Carpathia Trip report

[richstevenson]

Well after 6 years of trying we managed to get back to Carpathia and finish off what we started! The Carpathia lies 200 miles West of the Scillies and 175 miles South of Baltimore and was famous due to assisting the survivors off the Titanic.

The trip lasted just over 2 weeks and we managed 6 dives to a max depth of 156m with bottom times 28 minutes max and in water times of between 5-6 hours.

Conditions were near perfect with a lazy swell and slight Northerly Wind and the vis was stunning with ambient light on the wreck. The artefact recovery alongside Comex / Titanic inc was successful but we can't discuss too much yet as the first exibition is next February in London, but is was an amazing experience to have ROV's working on the Carpathia next to you in 150m!

Filming was a complete disaster though, we imploded every camera we had beyond 130m so the only footage we got was with a 3CCD single fixed focus camera. Both HD cameras let go in a big way with a loud bang and 2 very unhappy owners, but all the Silent Sub scooters held together as did all the units too. We also destroyed Halcyon and OMS lights without any hassle either, and they are supposed to be rated to 150m! Quite a few contents gauges let go too on the CCRs as well but with no catastrophic gas loss.

The dives were uneventful, no DCS but a couple of tired and cold divers every now and again as you would expect after such long dives. We did use the recompression chamber once for one guy but that was on a much shallower wreck as he surfaced feeling not too good. Having the pot onboard really made a difference, I could not imagine what would have happened if we'd had an incident on site without one, but still glad we didn't have to need it on Carpathia.

The wreck itself is starting to collapse in on itself quite a lot now. On the dive I made in 2001 we never really explored much beyond the bow area but this time I managed to get 2 scooter laps around the wreck to get a real impression of how she is and at 600' long there is a lot of wreckage to see.
At the bow she is very flat now with just the winches standing off the sea bed. As you move aft the midships gets higher and more intact, nearly 10m off the sea bed and the stern is perfectly intact with a list to Port but is very obvious and easy to navigate around. The stern is the shallowest part at 143m and the deepest anyone got was 156m so she is still standing high.

The artefacts were everywhere, as you can imagine, in particular large numbers of China plates and portholes. All the telegraphs were there too and Comex did a smart job of picking up the obvious bits with us divers cleaning up the trickier areas, in particular some of the plates that were inside the wreck itself.

There's some bollocks written about my mouthpiece coming off and me swallowing loads of water, as usual the facts never get in the way of a good story and what really happened was the zip tie came loose and the front loop popped off at depth. It was fixed very simply by putting it back in my mouth again, so no dramas and certainly no swallowed water!

So in all we're very happy to be back and very happy with the expedition and the boat 'Ocean Dancer', if some smart person could find a way of reducing the deco we'd all be happy to go back again but until then she can lie undisturbed!

The team from this years trip were:

Ric Waring, Inspiration Classic
Jeff Cornish, Inspiration Classic
Carl Spencer, Boris
Helmuth Biekel, Inspiration Vision
Edo Pavia. Inspiration Vision
Andrea Bottelini, Inspiration Vision
Mark Elliot (not Ellyat!) Inspiration Vison
Tim Cashman, Inspiration Vision
Duncan Coates, Inspiration Vision
Rich Stevenson, Meg

All the units were standard, ie non bastardised rigs that worked perfectly and most folk did the entire dives on the loop. The lads with the Vision / Temp Stik saw some interesting results at depth with the temp stik showing heat right at the end of the can which was worrying, but fortunately no break through and as the divers got shallower the cans became more efficient. I certainly think the Temp Stik is a fantastic tool and the effects of depth on canistor performance are certainly worth noting!

