President Coolidge - Vanuatu

[Ian T]

While certainly an excellent dive, I dont have time to compose a detailed trip report at this point. We did some excellent dives and enjoyed the Wreck thoroughly. We purchased a DVD made in 2007 with a lot of historical footage and diving footage. If anyone is interested, let me know and I can loan you mine. Unfortunately as much as we tried, they only let us do an accelerated deco dive on our last dive there (EANx 50 for Deco). Was very interesting to note the following on the dive though:

1. Our guide was a TDI instructor who preaches the 'Right rich / left lean ' rule. All deco was planned using 50% only, though he add 100% O2 there. His 50% was already clipped off to his right side, so he clipped the 100% to his left. He seemed to think nothing of it. A student of his earlier in the week we saw with deco cylinder clipped off to RHS. The regulator in his mouth was almost at a 60 degree angle due to the hose. It looked uncomfortable to say the least !

2. During deco, after the gas switch, did 4 mins at 21m then 4 at 18, purely to open up the Oxygen window with higher ppO2s. Our TDI instructor guide did about a minute at 21, then took off with very brief stops to 6m where we met up with him again ( his dives were planned on V planner ).

3. Easily able to calculate that we could do all our deco on a 5.5 L cylinder. Through V planner, our guide knew he needed so many Litres, and didn't know if he had enough gas for the deco.

4. Although the dive was run to a dive plan, Tec 2Gs in dual gas mode used. Deco plan aligned very well with the algorithm in the 2G. The 2G does not prompt for deeper stops though deco credit is given for deeper stops.

We didn't get too bent around the axles over all this, though just some interesting things to note.
Bubbles Up.

[JD]

I thought that they strictly adhered to Canadian tables? Even when we used 50%, I was forced to do air deco times. Not that it really mattered, as warm water in a 3mm suit makes for nice deco!
Who did you dive with, and who was the instructor? There has been a little conversation on various forums about rebreather use over there. Be interesting to see what tables they use then, or if they let you go and do as you please.

JD

[Ian T]

JD,

All air dives planned to DCIEM tables ( taken from TDI course notes, circa 1996). It took a lot of convincing to let us do an accelerated deco dive. The dive also had to be with the TDI Instructor as the guide, as they were 'trained' for it, as opposed to the local dive guides they use. This was the most difficult part, getting an appropriate guide. For the same dive the day before, a group did 89 minutes bottom time, we did 64 mins fortunately. Why do more deco than you have to ? If I'm using 50%, then I want to get out of the water as soon as possible. The reef there can get a little boring after a while.

The thing that was strange, was that they didn't use this as a marketing opportunity. A guy there was doing his TDI ER course, then couldn't use deco gas for the next dive ( even though he's now qualified ) and his mates who hadn't done the course were doing the same dive as him. Ridiculous I though. Why not say, these are the limits, unless you have these quals, and then you can do these dives, with accel deco. It would sell a lot more courses for them.

We had a diver with us, on an Inspo (Air Diluent). He didn't go below 40m as a personal limit and with the extra Narcosis he notices on a breather on air. He was still forced to follow the DCIEM table as the dive guide was using DCIEM. (His VR3 threw in a deep stop though on ascent, the guide kept swimming, and they lost him anyway !). One of the instructors over there has an Inspo. I recommend that they have separate 'Tech' dives in their schedule, where advanced dive techniques can be employed. They may consider it. By no means do they let you go and do as you please on the wreck. 

[STisaflog]

Mr T glad you and the lovely mrs made it back safe and sound. With restricted diving like that it's a wonder why anypone would bother going!!!!.

ps. is it true you paid $200 in excess bagage for your Jetfins?