Club Blog
An experienced group of seven divers headed out this Friday to Deep Reef. With plans to see the bottom at 42m dive plans had been carefully made and recorded. So with the shot line in place on the reef the first pair of divers were dropped in the water. The current proved to be running fast and the pair could only stay in place with lots of fin kicks. Using the boat to tow our divers back to the buoy they headed down. Finding the shot had landed on the shallower (35m) side of the reef they watched as five or six eagle rays glided by!
The next group of three dropped into the water and drifted towards the buoy. Unfortunately one of their group had problems decending and they missed the reef surfacing after 25m of looking at the sandy seabed.
At last it was mine and Steve's turn. Steve powered up his Evolution Rebreather and I checked my Trimix cylinders......this was not going to be a short dive for us! We were dropped in up stream of the buoy and finned hard so that we caught hold of the shot line. A quick check at the surface and we were on our way down - hand over hand down the line like flags on a flagpole. The shot weight had landed in a recess in the reef and this provided perfect cover for us to get our breath back after the descent. We then headed north along the back of the reef. The back of Deep Reef is covered with soft corals and the visability was clear, all looked good for a nice dive.
We found that the current at the bottom was not too bad and away from the reef there appeared to be no current at all. So we enjoyed the swim along the reef and after about 15minutes we came to the end. We turned around and headed back slowly ascending the reef. A school of Angel Fish swam by and off in the distance we could see a large group of Yellow Tail Goat Fish. All too soon we were at the top of the reef so we headed back to the shot line. Our ascent started with twelve minutes of decompression needed but after the swap to 40% Nitrox at 21m and a swap to 80% Nitrox at 9m I only had six minutes remaining when I reached 6m. Steve on his rebreather had one minute less than me. We completed our decompression holding onto the shot line with the current still running and surfaced to be picked up by the boat.
It's now time to plan another deep dive but this time we will see if we can find somewhere out of the current........
Neil
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