About 6 on RBs and 7 on Open Circut....I am still on the fence about rebreathers...I have tried 5 different units on demo days but have lost 3 buds so far on em' ....very accomplished divers too! For now I'll stick to OC. I got some good bottom time though.....poppydog wrote:Red, I see from your picture you were on open circuit? I assumed for that kind of depth people mostly used re-breathers. Excuse the basic question - I dive quite a bit but only shallow.
The following is my log of the 2 dives I got in:
#1135 Andrea Doria Wreck 7/9/11
Marcie Bellinski and Gary Gentile were meeting me at Giant Stride Dive Shop to pick me up and catch the ferry in New London, Ct going to Long Island, NY. From there we had to drive to Captree Marina Basin, home of the Wahoo Captained by Hank Garvin. I had mixed 2 sets of double 100s and 2 sets of 130s with 17/40 trimix, 4 al 80s with 30% EANx and 3 al 40 with 70% EANx, and got all my gear together for this 4 day trip aboard the Garloo, Formerly known as the Wahoo. For crew aboard there was Dave Console, Peter Piemonte, Bob Foster, Mike Dudas and Wes. All great divers and cool people who helped us gear up. We had big seas of about 8-10 feet on the way out and I was rocked to sleep by the ocean waves. We hoped it would settle down by the next day so diving would be safe and better yet even possible. This was my cherry dive on the Grand Dame of the North Atlantic and it was really cool to be diving with Gary Gentile as my dive buddy because he has more dives on this baby than anyone else in the world….tomorrow will be his 200th dive on the Doria. We mainly explored the exterior of the hull and I oriented myself to the mystique that is the Andrea Doria…my deepest dive to date. After 20 minutes on the Hull my max depth was 213 ft for 74 minutes in 44 degree water with 25’ viz….cool dive and a dream come true. We arrived at 5pm and 1 dive was all there was time for.
#1136 Andrea Doria Wreck 7/10/11
I dove solo and didn’t futz around on the hull for this one I just got to the wreck, penetrated her and after 10 or so minutes (HALF OF MY PLANNED BOTTOM TIME) of searching the dark muddy floor (actually the wall as the Doria is laying on her port side) and found 2 plates with a Roman man and woman on them and some kind of platter or wall decoration with a bottle of wine and a wedge of cheese hand painted on it. YEAH BABY DORI ARTIFACTS WOOHOOOO! Max depth of 236 ft for a total runtime of 79 minutes in 44 degree water with 25’ viz. I was hoping to get 2 dives each day but the current picked up so much that after my 3 hour surface interval, getting dressed and doing a Giant Stride into the seemingly calm Atlantic I found myself working way too hard and using 500 psi just getting to the bow of the Garloo before even descending and this was on my twin 100s….the last 2 were using HP 130s….even though I know where there is more china and other goodies I aborted the dive as it was, in my opinion way too dangerous at this stage of the trip to tissue load working harder than I should have. There’s always next time!!!