Malta Day 1 – Accidents and Emergencies, Part the Fourth

 And indeed the Tugboat Rozi is a splendid wreck, one I’d really recommend to anyone. It’s mostly intact and has lots of fish, plus the cabin is open for that inevitable “diver sitting on a toilet underwater” photo that everyone likes to take. At one point my buddy spotted a barracuda in the distance. Best of all, I handled the depth, staying mostly relaxed and happy. I felt a little strange at one point, stopped, gently rose a metre or two, and it went away. Eventually, inevitably, our computers began to count down the minutes until we started to reach the ‘five minutes til you go into deco(1)’ moment. 

And this is where things went a wee bit wrong.

Firstly, the current. As we headed back towards our planned exit point, we encountered a strong current which kept pushing us back towards the ship. For most of us, this was an annoyance but not a serious problem; we dropped down slightly to get out of the worst of the current. (Currents tend to be strongest the nearer you get to the surface of the water.) 

Unfortunately, this was not an option for two of our number, who were running low on air and for whom dropping longer would have meant risking running too low. They stayed shallower to conserve air, and found themselves being pushed further and further backwards. My buddy, a Divemaster, noticed this, and slowed down to watch to see if they were okay. The rest of the group, alas, didn’t notice this and kept going. I did my best to keep my eyes on both the struggling two divers, my buddy, and the rest of the group, but eventually reached the point where the group had simply vanished into the blue.

The two running-low-on-air divers eventually appeared to decide to surface, and myself and my buddy tried to decide what to do next. We followed our compasses in the direction the group had taken, and eventually found ourselves near the exit point next to the lighthouse. (Again, props to the excellent maps in the "A Guide to Shore Diving the Maltese Islands" book by Peter Lemon – I saw several metal beams in the water near some rocks, and instantly recognised them from the drawing in the book as the wreckage which indicates you have found the exit.)

We looked up to see the waves crashing overhead. 6m down, the water wasn’t moving too much, but it was clearly a different story on the surface. We’d have to go around the rocky outcrop to the planned exit point at Suzie’s Pool, which, being more sheltered, would be much calmer.

I checked my air (a bit low but not dire), my computer (which was doing a safety stop for me), and my buddy. And then realised what my buddy was staring at…

(1) ‘Going into deco’ is divers’ shorthand for staying down either long enough or deep enough (or both) that you have to do a decompression stop. In other words, you have stayed under long enough that your body has absorbed so much nitrogen (from the compressed air divers breathe) that you cannot ascend directly to the surface without an unacceptable risk of getting the bends.

This is when the nitrogen dissolved in your body tissues “bubbles out” destructively on ascent, due to the decreased pressure as you ascend to shallower depths. “Bubbling out” happens on all dives, but if you have too large an amount of nitrogen in your tissues and / or you ascend too quickly, the bubbles are so large that instead of being safely transported through the bloodstream into the lungs and exhaled, they become trapped and damage your tissues and circulatory system.

When this has happened, you must do a decompression stop, where you ascend to a certain depth and stay there until you’ve exhaled sufficient of the nitrogen stuck in your system that you can ascend further without an unacceptable risk of getting the bends. This is a regular part of technical diving. Technical divers, however, carry extra gas and an entirely separate scuba breathing system with them, so that in the event of one of their sets of breathing gas failing, they can switch to the other and still safely carry out decompression. The extra gas is also calcuated to last for the length of the dive plus decompression stops and a safety margin. Finally, they carry diving computers which can calculate decompression stops based on the divers’ time and depth during the dive. 

Recreational divers, of which I am one, do not carry this amount of gear as it’s not needed for dives without decompression stops. (The extra gear for technical diving is expensive, heavy, needs much more maintenance, and you have to do a lot of training and learn extra skills before you can safely dive with it. Each diver makes their own choice about whether the extra time and expense is worth it for what they want to achieve when they dive.) This means that, should you have to do a decompression and you have problems with your breathing gear or run low on gas, you face the choice every diver plans to avoid: run out of gas or get the bends. Neither is desirable.

Malta Day 1 – Accidents and Emergencies, Part the Third

Spot the octopus!

