Nova Tech: Northern Virginia's Technical Diving Community

Dive Reports > 7/21/2002. Eureka. Dave Dalton, Sr.

Sunday, July 21, 2002 found 4 Nova Tech divers diving out of Virginia Beach, VA on the Miss Lindsey with others with whom they regularly dive of the VB Tech group. Nova Tech group divers consisted of Todd Clagett and Allyson Clagett diving as a buddy team 1 and David Dalton, Sr. & David Dalton, Jr. diving as buddy team 2. Team 1 is generally more interested in artifact recovery and Team 2 leans more toward sightseeing.

We arrived at the site of the Eureka (118 fsw) at approximately 10:30, geared up and were in the water at 11:30. Visibility was a spectacular 70 ft and water temps on the bottom were a pleasant 61 degrees,with surface temp being much warmer. There was astrong current and it was very nice to be usingscooters to deal with it. More on that later!

Team 1 went right to digging in a hole that wasn't more than 15 feet from where the wreck was tied in.They left the numerous bottles they unearthed for thesecond dive bringing up just one. Team 2 toured thewreck with D1 (Sr) pulling D2 (Jr) with his Gavinscooter. D2 carried a camera and shot two rolls whichare in the process of being developed as I write. The clarity of the water allowed one to get a very goodunderstanding of the layout of the wreck. Viewing the two large anchors on the port side of the bow, at the same time was incredible. Both Teams completed their planned 40 minute bottom times and required deco and got back on board.

Todd advised that he had just broken into a new crate of bottles and showed one he had stuffed in his pocket, a square bottle of Dr. Prichard's Castoria with the good doctor's name and the product name cast into the bottle. Although these bottles were from the 1890's when this ship sunk, D1 is old enough (54) to remember taking this patent medicine as a child. It was still sold in a square bottle and appeared that the only change was from a cork to a screw top.

Todd's discovery generated considerable excitement between both teams and both decided to concentrate on
excavating that hole on the second dive.

Both teams brought bags down to carry back bottles on the second dive. Todd, being the master digger with a
scooter, went to work while the other 3 stuffed the bags as he handed out bottles.

About 20 minutes into the dive Allyson developed a problem with one of her regs and after the situation was handled both teams decided to end the dive. Team 1 started their ascent and deco and Team 2 hooked up the two bags of bottles and started their ascent. Rather than hang on the line like a flag in the breeze we were doing "drift and run deco". Drift 50 or 60 feet from the anchor line and then run back to it with the scooter, then drift again and repeat, obviously only a technique one would employ in good viz. Between 40 & 50 feet the current picked up quite a bit
and we (Team 2) inadvertently drifted out of sight of the anchor line. We ran some circular patterns on the scooter but to no avail. We settled in, shot a bag, completed our deco drift style, and upon completion surfaced to find the boat several hundred yards away. We dropped down to 15 feet and scootered toward the boat for about 2 minutes. We surfaced again and saw that we were making progress so we dropped down and tried it again. This time I could hear the motor on the scooter slowing and realized we were out of juice.

We returned to the surface, and found we were even farther away than before. We fully inflated the lift bag, hooked up the dive-alerts an honked them and flashed the HID light in the direction of the boat.

Todd later advised that he saw us as soon as we surfaced but we were not aware of this. Consequently we continued to signal and honk. Interestingly no one heard the dive alert (other than us!) and the HID light (a 10 Watt EE Pro 6) was more visible than the yellow lift bag. (Note to self: Never dive in the ocean without the HID!)

As we were the last divers in the water the boat didn't have to wait TOOOOOOOOO long before coming to get us. The mate went in to pull the hook, they pulled up the hangbars and gear lines and got underway. All of this took about 30 minutes which doesn't seem like too long, but when you don't know if anyone knows where you are and you re drifting farther and farther from the boat, I can assure you it seems like much longer!

Lessons learned:

1) Switch batteries on the scooter between dives. If we had fresh batteries in the scooter we could have made it back to the boat following our drift deco.

2) Make sure you have appropriate signaling devices. Lift bag, safety sausage, HID light, dive-alert. On the last, while the dive-alert has it's place, which is probably in situations where fog blows in and you are relatively close to the boat, its not much good at longer distances as I have now learned.

Along this same line it would be comforting for the team in the water if the boat had someway of signaling back that they knew where you were and would come get you shortly (Horn, flare, guy in a lime green drysuit waving his arms on the top of the boat)!

Chase boats are also in order and while the Miss Lindsey has one it was not used, apparently because they were ready to pull the hook.

3) Stay calm. While we were concerned as to whether or not anyone knew where we were, we remained calm which helped to contribute to the favorable outcome of this dive. There was no reason to panic, the water was warm, we were in trilam drysuits with thinsulate undergarments, we had a 10 watt hid that would burn for 5 + hours which would be especially good for signaling in the dusk or at night and we had 4 back up lights between us. We had just eaten several Miss Lindsey "Deco Dogs" before the second dive so our nutritional requirements were taken care of (those
things will stay with you forever!). We were well hydrated and I had a P-valve in my drysuit - too bad my son did not (You've never seen anyone get out of a drysuit and run for the head so fast)!!!!

4) If you are doing a "drift and run" deco, make sure you don't lose sight of the anchor line.

All in all it was an incredible day of diving, great weather, great viz, great bottles (yes we still had both bags when we got back on the boat), and a very worthwhile learning experience. What more could you ask for?

Dave Dalton