DIRty TRIP REPORT –
The following is part fiction, part factual based on real-life events experienced by four DIRty divers. Read at your own risk....
The Beginning
In the early hours of September 14 2006, the following was posted on the DIR-Singapore Forum by a Filteredsg:
Hi guys
We have a trip coming up aboard Mata Ikan. Below are the details :
Option 1: Pick up at TMFT ,26th afternoon, Dive 7 skies on 27th, Dive Repulse on the 28th, Dive Maritime Fidelity
early on 29th and back to TMFT on night of 29th.
Option 2: pick up at Mersing evening / night of 26th, Dive the Repulse for the next 2 days -27th and 28th - 29th,
Early morning. Dive on the Aur tanker or the K16Sub. Then back to Mersing afternoon of the 29th.
This is a half charter so ideally we're looking for abt 4 - 5 Tech 1
and above divers. If we can get more, say maybe 12 we can do a fullcharter
Price: S$ 800 approx
Gas charges: Cost sharing basis. Greg Lai (Lobang King) will arrange
the gas.
Departure Pt. Option 1 = TMFT to TMFT.
Option 2 = Mersing to Mersing. -- Divers make
their way to Mersing themselves. Or we can Jointly rent a van and
share costs.
Which option do you prefer. My vote is for Option 2
If interested, pls do let me know, latest by end Sept. You can email
me at filtered@...
Cheers
Teddy bear
With the sun barely up, a DIRty reply was sent...
----- Original Message -----
From:Serko
To: filtered@...
Sent: Thursday, September 14, 2006 8:42 AM
Subject: Re: [dir-singapore] Repulse & Aur Tanker Trip 26 - 29 Oct 2006 (Mata Ikan)
Hi Teddy bear,
I am interested. Fine with either arrangement.
Serko
…. and a DIRty Tech Trip was conceived. In no time, we found four DIRty divers (Greg, Teddy Bear, Leon and yours truly) on the Mata Ikan to the South China Sea from October 26 to 29, diving the Seven Skies, the Jelly Fish Wreck and the Aur Tanker.
The Rehearsal (Dive
A preparation dive weekend was conducted on October 14 and 15 at Roger’s place in Pulau Tioman to refresh our skills and test out our equipment. We organized the trip ourselves.... drove up to Mersing with our twins and stages, coordinated with Roger on the ferry, accommodation and diving needs, planned out the menu with our meals at Salang Beach Resort and scheduled our training program. This trip also allowed us to work together for the first time as well as save some money so that we can pay for better (sweeter) Helium. Hey, we are DIRty tech divers; we have to be self-reliant right?
Over the weekend, four boat dives were made at various choiced spots around Tioman.
With our skills sorted and our gears squared away, we drove back to
Gear Preparation (Weeks before October 26, 2006)
Much effort was made to beg, borrow and ste… ok, only beg and borrow all the gears required for everyone in the team less our Mr Greg Lai. He has everything and anything you need to do a tech dive including RB80 and Gavin DPV; he even has his own oxygen bar at home. We had a packing list that would require the service of a truck to deliver…. Maybe next time, we can get Andrew Yong to help. For the trip, we gathered the following and more:
4 sets of MC systems (all Halcyon, of various generations) and double tanks
8 deco stage bottles, 40 cubic foot with DIN valve
4 bottom stages, 80 cubic foot with DIN valve
12 sets of regulators for left and right posts (inclusive of one spare set)
12 sets of stage regulators
12 sets of stage rigging kit
5 canister lights (inclusive of one spare, not all are Halcyon…. a few are Salv… oops!)
8 backup lights
4 pinkie shorts, 4 leashes, 4 spools, 4 SMBs including a 6 footer
8 G-bottles of gases comprising 40,000 litres of Helium and 40,000 litres of Oxygen
3 oxygen analyzers
1 mixing panel and 2 filling whips with more than 100 feet of various hoses
1 blue plastic basket to contain all the handyman tools, no prize for guessing who it belongs to
… and heap of other personal dive gear
Gas Preparation (Greg’s place, October 23/24, 2006)
We gathered at Greg’s place (which we have conveniently adopted as our unofficial clubhouse) in the evening of October 23 to fill our tanks. Greg’s mixing panel which was just being serviced failed from the word ‘GO’ and instead of filling gas, we were treated to an enjoyable session of Greg’s well versed multi lingual recital (Hokkien vocabulary mixed with typical Ah Beng English and Malayu nouns on human anatomy) meant for the service technician and his eighteen generations of family members. Very colourful multi-languages all stringed into a perfect sentence and delivered doubled-time depicting Greg’s language talent. It was truly a performance! We decided to postpone the gas filling to the next day and decided to talk-cock about who is diving who, oops! I mean who is diving WITH who and who is using what gear. A phrase I learnt during this session, ‘Poor Man’s Mix’, this is what Mr Greg uses to describe non-standard, low quality helium mixes produced by tech divers who want to save cost, example would be using 21/25 to do dives to 50 meters.