We pored over the excellent dive book, planning our dive on the Tugboat Rozi, just off Cirkewwa Point. In my case, with a slight residual anxiety, although the BCD problem had been solved swiftly by one of the divemasters. C took one look at the valve, unscrewed it, fished out the rubber seal and gave it a clean. He then screwed the valve back together and popped down to Suzie’s pool to test it out. Result: one working BCD. I was happy about this, but was also somewhat mindful of the fact that a dive to a wreck which sits at 35m on the seabed isn’t a good place to lose buoyancy. Still, I had faith in C.


Just as well, since I was slightly nervous about this. I’ve recently been getting the scuba yips about diving deep, legacy of a unfortunate incident in the Farne Islands where I overbreathed my reg at 21m and nearly had a panic attack. My best guess is that I’m a little sensitive to the extra work and noise of breathing through the reg at depth. Even with the breathing resistance dialled down, air at 30m is four times as dense as air at the surface, creating extra resistance, and I think it’s that which gives me the yips. 

On the other hand, part of me really, really wanted to do the dive and prove I could do it (and that the ‘Deep Diver’ speciality card I hold isn’t just there to prop up a wobbly table). Malta is where you go to see wrecks, and I really wanted to see this one. And so, along with everyone else, I kitted up and trudged to the entrance point by the lighthouse. As I strapped on my fins and attempted to rinse out my mask in a nearby rock pool without having the tide snatch it out of my hands, I thought to myself, “Wow, that’s a fair way down”. 

Never mind. I stuck the reg in my mouth, inflated the BCD, took a few breath, and giant-strode off the edge to join the others. A quick exchange of hand-signals, and we breathed out, deflated our jackets, and sunk into the sea. At four metres, I tested the BCD with a quick puff of air to slow my descent, turned my head, and watched in happiness as the air failed to stream out of the valve. I kicked forward, then paused, and found myself hanging effortlessly in the water column. 

Problem solved. I set off after the others, keeping pace with my buddy and staying shallow to maximise bottom time. En route, I took a white balance reading from my slate; the camera worked just fine. Five minutes in, the wreck loomed slowly out of the blue, surrounded by fish. 

This was what I’m come to Malta for!

Malta Day 1 – Accidents and Emergencies, Part the Second

We descended gently, or in my case swiftly, to the bottom of the wall nearby and commenced exploring. This should have been a nice, gentle dive with lots of fish and interesting life on the wall to see. 

Except that I still couldn’t swim properly. It felt like I was being pulled downward. Fortunately, we weren’t near a drop-off, but I just couldn’t get buoyant. I filled my jacket, and filled my jacket, and then became aware of a deeply, deeply unwelcome sound behind my head. The sound of escaping air. 

Bugger.

I turned my head as far as I could, and there was the problem; a steady stream of leaking bubbles from the dump valve on my right shoulder. I swiftly signalled my buddy, indicated a problem, wrote on the slate “Leaking valve?” and pointed. My buddy shook her head, possibly because by this point all the air had leaked out and there was either no stream of bubbles, or a very small one. 

We continued our dive for five minutes with me hoping that my buddy was right. Alas, this was not the case. I was having to drag myself across the rocks. I checked my air; down to 110bar from a full 12-litre tank (230). I’d have expected to be at around 180-170 by now, given the depth. At this point, my oh-shit-ometer started going “BEEEEEP” as I stared down at the sea floor, 22m down, and had the deeply uncomfortable thought that if I sunk down to it I might not be able to get back up again on my own without ditching my weights. This was not an irretrievable situation, but it needed dealing with now. Time to end the dive.

I practised a skill I’ve come to realise recently I need more of, that of being assertive with my buddy. I resignalled “Problem”, pointed at the valve, then pointed at the SPG. My buddy, being familiar with my levels of air consumption, realised the problem. We swam off, or in my case lumbered off, to find the rest of the gang. Alas, everyone had swum off in front of us; always a fun situation when you can’t swim fast and you need to catch up to indicate a problem. Ten minutes later, I stationed myself on a rock, whilst my buddy attempted to get the divemasters’ attention. 

