stubsadventures

Today was the day I had been waiting for. We were going to dive the San Francisco and hit my deepest yet. Before I this trip, I had hit 148ft in Belize and I was looking to go a little further. Doing a deep dive can be hit or miss through because if you’re ears won’t equalize or if you don’t feel good for some reason, you have to abort the dive, which sucks. There was a little more structure to this dive than any of the others. Each team had to dive with a dive master and you had to have a predetermined dive plan that you did not vary from.

The mood on the boat was a little more serious before this dive, one of the ladies kept muttering that she was probably going to die. I was very much in my own head by this point. You check and recheck and just stay focused on getting into the water.

To free fall 140ft into the ocean is an amazing feeling. There are still things that you are doing with your gear on the way down but for the most part, you’re just taking in the view. It feels like you go for a while with nothing around you but green water when all of a sudden, the outline of a ship appears. The whole thing can be really surreal sometimes.

When you dive to 160ft, you are riddled with narcosis, I don’t care who you are. For every diver, this can be a very different experience. For me, I get a serious body buzz and I almost become tunnel visioned in a sense. I still have a some what clear thought process though and have never hallucinated thankfully.

On the deck of the San Fran are tanks, one partly leaning on the other, in amazing conditions. One even had the hatch open and you could look inside. The inside of those things was absurd.

I have no pictures from this dive. It was 35 ft past the manufactures recommendations on my camera, and based on past experience and camera bills, they are usually pretty accurate. It was one amazing dive and I will always remember touching down on that deck, smiling and looking at my dive computer and being pretty darn impressed with myself. 163ft. New record.

Second dive of that day, I actually forgot my camera! No pictures from day five.

17th Dive
163ft
51 min
2min deco@20ft, 11min deco@10ft, 3min safety stop

San Francisco

18th dive
96ft
41 min
5min stop

Cold! Forgot camera! Cool torpedos with props – 21ft long, medicine cabinet intact with liquids still in bottles, syringes. Name of ship was very visible in English and Japanese. Saw an octopus and telephones. Small tour through inside of ship. Saw a bunch of periscopes stacked up.