Greg sent in the panel for a quick fix the next morning. With his excellent language ability, I am sure Greg communicated very clearly to the service technician on the problem and his expectation on the outcome. True enough, the panel was fixed in a jiffy and we were recalled to meet at his place for lunch followed by gas filling. Greg knows his stuff in the kitchen, his homemade pizza is the ‘can really go open restaurant’ type. This guy is very talented… hair, business, culinary, diving, car (he owns a racetrack capabled WRX), flying (yes, he has a PPL but does not fly regularly to spare the air traffic controllers their ears), languages (especially when he is angry, his language ability really peaks!) … After a sumptuous meal, we proceeded to fill our gas. We managed to fill all that we wanted. We did it outside his house in between intermittent rains, unsheltered!! I was thinking of suggesting to him that we fill the oxygen inside his house but was pai seh (shy) to ask since he did not offer…. I checked, he bought fire insurance for the house. This little rain was nothing compared to what
Revised Schedule
We did not get what Teddy Bear posted initially and were unable to change things as there were only four of us and we were not in control of the boat, the revised schedule looks a little different as follows:
3p.m. October 26, meet at Raffles Marina
4p.m. October 26, set sail for Seven Skies
10a.m. October 27, two dives at Seven Skies and set sail for Jellyfish Wreck
10a.m. October 28, two dives at Jellyfish Wreck and set sail for Sara D
8a.m. October 29, one dive at Sara D and set sail for
3.30a.m. October 30, arrival at Raffles Marina
4.30a.m. October 30, home sweet home for some and “Honey, I am home!” for me
The Departure (3p.m. October 26, 2006)
In the absence of Andrew Yong’s truck, I took over my wife’s trusted Toyota Wish and met Greg at his place to pick up all the gears. After we loaded everything into the car, it looked more like a van. Other than the two front seats, the rest of the seats were leveled and Greg packed all the tanks, gears, boxes and bags nicely into the rear two thirds of the car (another of Greg’s talent I discovered is his packing ability, it has reached professional status, can open movers company anytime) and drove at baby crawl speed to Raffles Marina, where the Mata Ikan is berthed.
We settled into the Mata Ikan quickly (I will need another chapter to introduce the boat and decided against it, please visit the website at <http://www.fisheyeproject.com/mvmataikan.asp> if you want to know the boat better) thanks to our advance party, Teddy Bear and Leon, who arrived at Raffles Marina early to ‘reserve’ the best bunks for this group of DIRty Divers. What can I say, it was pure teamwork.
On this trip, there were five other BSAC divers including the leader of the trip, Dr YC Lee, a BSAC Regional Coach and National Instructor (the first Asian National Instructor, Salute! Respect, Respect), Yih Gia, Yuh Lin, Jui Meng and Benjamin. Oh, I forget to mention that we managed to come on board because of Greg’s lobang (contact), Greg is a BSAC instructor and has been diving with YC for decades, yes decades, since the horse-collar (if you know what it is) days.…
The boat left Raffles Marina and sailed at a steady pace of 7 knots, passing through the most western tip of
Seven Skies (11a.m. October 27, 2006)
This is a 260 meter, 98,000 ton Swedish Bulk Carrier sitting at 62 meter depth. It blew up in an explosion and sank upright in 1969. The forward section was separated from the main deck superstructure with the shallowest point being the tip of the funnel at about 22 meter. The wheel house is at 35 meter and the main deck at 42 meter. It is home to schooling Batfish, Golden Travelley, Barracuda, Snapper, Manta Rays and occasionally Whale Sharks. For this trip, we saw the first four species while the latter two saw us.
In the pre-dive briefing by YC, the one point that stood out was his repeated reminders that we should try our very best to return to the mooring line and drifting is strongly discouraged, he kept looking at Greg when he said that, I wonder why?