I managed to make eye contact with one of them (also, coincidentally, the same instructor who taught me on my Rescue Course). I signalled “Problem” and “Come here”, probably rather emphatically. I then printed on the slate “BCD VALVE LEAKING, CAN’T STAY BUOYANT”. We agreed to swim back together, ascending slowly to about six metres. At this depth the 5mm semidry suit plus the lighter tank and what little air I could keep in the BCD were enough to maintain buoyancy. 

We paddled slowly along, with me keeping a wary eye on my SPG, and trying not to think about the fact that I had no fine control over my buoyancy, and if I went to the surface, no means of keeping myself float apart from my ability to swim, and my semidry suit. (Orally inflating a leaking BCD being an exercise in pointlessness.) I thought about all the functions you need your dive gear to perform both during a routine dive and in an emergency, which you never realise you relying on it to be able to do unless for any reason it can’t do it. 

Nevertheless, we made it uneventfully back to the exit point and paddled back out, trying not to get knocked off our feet by the surf, which was getting up a wee bit. I shed my gear, waited for everyone else to emerge, and started planning a) lunch and b) what on earth I was going to do for the next dive.

Malta Day 1 – Accidents and Emergencies

Recently I spent eight days in Malta, courtesy of my friendly local dive shop, with ten fellow divers. We explored the island and drank much beer.

I'd like to point out that any bugger-ups recounted here are entirely my own fault. No blame attaches to anyone else! So, onward...

The Diving Holiday in Malta team’s first day was spent at Marfa Point, aka Cirkewwa. About an hour’s drive from St Peter’s Bay, it’s where the Gozo ferry leaves from, and also has several excellent dives in its own right. We had our trusty guide to Malta’s diving, penned by Peter Lemon, whom we bumped into in the Dive Shop later in the week. (I’m not being sponsored by him or anything, but if you want a guide to diving in Malta, buy his. It has excellent directions, including compass bearings, good descriptions, and undersea maps that actually make sense when you get under the water.)

Should have been a doddle of a check-out dive, following by an interesting dive on the wreck of the Tugboat Rozi, right? 

Well…

Our first dive was to be around the area known as “Suzie’s Pool”, an area often used for training dives, and thus a logical place to have our first “check-out” dive of the holiday. Always a good idea to test out everyone’s skills and equipment before the more challenging dives. In my case, it was going to be particularly useful, since I had with me my old BCD, which I now use for travelling. The new one is more up-to-date, comfortable and ergonomic, fits over my drysuit, has integrated weight pockets – and also weighs a ton, so it no longer comes with me on holiday unless I have extra baggage allowance. I’d had the old BCD serviced back in February, hadn’t used it since June, and had meant to have a pool dive with it the week before we left, but life got in the way.

I kitted up with 6kg of lead, figuring that since I was wearing the 5mm full-length suit of my two-piece semidry suit – but not the jacket, hood, neoprene socks, 5mm gloves or rash vest that complete the rest of my diving ensemble back in the UK – I could knock 3kg off what I needed. I’d been diving on 6kg in Crete earlier in the year with the same set-up. 

We slithered into Suzie’s Pool, in some cases literally as the sea was vigorously splashing onto the rocks* and swam out to the drop-off. Or in my case, didn’t, as I seemed to be pinned onto the rocks. I signalled my buddy and wrote on the slate I always carry with me: “Too much weight.” 

Looking back, this should have been a clue. Even if 6kg was a little on the heavy side taking into account the amount of neoprene I’d lost from my usual diving set-up, I’ve dived with that BCD on 9kg of lead and a lot more gear, and it can produce roughly 20kg-worth of lift. Even if I was over-weighted, it should have been possible to compensate by adding a bit more air to the jacket.

Still, buddy and the nearby dive leader fiddled about with my weight belt and removed a weight, always an interesting experience when all your weight is on your belt. Fortunately, with only 3 minutes’ dive time and 4m of water above my head, even a buoyant ascent would probably not have done me too much damage. Even more fortunately, this didn’t happen: the dive leader tucked the weight into his BCD pocket, and we set off into the blue.

And then things got worse. 


To be continued…


* Yes. This will become an important detail later on on this blog.

