Trench B and two-toed amphora

Monday 12.9.2016

I dived with Ray this time. We had the first dive. On our way down we took an extra tank set to the bottom of the ascent line - just in case. We excavated trench B, loosened one amphora, and moved it and three others to the apotheke (Greek for storage area). At the end we took one nice looking amphora up from the apotheke. Or Ray took, while I was collecting the sherds into our bag and returning the airlift back to its place.

The amphora to be lifted up is placed in large sturdy net on the sea bed, the net is closed with smaller rope, and lifted up with a lift bag. You put just enough air in the lift bag, so that it barely starts to rise up. You have one hand all the time on the exhaust valve on top of the bag, so that you can let extra air out, when it expands while rising (5 liters at 40m becomes 25 liters on surface). If you would not do that, the expanding air would increase lift dramatically, and the whole system would "woosh" to surface. Not good. You do not want to let too much air out, because then the amphora would start sinking and you would be in real hurry to add more air into the lift bag from you regulator. And you are on top of the lift bag, and the opening is at the bottom some 1m lower. So, you need to be careful.

Once we were at the decompression trapeze, Ray gave the amphora a gentle push up, and it floated nicely to surface for the safety diver to take it to Queen Zenobia. It had only some 10m to go, and so the air in the lift bag only doubled in size. However, the distance was short and there was no time for big rush to surface.

Amphora parts are named after human parts: hands, shoulders, neck, body, lip, and toe. The hands are above the shoulders, the toe is right under the body, the lip is just on top of the neck and there is only one lip and toe. Except for this one amphora (lifted up many days ago) had two toes! However, the other one was inside the body - with lots of other amphora sherds.

Two toed amphora, one under the body on its proper place, and the other inside.

What happened? No one really knows, but one possible culprit could be a turtle. A big turtle was recently (year or two ago) noticed to be moving finds in the area, and maybe she decided to do also some home decorating? It does not seem feasible for all those sherds to just randomly fall into one amphora.

Our backup boat coming back to M/S Queen Zenobia.

The wind picked up, and we had some boat trouble getting back home. I hoped they would get it all sorted out tonight so that we could dive tomorrow. They did not. We all have an extra off-gas day tomorrow. Must figure out something to do...

Most people are now relaxing by the pool. Not swimming, but just chatting and listening Robert playing his flute. There no real hurry to go to bed early today! I can not follow all discussions because the locals are like Finns, and like to chat in their own language. And that is all Greek to me.