We buddy up in two pairs (myself/Leon and Greg/Teddy Bear). Before we entered the water, we lowered our stage bottles down to 6 meters using a mermaid line. After we jumped in, we proceeded to collect our stage bottles like bees to honey and began the labourous task of attaching the bottles to various parts of out MC system. All of us managed it satisfactorily without much loss in buoyancy. In the end, we were carrying a 40 cubic foot (Nitrox 50) and 80 cubic foot (bottom mix, 18/45) on our left with another 40 cubic foot bottle (pure oxygen) attached to the leash on the left hip D-ring. We deployed our bottom stage and pulled ourselves along the mooring line (thanks to Yih Gia and Yuh Lin for setting this up); descending into the unknown as the silhouette of the funnel and superstructure slowly appeared.
We looked up as we reached the main deck where the mooring line was secured, it was a magnificent sight looking at the superstructure towering high above our heads with the tip of the funnel disappearing into a hue of blue, hidden from us just like the top of a skyscraper hidden amongst the low cloud base. For those with a creative mind, the mental picture of mantas cruising over the top would make this a near perfect dive…. Quick flashes of bright 21 watt HID light followed and I was jolted out of my day dream. My buddy, Leon gave me a dirty look for abandoning him mentally. We proceeded along the starboard side descending and averaging between 45 and 50 meters and circumnavigated the wreck and returning to the main deck. Time evaporated as fast as our bottom mix and twenty minutes flew by in a hurry. We proceeded with our deep stops with the first one at 42 meters (80% of the ATA). Details of the deep stops and deco profile have been deliberately omitted. To find out more about this topic, please seek professional DIRty instruction with the GUE Instructor of the Year at www.livingseas.com.sg . As it was our first dive of the trip, all of us agreed that we were see-sawing somewhat in our stops and when we were switching bottles, we resolved to work on our buoyancy control till plus/minus 0.5 meter and on our switching skills. We surfaced one hour after we entered the water.
The next dive, we entered the hatch and descended through the cargo hold to the bottom,
Jellyfish Wreck (9.30a.m. October 27, 2006)
The sheer size of the wreck, 242m is staggering and it will need many dives just to orient yourself on the outside. She lies on her port side on the 55 meter bottom about 50 nautical miles north of Pulau Tioman.
We were in our usual two teams of two, I was buddying
We came up to the boat and saw the chase boat, barely visible, just a little speck in the choppy sea more than one nautical mile away following the drifting team. The two drifters surfaced shortly after us, removed their gears and clambered onto the chase boat. Teddy Bear felt a pain in his left arm after pulling himself onto the boat and another story (which he has to tell it himself) developed. The next dive, I was assigned to buddy Teddy Bear. We descended to about 45 meters and headed towards the bow. Due to the poor vis, we were unable to see how majestic the wreck was and the dive was below average. For me, I began to get the hang of diving with three stages and each dive I made, I grew more comfortable. Deco went well and ascend profile was strictly adhered to. Teddy Bear was feeling ok all the way up…. till three meters….
Sara D (9.30am October 28, 2006)
Teddy Bear and Greg were feeling lazy and decided to skip the dive, I buddy up with
Sara D is a steel 143m long merchant vessel; it was carrying sugar when it sank in 1985. Apparently, the engine room caught fire and the ship had to be abandoned. The wreck lies on its starboard side at 60 meters with the bow facing north-east. The cargo holds were empty and rust has corroded through parts of the hull. At 30 meters, we reached the gunwale of the portside. Abundant schools of yellow tails, fusiliers and jacks were swarming around the leeward side of the wreck, taking refuge from the unforgiving current. We maintained our depth to Tech 1 level depth (50 meters) just in case we were unable to get back to the deco bar and the oxygen deco stage. We thumbed the dive after twenty minutes and proceeded to ascend using the shotline as reference. As I looked up, I could see our oxygen bottle hanging on the deco bar bobbling up and down, it was a comforting sight. YC managed to free the shotline from the wreck and we did a our deco drifting in tandem with the shotline and deco bar. Smooth and effortless.
To Be Continued……
We completed our last dive at 11 a.m. on Sunday, sailed back against current at 5 knots and arrived at Raffles Marina at 3 a.m. on October 29, 2006 (Monday). 16 hours of sailing, arrival at wee hours, not forgetting the returning of equipment and washing of gear after that. Who said tech diving is easy?….
Lookout for the next trip report this coming Spring. For those of you sick of reading trip reports and want some action, sign-up early for our “Wrecks in Spring 07”. We promise you slow boat, strong current, cold water, heavy gear and green vis….. till then, “Stay Neutral”.
DIRty Diver
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