so this is a really really small ship um and and
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clearly old as well and we'll see see another sign of it of it being old in second so um this is just in front of
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the uh the boiler you can see there's some sort of uh you know maybe hatch there uh probably where coal was loaded
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in uh often you get kind of hatches for loading coal uh after the bridge but just forward of the boiler um so that
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that may have been what that is but clearly this is the area of the bridge so so what I'm doing is I'm having a look around here you know just to see if
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there's any um you know any Bridge gear you know but there's nothing there's not even there's no Port holes uh um you
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know there's there's not very much at all so bridge on this would have probably been wooden so you know it may
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well be that the bridge is off to the side somewhere it may well be that the bridge got trolled I mean you can see
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there's all sorts of fishing gear even though it's so far offshore loads of fishing gear on this wreck and uh it
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could have been trolled down and here it is I promised you uh promised you interesting steam engines and you can
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see we're just uh we're just coming up to it here and it really confused as this steam engine it it didn't look like
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anything that we've seen for but what what are you know very very rare the thing on the right the cylindrical thing
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that's a condenser the big thing on the left that's the obviously the bit of the boiler and you can see there's some legs
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uh on which the uh the engine is standing up also a diver there um and what I'm going to do here is uh as I
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often do I like to go up on the top and have a look on the top of the engine you can see how many cylinders it's got you
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can see what size the cylinders are so you can see this cylinder clearly sorry this engine here has got two cylinders
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it's got a high pressure one at the right near the boiler and then it's got a low pressure uh cylinder to the left
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um which is obviously where when the gas is when the steam had expanded it would have gone through that so you may recall
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from when I showed you the decompression profile earlier on but this is um this is 10 minutes into my dive I've been on
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the bottom for 5 minutes and if you can remember all the way back to that decompression profile I had uh 48
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minutes TTS um so so uh my my 5 minutes
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of actually looking around the wreck has uh means that I you know in order to get to the surface I'm going to need to do
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nearly an hour's worth of decompression but you know what uh this is 95 M down
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uh so it's nearly a ton and you know this is simply the cost of doing diving
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like this you have to accept that you are you're going to do a whole load of Deco and uh we're all kind of we're used
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to that and we're prepared for it so we got all the right gear we um uh you know
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we're going to be warm enough you know I've got a heated vest all that kind of stuff and obviously we've got the system the lazy shot system to make sure the
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divers stay together we got loads of gas near us and uh we're all good for it now now just in front of me there you can
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probably see there's a uh the drive shaft or the prop shaft that's uh that's going from left to right and um so you
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know once again further confirmation that the stern is well basically the direction I'm heading now now so I'm
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going to go down there and have a look at that Sterns not always um that
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interesting um you know sometimes you can you get props and you know they they will tell you a little bit about the age
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of the wreck um you know maybe the how good a quality it is so if it's an iron
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prop uh clearly it's normally a fairly rubbish quality uh soort cheap ship if
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it's got a bronze prop then you know might be a bit more expensive but as you can see down here I mean there is the
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wreck is really flat it's it's completely broken down there's loads of
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uh really old fishing net all over it and you see why there's fishing net cuz obviously there's a ton of fish around
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here isn't it so uh you know like all all the wrecks um in uh off the off the
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British Coast they are uh they're fertile breathing breeding grounds for
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fish and they uh they keep the rest of the uh the sea populated and fishermen
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can't fish too close to them so they know if they do they're going get their NS CAU
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anyway uh back to the engine now uh you recall earlier on that I uh that I said
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we learned far more about steamship engines than we possibly might uh want to on this dive so we we came back up um
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with that engine uh nobody had really seen one like it before so we were all pretty excited we thought uh you know
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that might help us identify it so I'm in the really fortunate position that I uh
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I I know a a guy he's actually vica who um is a bit of an expert in Steam
