Back in business with my rebreather!

[John Rawlings]

Today, Monday, January 15th, I was finally able to re-enter the water with my rebreather! The dive was at Seacrest Cove 2 and my dive buddy was Curt McNamee, (SilentScuba here on the NWDC board).

As you all know, I haven't been able to dive my CCR since last June due to my accident. I started back diving in December with open-circuit equipment and it has been a BLAST, but I have really been looking forward to once again donning my CCR for some nice long, quiet dives!

I met Curt at 9:30 at Seacrest and conditions couldn't have been better! Perfectly blue sky, the surface of the water was like glass, and NO ONE else was diving! We had the parking lot all to ourselves! Hard to believe on a Federal holiday!

I used my Classic KISS rebreather, as did Curt. Both of us carried AL 40 bail-out bottles. I also attached my small 6 cf Argon bottle for extra warmth because we were planning a long dive. Water temp was 46 degrees F. My maximum depth was 90 FSW, but the majority of the dive was spent between 70 and 80 FSW. I kept my PO2 at or around 1.2 at depth, but had my VR3 set for 1.0 as an extra safety margin. I also carried a back-up NiTek HE computer that I left set on Air and then didn't surface until it had also cleared as well.

Total run time for the dive was 1 hour, 29 minutes. I started the dive with two 19 cf tanks - one for Oxygen and the other for my diluent gas, (in this case, Air). Each tank had 2500 PSI at the beginning of the dive. Upon surfacing both tanks had 2000 psi in them....how's THAT for a 1 and 1/2 hour long dive!

It took some hot chowder, some fish-n-chips and a GOOD truck cab heater to thaw me out afterwards, but it was WELL worth it!

Thanks, Curt, for a really nice dive....AND for gently reminding me of several things I had forgotten about CCR diving over the past 6 months!

- John

[Tom Nic]

Awesome!

Congratulations John! and thanks for the report!

...ah, maybe someday when rebreather's become "the" standard gear for recreational divers and MUCH cheaper...

[Zen Diver]

Congrats John, that's fantastic. Also a nice reminder of how lost we'd all be without truly wonderful friends and dive buddies.

Nice report.

-Valerie

[BASSMAN]

Wow
1 & 1/2 hours?
Man, I can only imagine what that would be like.
That, along with no bubbles? Sounds to good to be true!
Some Day....

Thank's for the report John!

[Curt McNamee]

John- Welcome back to the dark side . It was a great day for diving and I knew that getting back into that KISS CCR of yours would be just like riding a bicycle.

You did a great job and I enjoyed every minute of it (except maybe the last 5) it was getting pretty cold after 90 minutes.