Things I Learned From Buying A Flat

1. If there’s anything else in life which you need to devote energy to, sort it out before you start the process of buying. Double if you’re buying and selling. Once the process starts, people will be calling you at any time with any question, usually whilst you’re at work, but sometimes in the evening. You’ll need your resources to sort this out. You may also like to warn your friends and family in advance that, temporarily, they are not your number one priority (unless their house burns down or something).  
2. Other people’s advice can be useful, but remember, this is YOUR home – not theirs. If you want to buy it and you’re not sure the seller will go for a lower price, ask if you’re prepared to risk losing the property for the sake of potentially saving a few thousand.  
3. This is not the time to be a shrinking violet. You are paying people – the solicitor, the surveyor, anyone you get in to fix the property – to do stuff for you on the biggest purchase you’ll ever make. Forget being polite and retiring and be prepared to be a pain in the bum if you need to. If all else fails, pretend you’ve turned into the most assertive person you know, and think about how they would handle it. 
4. Where the north-east isn’t riddled with underground streams, it’s riddled with disused mines, and many properties are leasehold flats, which are complex to sell. Don’t get the cheapest solicitor, get a GOOD solicitor who knows the area. 
5. If you’re not sure, ask, ask and ask again. If you don’t understand it, get them to explain it. If you’re not sure if the garden with the large dead yucca plant in belongs to the property you’re after, get the estate agent to find out. See point 1. 
6. The estate agent may push you to complete the sale so that they can get their fee. Be prepared to ignore this for as long as it takes to conduct as many checks on your potential new home as you require. 
7. Insurance, insurance, insurance. Don’t complete without it! (See aforementioned "House burning down" comment.) 
8. Buy a large bottle of wine and keep the number for a decent takeaway handy, you’ll need it for the first night. Also keep nightclothes, bedding, toiletries, towels, tea, coffee, biscuits, loo roll and lightbulbs handy.  
9. If people offer to help you move, accept the offer with joy, and go buy or make a big cake for them to eat whilst helping you move. Free help is great.
10. But do think about what you'd like them to do on the day, else you'll spend Moving Day with people crowding round you going "What do we do next?"
11. You may also like to lay in a bottle of Scotch for if either a) it all goes wrong, b) the central heating packs in - that's why the Scots invented it in the first place.

And Off I Go Again

To Malta, where it is sunny and warm and there are sunken ships, and I don't have to worry about the gathering clouds of DOOM over my office. See you when I return!

Things I Learned From My Last Dive (St Mary's Island)

Note: Lest it be thought otherwise, these are my own thoughts on what I learned from my last dive. It's not intended as a criticism of my dive buddies. I take the view that I'm personally responsible for my own dives and if something went wrong, I need to think about what I personally could have done differently to prevent it.

1. Never abdicate looking up the tides and currents to someone else, even if they’re a Divemaster and your internet connection isn’t working.  YOU'RE responsible for your safety, not them.
2. The handsignals for “You two stay together and wait here, I’ll go up and take a compass bearing” look disturbingly like the handsignals for “You two buddy up, I’m ascending and ending my dive”.  
3. If you don’t understand the message someone is conveying, don’t let them do anything until you do. Write it on the slate if you have to.  
4. In poor vis, agree with your buddies in advance that the dive moves at the pace of the slowest diver, and that the people leading will look back frequently to check that there are still the right number of people present.  
5. In poor vis, get close on descent, and hold hands (or a buddy line) on ascent to avoid getting split up. 
6. Never let the guy with the broken compass lead the dive. 
7. Always carry audio and visual signalling equipment. 
8. Spend time keeping your fitness up. My buddy and I had to surface swim for about 20 mins with a tide running. Every minute I’ve ever spent in the gym on the treadmill was worth it, because an unfit diver would have been struggling, and trying for a tow against a current is a difficult thing. 
9. On the North Sea coast, heading West will pretty much always get you back to the coast.

On the plus side, I faced my fear of overbreathing my reg at depth, and overcame it. We all got back in one piece. And as we surfaced, and I thought “Bugger me, that lighthouse is a long way off”, I saw the Red Arrows performing in the distance for the Great North Run, and the inspiration powered us back to the lighthouse, and a very welcome biscuit.