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Engines so what I did was I sent him uh some of the Stills and some of the
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videos um including some of the imagery that you've seen already and said look you know can you tell us anything about
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this engine you know maybe you know uh how old it is or you know if it was in
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common use or anything like that so uh he uh very kindly produced a diagram that I've shown you at the beginning and
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and you can see here and basically what he said to us uh really nicely was uh look they made loads and loads of these
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engines um it is quite an old design but they carried on making them all the way through um up until really uh just
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before the second world war but he says probably yours was from you know maybe
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1890 that kind of time and and he based it on a few of the individual design
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features but yeah so uh really unfortunate that wasn't able to help us
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identify the wreck but we did learn a bit more about um steam engine design so
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that kind of thing where the condenser just next to it where um you got the various uh Pistons going up and down and
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all and the kind of the arms holding up the engine and everything so so that was uh that was kind of interesting what it
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in fact there we go you can see it again you can see the the arms on the right hand side the condensers on the left um
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and that's our um that's our engine the great thing is though what it was able to definitively do is say that this
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isn't the tamper and the reason it isn't the tamper um well you know along with all the other things there's no guns or
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anything like that is because um the uh the tamper had a three-cylinder engine
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and that's clearly a one a two-cylinder engine so definitely not the tamper what it is though um we will never know
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almost certainly and the reason is because you can see through this dive uh you can see me and the other guys who
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were part of the part of the team we all looking around and uh it's a small small wreck so even though it's 95 is M we
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we've got you know the opportunity to have a good look around there and you can see me there I'm I'm really having a look in you know potentially the the
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maker plate is somewhere now down here the engine makers plate perhaps having a really good look and we found basically
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nothing we didn't find uh the Bell we didn't find the maker plate we didn't
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find any Crockery um we didn't find in fact we
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only found one P hole and you'll see that right at the end it's a right really Mankey old thing and and Port
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holes don't help you identify Rex anyway so basically uh eight of us scrutinizing
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this wreck for um if you know say we probably spent 18 or 19 minutes on it each and none of us none of us found
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anything and uh between us we' got we got people who are who are you know pretty good at finding things so that's
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obviously for me that's a fairly clear indication that there's uh there's nothing to to find down here it's either
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uh buried or it's been pulled off or possibly was never there in the first place and so I consider it extremely
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unlikely that anybody will actually even dive this wreck again and the reason is because I put information about the
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wreck on recite that basically says uh it's an old steam ship it's very small there's
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nothing interesting um and I would imagine anybody who's thinking about coming uh heading 50 miles out of new to
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do a to do a 100 meter dive they're going to be wanting to do something that's a bit more interesting than this
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so um I guess we've saved anybody else the pain of coming to this wreck uh by
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by having a good luck and confirming there's nothing there so so what you can see here is I'm actually just off the side of the wreck and what I'm doing is
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you know I I guess I'm I'm a bit hopeful that maybe something has collapsed and is is just sticking out of the mud or
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whatever on the bottom uh unfortunately uh that isn't the case so uh I'm
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slightly heading back towards the bridge now sorry slightly towards the B I'm going to turn in towards the bridge and
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uh you know I have had a really good scrub of it but you know sometimes going away from something coming back you uh
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you spot some stuff that you you didn't see in the first place so um you know I
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guess that's hopeful there's something down there you probably just see there's a bit of a ladder maybe um but yeah those double uh double
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video lights that's kind of classic Rick and the the boiler there you can see it
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would have been uh stoked from the other side of it so the the side near the engine um which I guess if somebody had
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a ship's plan set of ship's plans and they thought they knew which wreck this was that that might help but the reality