Deco schedules were mainly VPM-B on square profile. The VR3's worked almost to the same schedule until the last few stops where they became very conservative, but still a great tool to have onboard. Bailout was 2-3 ally 80's carrieed by each diver that gave gas to get us to 80m where we had staged gas on the line and shallow support to meet us. For divers that couldn't get back to the shot we had a chase RIB in the water with drop gas down to 80m, fortunately nobody used any of the bail out gas as every dive went without incident

Hope the report was of some interest, cheers

rich stevenson
www.deepbluetech.co.uk

[HelenM]

Really interesting, cheers Rich, appreciate you putting the report up

[iani]

Originally Posted by richstevenson

<snip>
There's some bollocks written on YD about my mouthpiece coming off and me swallowing loads of water, as usual the facts never get in the way of a good story and what really happened was the zip tie came loose and the front loop popped off at depth. It was fixed very simply by putting it back in my mouth again, so no dramas and certainly no swallowed water, where do these folk get their nonsense from?

Err, from your sponsors website
I think.

Ian

[richstevenson]

fair point Ian, I hadn't realised that had been posted, I will make sure Jeff gets it sorted out, I suppose the person on the other end of the phone writing the diary got a bit excited!

cheers

rich

[Mark Chase]

Daron on Loyal watycher was giving us updates on your trip. He said 10 hours in the water?? if so your all quite mad but well done it does sound like a hell of a dive.

PS any clips break on the scooters

ATB

Mark

[Mdemon]

Brilliant post Rich! Fantastic stuff, really good - well done!

Really interesting to read about all the kit failure. Sounds veeeery expensive! Looking forward to seeing some pictures when you get back.

5-6 hours per dive? What sort of temperatures?

Very cool.

[richstevenson]

Hi John,

Thanks for the comments, I forgot to discuss the water temp. When we first dived it in 2001 we had 13-14 degrees on the bottom, 16 degrees from 60m upwards and then between 18 and 20 in the last 10m

This year was completely different with 10-11 degrees on the bottom and all the way up to 40m then it jumped up to 16 degrees and just about made 17 at 6m, much colder

Photos wise I have deco shots and surface stuff, the water looks like you're in the Red Sea!

cheers

rich

[Mdemon]

Nice pic - it does look a bit "Red Sea". Did you wear/use anything extra for the long hangs? We did a couple of hours yesterday at 17 degrees and that was starting to get a bit chilly. 5-6 hours would be a little frigid I imagine.

How did the shot work? Lazy shot - is that the chase boat in the picture? And do you have Expedition Grade reading material because 5-6 hours is a long time to be looking at plankton...?

[Adrian]

Originally Posted by Mdemon

Nice pic - it does look a bit "Red Sea". Did you wear/use anything extra for the long hangs? We did a couple of hours yesterday at 17 degrees and that was starting to get a bit chilly. 5-6 hours would be a little frigid I imagine.

I was thinking the same John after my comparatively non-existant ascent of 35 minutes from the Skaala yesterday. I was wondering just how to maintain a comfortable temperature in colder water for the same kind of dive. 6 hours in cold water can't be fun with even the slightest cold dampness tracking up wrist seals.

[richstevenson]

Hi John,

Most folk wore Fouth Element Artics with a 400 gram undersuit on top which was very uncomfortable on the surface but perfect underwater. I think that being able to eat and drink underwater couple with using P valves really helps maintain core temperature and if it doesn't physically then it certainly does mentaly! No one really complained of being cold as once you got into the 16-17 degree section the thick undergarments really helped, everyone was using air for suit inflation as we expected the water to be as warm as it was in 2001, big mistake! Argon would have been a nice touch but we didn't have it.

The main shot was tied in at depth then the lazy was deployed down the main line and tied off at 80m with a bottle of 16/45 waiting 'just in case'. Then once the divers had realeased the lazy at 80m and no yellow bags had been deployed the rest of the station was built and the RIB you can see in the picture was tied to the station. We has 2 RIB's on site just in case we had 'worst scenario' which was a diver bailed out from depth off the wreck and then a yellow bag during the deco phase on the station, we had every eventuality covered as being so far offshore you have to answer every question safely.

The main boat deployed safety divers after 3 hours as that's when the CNS load starts to rack up and then they swapped out every hour to avoid boredom and excess in water time. CNS loadings were over 300% but we had zero 02 incidents, not even any chesty coughs!

