(kidding) We had our cylinders filled the week prior for a dive that didn't happen due to sketchy weather conditions. The plan was to fill both sets with 25/25 with 100% O2 for deco. How much is an all you can eat Helium card? At any rate, we didn't dive that weekend. No worries, I guess if we're gonna try to become tech divers, we should get used to that sort of thing.Joe had waited until Saturday night, to determine if he could go diving Sunday. I don't know if he had to ask permission or what, but he was laying it on pretty good with Dinner and a Movie. I went along just in case he needed backup, or a bailout for saying anything stupid. Anyway, the plan was set Saturday night, meet at Alki at 1100 am. Okay, so what about the dive?
I arrived at around 1030 and started to set up my gear. Joe was already there. I think he's a little more excited about this tech stuff than I am. Brian and Jeanna showed up and we had a small discussion about the plan. Brian said the site was pretty deep, and we'd go down to 130' and look around. We talked about calculating a deco schedule, based on the 150'=1:1 setpoint. I'm not sure but I might have blacked out. Numbers do that to me. After spending several minutes just going over deco profiles on paper, we packed it up and headed to the site. Okay, where is this place? Is it by the Pipeline? Jeanna said she thought it was just "North" of the pipleine. Hey! I'm a navigating fool, I know where North is. It's the opposite of South, so we ended up going to the wrong place. Good think Joe remembers numbers. He's giving me signals, "4100 beach view" in my rearview mirror. So we find Brian and Jeanna, park and begin to gear up and get in the water. Brian and I are walking back to the cars from the beach, and this guy asks us how deep we're gonna go. Finally! The opportunity I've been waiting for! "All the way to the bottom!" I reply. He realized his mistake as soon as he said it.
So we gear up and get in the water. As we wait for Jeanna, Joe and I do our gear checks. Seriously, the guy's got problems. You'd think he could take this tech stuff more seriously
. After several derailments of my flawless equipment procedure, I think we're done, so we start the long swim out. It wasn't until this morning when I realized we forgot to do bubble checks....again! We're at a site Brian called the Vault, which is basically a trench that goes down sharply into a kind of bowl. It's one of those sites that requires a decent surface swim, and I know the purpose of that is to make me wish I had a scooter. Honestly, I get more enjoyment out of watching Joe struggle to keep his skinny legs from breaking pushing the weight of those twins! When he stops to catch his breath, I really feel superior! :naka:
I'm leading the dive, and Joe's going to call deco. This I would find out later is a big mistake! Next time I'm calling Deco. So after swimming forever against the wind and the swell, I was happy to submerge and get this show on the road. After a quick spin around to check the team, I noticed Joe had a routing issue with his light, easy fix. I was focused on getting us there, and making sure I could get us back, while Joe and Brian flanked me on either side so I pretty much kept all my attention forward. Right around 70 fsw, I started to feel that heart pumping anxiety. Strange, there is no way this is narcosis as I calculated the END for my mix (28.5/25.6) to be around 96.2 fsw. At 5 minutes we were at 110 fsw. At 8 minutes we were at 132 fsw. Someone’s binky (BT) was Beeping to beat the band, and looked around to figure out what the hell was going on. Joe, apparently had a max depth alert and we had to listen to his computer beeping for a full 2 minutes!
At some point, we ended up at about 137-138 fsw depending on which gauge you’re going by. Joes is consistently a foot deeper than mine, and that’s NOT what she said! I was working on calculating average depth and eventually settled on 130 fsw. There really isn’t much to see, and we were getting bored looking at nothing. I turned to Joe, and asked him what he had for AD. 130. Good, we’re on the same page. About 15 minutes into the dive, I turned around, and realized Jeanna was not with us. Hmmmmm she must’ve called the dive just after we submerged. Brian was there, and didn’t seem concerned. I signaled Joe, and we had a pointless conversation about it. I was trying to ask if her ears didn’t clear, as that was an issue for her on Saturday. He thought I was having problems with my ears. Talk about lousy situational awareness. Neither of us even noticed that one of our team members was missing! Sorry Jeanna.
18 minutes into the dive, and I’m bored to tears. I give the turn signal, Joe’s onboard, Brian shrugs and we head back. I look back to see Brian taking notes as he swims along. He hands me his wet notes and I give them to Joe. I’m thinking good, Brian is giving Joe our schedule. Joe takes over and we begin our ascent. I’ve got a real problem incorporating travel time, with stop time. We’re moving at a snails pace (10 fpm) and I want to STOP at 90. At 76 fsw, Joe’s panicking and telling me to hurry up. Okay okay! I’m coming already. Good job Joe, that’s exactly what you need to be doing. Been there done that! LOL. Then I look over at him, somewhere between 70 and 60 fsw and Joe is doing math. Looking at his computer (BT) and using his finger to write numbers……
..??? I look over at him and give him the universal do you need a calculator? Is everything okay? I get a pretty confident Okay back so I relax and settle in for the ride. 60 fsw 3 minutes, 50 fsw 3 minutes, 40 fsw 2 minutes, 30 fsw 2 minutes. I don’t know why, but none of that added up for me. I sure hope he knows what he’s doing! Next stop, 20 fsw time for a gas switch! Here I was thinking, man, we did great on this gas switch. From 30 to 20 we both had our regs deployed, our gas was turned on, purged and we were ready. I thought we did pretty damn good, but we forgot to “Okay” our hoses and Brian was quick to point out our mistake. This will be much more important in Tech 2 when we're using more than one bottle! Finally Joe decides to tell me what the plan is. 7 minutes at 20 fsw, and 3 minutes from 20 fsw to the surface. Now it clicks. We’re doing a schedule for 130’ for 30 minutes, with 20 minutes of deco, 10 minutes from 60’ to 20’ on backgas, and 10 minutes from 20’ to the surface on O2.Now I said earlier that letting Joe call deco was a mistake. But it wasn’t because he screwed it up. Joe nailed it. He was a deco calling rockstar. He was in control for once in his life, and he didn’t mess things up. Most importantly, he didn’t turn me into a pretzl.
The mistake was letting Joe call deco, because he did such a good job, that now we’ll never hear the end of it!
on the way home! 
I'm sure it wasn't the Manny's. :occasion5: 
( well, other than the losing Jeanna part) I suppose now I'm gonna have to get some doubles so that you'll dive with me still. 
or tree rings 
? I'll agree with the latter. The former? Depends on who has had more mojitos.