First day on wreck site - checkout dive

Sunday 21.8.2016

First day started promptly very early in the morning. We had staggered departure times from the hotel, at 6:00, 6:20 and 6:40. They were too tight and it took us a few hours to get to Queen Zenobia, which is now semipermanently anchored right on top of the work site. The boat might look large but it gets quite small with 30-some people on-board.

Queen Zenobia is usually catering divers on a little bit newer wreck site, MS Zenobia.

The work today involved actually getting ready to do real work later on. We put together one airlift, which is not as easy as it sounds. It is some 30m long plastic pipe, that needs to be placed vertically on top of the work site. It can break and it can not be bent. The pros did the work and we helped whenever extra hands were needed. We have also another airlift, but the air hose attachment was broken and the airlift could not be installed today. It was actually good, because we run out of time anyway.

Simultaneously we worked on the airlift compressor, which had to be unwrapped and installed properly on the upper deck. We were surprisingly short of tools. A large spanner works equally well as a hammer and as a nail removal tool! Archaeologist are used to working on tight budgets, and they will make do with whatever they have! Another compressor (for the other airlift) also waits for its turn to be unwrapped from its shipping container. Most of our work does not involve diving, and there is lots of waiting.

Finally we students also got into diving. We made a short practice run to the wreck site, and it was great. It is so neat to dive on 2300 years old wreck site. I took some GoPro videos on it, but they probably will stay with the project. We also tested the logistics for fixed line decompression. First deco stop is at 12m with air, then at 9m with 80% O2, and finally at 6m with 100% O2. The deco-gases are delivered from 50L tanks with long hoses from Queen Zenobia. Communication with surface crew is with a plastic writing tablet attached to weights.

At the beginning of the dive I learned, why you should always check your zipper after someone else zips you in. Surprisingly, not everyone knows how an watertight zipper works as it needs to be closed completely. I started to get some water in the suit right after jumping in, but I quickly guessed what must have happened. I just reached out to close the zipper on my back. It was about 1 cm open. That helped, but I did have to dry my underclothes afterwards.

I was on the first boat back to the hotel, and I would have plenty of time to work on my wet diving undergarments and writing this blog before our course work would begin. We have only one key for each room, and a very well defined protocol on how that key will always be found when needed. The system broke down completely, because the last person to leave to the room just put the key in his pocket. Coincidentally, he was also in the last boat from Queen Zenobia back to shore. We had terrible time waiting for him for more than an hour by the poolside...

In the evening with still had practical work on learning to measure a wreck site. This was part of our earlier web-course. We practiced finding 2D-locations for given objects in a wreck site with two different methods, which would also work in poor visibility. Old technology, but still needed sometimes.