02 was at 6m with everyone taking 30mins or so towards the end of the dive and air breaks were done with a 3 way reg set built by Edo and Andrea. This could be moved from 12m upwards which was the depth we started on air breaks.

Boredom was alleviated by a generous donation of 'Nuts', 'zoo' and 'FHM' mags kindly donated from the staff room at Duncan Coate's workplace! There was also a couple of MP3's on the line too

To be honest the deco was fine until the last hour when it got a bit tedious, but it's the price you have to pay and it's not negotiable!

cheers John

rich
www.deepbluetech.co.uk

[Milldog]

Rich

what can i say fantastic report mate, green with envy but not something i would have seriously done, you'll have to raise it for me to see it

As you were the only person on the meg what was your impression of it and what did you think of the Inspo system along side it ??

look forward to seeing you for a pint and hearing about the dive

fantastic mate good to see all the ribs made it back

Graham

[The Old Ruminator]

Originally Posted by Milldog

Rich

what can i say fantastic report mate, green with envy but not something i would have seriously done, you'll have to raise it for me to see it

As you were the only person on the meg what was your impression of it and what did you think of the Inspo system along side it ??

look forward to seeing you for a pint and hearing about the dive

fantastic mate good to see all the ribs made it back

Graham

Hey Milldog did you miss that trip as well ??

[Milldog]

Originally Posted by salsettediving

Hey Milldog did you miss that trip as well ??

ha ha ha i'll see you later

Graham

[richstevenson]

Hi Graham,

Thanks for your post, it was indeed great fun, a really good bunch of friends and divers with a superb boat albeit a little expensive!

I first dived Carpathia with a Classic Inspiration, and would quite happily of dived her again if I hadn't got the Meg. The Meg for me offered a few advantages than the Vision mainly a better Cansitor (slightly more lime and easier WOB) plus the HUD tells you your exact PO2 passively so for the long scooter runs around the wreck I know exactly what I'm breathing.

I also noticed that when scootering with Jeff who had the same scooter on the same speed setting, same bail out cylinders and he is also similar size to me he got left behind so maybe the Meg is more streamlined?

It's pretty small feed really, I have dived Inspirations since 1998 and never had a problem and would have gladly used one if the Meg had broke, I just enjoy diving the Meg these days!

cheers, see you soon Percy!

rich
www.deepbluetech.co.uk

[Mdemon]

but it's the price you have to pay and it's not negotiable!

Classic quote.

What was the conclusion about the Vision temp sticks all heating up? Just that the reaction front was as long as the scrubber or did the electronics get confused?

[richstevenson]

Hi John,

Basically Martin Parker told me years ago that the cansitor would be less efficient the deeper it goes, and he guessed that we would get 20 mins max at 150m, maybe a bit longer if we were scootering.

The temp stik is basically backing his theory up as the amount of gas running through the loop at 16.5bar is making the canistor earn it's keep! The temp stik is showing where the 'active face' of the canistor is, and with the increase in depth and therefore gas volume it's working it's way well up the stik.

When the lads got shallower the active face moved almost back to where it started! So if you were planning on diving a second dive on the Canistor (of course you wouldn't in real life) then all would look ok until you started going deeper and then you'd get (in theory) break through very quickly.

Naturally the temp stik can be abused, just like any other bt of kit really, but used properly is a fantastic tool that allows the user to see exactly what is happening in the loop.

I hear the new Sentinel Rebreather is fitted with one, that should be a good unit with VPM -B deco technology, back mounted lungs and a temp stik! That's only rumour though, so we all need to wait and see what comes out and when but if it's true it will be fantastic

cheers

rich
www.deepbluetech.co.uk

[Beanie]

What is a life float?

[Mdemon]

I was wondering that too...

[SteveC]

A little video clip can be seen here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/manchester/news/index.shtml

then click on "Watch latest edition"




Media Player will open up. Fast forward to 15 minutes and go from there. . .


Expedition Website www.provenvcts.co.uk/carpathia/index.php

[Dave Crampton]

Just seen this. Great looking stuff.

Dave C