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is is that this is a small coastal steamer that probably vanished towards the end of the uh 19th century um and
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there AR any number of uh ships that went missing at about that time that kind of fit this description you know
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this far offshore let's say it went down in a storm or a collision it's um you
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know not particularly likely that anybody would survived so therefore you know it may be that in the records this
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ship is just shown as having having vanished so it would have left a port I don't know maybe Bristol perhaps or
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Liverpool or you know maybe it's come around Land's End or maybe it's come from Ireland or some something like that
25:54
and wherever it left it was bound for somewhere and then just didn't um was
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never heard of again so uh you know that's why I think it really unlikely
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this wreck will ever be identified fact there you go you can see that is just there that is the top of a PO hole just
26:11
in there by the uh by the uh the side of the boiler and I'm going to try and pull it out and uh and have a quick look at
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it and uh you can see it's it's it's pretty well wedged in there so uh even
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though I'm having a good old go at it it's uh it's not going to come out it's just kicked up the viz and uh yeah I
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guess that summarize that summarizes the dive can't even get a really rubbish port hole out to have a look at it so um
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you know I guess it's in some ways it's nicest dive it's nice that the we got on the wreck it's nice that we've we've
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eliminated this as a possibility for the tamper uh the visibility is quite nice
26:53
uh there's quite a lot of fish um uh the dive you know there's no hles with a
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dive all my kit works well and all those kind of things but ultimately in terms of what we're trying to do which is
27:03
identify Rex bit of a disappointment oh you can see there that's a that's a small boiler by the side of the main
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boiler um so that's probably a donkey boiler which would have been a small
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boiler that they they kept stoked uh rather than firing the main boiler and that would have provided steam you know
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maybe for for winches or you know possibly even just things like heat um
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those kind of things so what I'm going to do now is I think I've I've had enough of the dive there's Rick you can
27:33
see me signaling to him and suggesting that you know really um we should be quitting the dive you can see there I'm
27:39
suggesting that we're going to we're going to head back to the shot I I think Rick see me I think he's in agreement
27:45
certainly looks that way doesn't it oh yeah a bit of a uh is that a ling down there might be a Conger probably a
27:51
Conger so you can see I'm heading back to the shot which is just off the side of the wreck um those strobes obviously
27:57
um you know make it really easy and if you haven't seen my strobe video then I really recommend that you uh you should
28:04
do you get a feel for this kind of thing and I'm going to go up so I think that's probably Rick's strobe at the bottom
28:10
that's my strobe there you can see actually that the current I would say is picked up a bit so you can see there's a
28:16
bit of tens there's a bit more tension on the shot that than there was before Rick and me are the last divers on the
28:21
wreck we were the first pair down and uh you can see in fact not quite there's
28:26
there's two divers there there's one coming back back to the shot and there's Rick on it so um I'm just looking at Rick I want to make sure that I don't
28:33
leave him on the wreck by himself so I'm waiting for him to come over I thought he was coming over anyway turns out
28:39
turns out he W he wasn't so uh you know I'm going to do the decent thing I think
28:45
and just go back and say to him look look Rick I thought we were I thought we were we were we were canning it here but
28:52
but Ricky like a lot of us um you know he's got his own thing for being on the wreck and if often you know for him it's
29:00
all about the pH photographs so I'm pretty certain that's what he's doing down here he's uh he's getting himself
29:06
something sorted but um and uh and clearly he's he's
29:11
completely ignoring any attempts I'm I'm making to communicate with him so uh he's there by he's there by the engine
29:18
and I think I'm just going to go up to him now probably give him a bit of a tug on his Finn um that'll get his attention
29:24
pretty quick and let him know that it's uh that I'm back and you know probably
29:29
it's time for him as well so uh one of the interesting things
29:35
about Rick is that he uses yeah you go just told him on back is he uses carbon
29:41
fiber cylinders so uh he carries them both on his left as as you saw there they're they're 300 bar 7 Lish cylinders
29:49
so carry the same gas as an Al 80 but they're just far nicer in the sense that
29:54
they they're much lighter on the land uh they've got great pointy characteristics and all those kind of things um the only
30:01
downside for them of course is they're uh they're more expensive than um than the Aly 80s that that the rest of us
30:08
carry so um but but but really nice and I guess just something a bit different
30:13
there so here we are back at the shot there's uh there's the other diver that's James who's got some sort of
30:19
looks as though one of his uh his lb has come loose and is flapping around there but rather than trying to resolve it
30:26
here obviously what we want to be doing is is heading up the shotline and uh and resolving it when we're on Deco stop so
30:33
you'll have probably seen on some of my other videos that I like to scooter up gets you up nice and quick so uh that's
30:38
what I'm doing back to my decompression profile I promis you i' I'd come back to this you
30:43
see I um I left the bottom 23 minutes into my dive at that point I had 128
30:49
minutes of TTS so basically just over 2 hours of of decompression and you can see here that I get to my first
30:56
decompression start at about 48 M and I've got 118 minutes of decompression to
31:02
do what I then do is uh two things the first thing is that I raise my po2 to
31:08
1.5 you can't see that on the computer but that does cut down my TTS and the
31:13
