Don
2008-07-29 02:17:21 UTC
The weather cooperated for a change and a bunch of
us got a couple of good dives in on Saturday.
We did the Fawkner(44M) and the Rotomahana(39M) with
Dive Victoria. The visibility wasn't great, somewhere
around 5-10M on the Fawkner and a bit better on the
Rotomahana. The Fawkner isn't in particularly good
shape, but the boilers and parts of what I suspect was
the pilot house were semi-intact. There's a photo
of the pilot house at:
http://goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au/~gingrich/new_dive_photos/victoria.html
The shot hit the wreck about mid-ship on the port side
so it was fairly easy to find our way around the wreck.
One member of the team was experimenting with more
conservative profiles after some skin bends so we only
spent 20 minutes on the bottom and had a liesurely 25
minute ascent. (Only O2 deco gas)
The Roto was also planned as a 20 minute bottom time
and slow ascent. But 20 minutes is plenty of time for a
good look around, and even a swim under the boilers --
a nice little bit of penetration on a wreck that is
fairly disintegrated.
The water was cool at 13 deg, but not too uncomfortable
in a drysuit. The seas were calm and flat making travel
and getting back in the boat easy.
Too bad this comming weekend is looking so bad. Seabreeze
is showing 4.5 meter swells for Saturday. So wetting the
gills looks like being on hold. (Maybe I'll cut the grass
before the house disappears.)
-Don
us got a couple of good dives in on Saturday.
We did the Fawkner(44M) and the Rotomahana(39M) with
Dive Victoria. The visibility wasn't great, somewhere
around 5-10M on the Fawkner and a bit better on the
Rotomahana. The Fawkner isn't in particularly good
shape, but the boilers and parts of what I suspect was
the pilot house were semi-intact. There's a photo
of the pilot house at:
http://goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au/~gingrich/new_dive_photos/victoria.html
The shot hit the wreck about mid-ship on the port side
so it was fairly easy to find our way around the wreck.
One member of the team was experimenting with more
conservative profiles after some skin bends so we only
spent 20 minutes on the bottom and had a liesurely 25
minute ascent. (Only O2 deco gas)
The Roto was also planned as a 20 minute bottom time
and slow ascent. But 20 minutes is plenty of time for a
good look around, and even a swim under the boilers --
a nice little bit of penetration on a wreck that is
fairly disintegrated.
The water was cool at 13 deg, but not too uncomfortable
in a drysuit. The seas were calm and flat making travel
and getting back in the boat easy.
Too bad this comming weekend is looking so bad. Seabreeze
is showing 4.5 meter swells for Saturday. So wetting the
gills looks like being on hold. (Maybe I'll cut the grass
before the house disappears.)
-Don