second thing that I then do is which is a bit naughty is I switch uh diluent on the rebreather from the helium mix of
31:21
1071 that I've been using at the bottom to 21% which is air now that cuts
31:28
another 17 minutes of uh of decompression off so I've managed to get it down from uh
31:34
from8 when I got to my first Deco stop down to 83 which is which is quite a
31:39
nice saving but um uh lots of people will tell you that um particularly the
31:46
uh the changing to to air diluent is is a naughty thing to do because it will uh
31:52
increases the the risk of isobaric counter diffusion and um they're absolutely right I I don't really do it
31:59
very I don't do it very often not really sure why I did it on this dive I guess what I should also do is point out at
32:05
the same time that as well as just changing the the diluent I also um uh
32:11
switch to 21% diluent and I do multiple flushes of my Loop to get the helium out
32:18
I do the flushes not just when I switch but but kind of Fairly regularly through the uh through the decompression as well
32:25
and uh the way I'm able to do this is because I carry a 3 l cylinder of air on
32:30
my uh on my unit and the 3 lit cylinder of air is is great because it means I can do as many air deal flushes as I
32:36
want I've got a ton of gas it's also what I use to run the uh the buoyancy on my wing and on my dry suit uh I can both
32:45
of them can also be connected to my diluent as well so I've got some redundancy but yeah so uh so that's what I do with with those gas switches and as
32:52
you can see here the um I I carry On Doing My Deco and uh eventually I clear
32:58
my Deco stops uh just over the 2hour Mark I actually stay down for another four or five minutes um probably out of
33:04
guilt of doing that um doing that uh that that switching my uh switching my
33:11
deal but anyway what I would say is that's a it's an old school practice it's very naughty uh you probably
33:17
shouldn't copy me because there is a risk of ice Spar counter diffusion and
33:23
it's not something I do very often so um please forgive me and I'm sure lots of
33:28
people will tell me in the comments that it's a really bad thing to do um i' just like to say I know I'm very sorry I'll
33:33
never do it again anyway back to the dive so um this is us obviously
33:39
continuing the ascent there's uh there's dive in front of me streaming his delayed SMB um obviously doesn't look
33:46
great but but doesn't uh really change the price Fish you can see me going up quite fast there you see my uh my sheer
33:53
water's not super happy about it you can also see that I'm uh obviously venting as I go and once again you see faster
34:00
scent alarm there on on the sheer water which really not happy once again you know you do these things at your own
34:06
risk um I I I like to get off the bottom quick I I figur the pressure change at
34:12
the bottom isn't as great as it is near the surface so um that's why I I I do it
34:18
I do it quick and then what I do is when I get to about half the distance from the bottom to My Deco stops I I slow the
34:24
rate of ascent down and then just take it at a normal kind of 10 meters a minute from there so you can see that's
34:30
just what I'm doing now um slowing things down and um it will it will go
34:36
you know a bit less rapidly from here on in and there's Rick you can see he's
34:42
with me as well he's on the shot line he tends to do the same thing as me and um
34:48
you see there Ascent rate's coming down and uh it's back within the sort of five
34:53
normal yellow bars that you get on a on a sheer water to indicate speed there you go I'm looking up the line there you
34:59
see his diver above me um oops I've gone back into the red there didn't mean to do that so uh I'm back back in the
35:06
yellow and uh there we go there's uh there's James with his his streaming delayed SMB and uh I'm getting quite
35:14
close to my first Deco stop now so slowing the rate of as scent down and what I can do is I can start um sorting
35:22
out my gear don't need the scooter anymore don't need the video lights so do a bit of admin turn off the video
35:29
lights and I'll be probably turning off the GoPro at the same sort of time so
35:34
it's it's simply a case now of of preparing for the for the Deco stops the other thing you'll see me do very
35:40
shortly is I will change the uh po2 I'll change it on my fact this is me doing it
35:46
now there you go I'm going to change it on my uh controller for for the vision
35:51
um I'm setting it to 1.5 P2 that will obviously help accelerate the
35:57
decompression once I've done it on there I will do it on my other computer on my offboard you
36:03
see it's set to 1.3 at the moment so uh that will be changed I'll edit it uh
36:09
eventually when I when I get to the right set right page there you go I'm going to change it you can see there
36:14
it's going to 1.5 and I'm just keeping an eye on the shotline making sure I'm not too far away that that's that's Rick he's
36:21
probably doing the same thing so I've sorted out my uh my my computers uh you
36:26
see me I'm taking my torch uh off my wrist that's going to be clipped up on my uh on my left side on on one of the
36:34
uh D Clips I've got on there and then it's it's literally just a case of uh of
36:39
getting on and doing My Deco you can see there obviously just checking what depth I need to be at and
36:46
it's it's 45 M I've I didn't turn my strobes off at the bottom so I'm I'm turning them off now as well there we go
36:52
both of those are off and there you go you can see my hands set 85 minutes TTS on that one and a bit more on the on the
37:00
sheer water which is which is what you expect because i' I have different gradient factors set on them I use the
37:06
sheer water to control my scent and I have that set at 6080 um gradient factors for my uh
37:14
inspiration for the for the vision I have that set at 995 and the reason I do it that way is
37:22
uh if I absolutely need to get out of the water quickly I use the uh the gradient fact factors on my
37:29
inspiration otherwise I follow the ones on the sheer water which uh um obviously
37:34
give me that um nice conservancy and therefore keep me uh you know minimize
37:40
the risk of DCI so I've got another hour and a half hour 40 minutes of decompression to do um and I guess you
37:49
know gives you plenty of time to reflect so I guess the thing on this dive is
37:54
clearly it wasn't a success in the sense that we didn't find anything we didn't
38:00
identify anything all we did we choked something off as uh as it wasn't what we're looking for but that's what
38:06
happens so anyway I hope you enjoyed this dive you found it quite interesting
38:12
um not least cuz it's doesn't always work we're not always successful anyway
38:17
please feel free to do all the usual sort of stuff and um you know like subscribe tell your mates add a comment
38:24
Etc and uh anyway I look forward to seeing you on my uh next video
#Diving & Underwater Activities