21st Aug 07:00
Afron, 36m, vis 3m, temp 18 degrees
Joe and Marcin
Diving from Top Gun
30% & 50%, 40min bottom time

Having got up at 03:15 instead of travelling down the night before I was more ready for bed than a dive, but the rather choppy conditions prevented much sleep on the trip out. I had picked up my new stage cylinder (in my mind this will save me money; the cost of hire being saved and the resale value when I head back to Aus) and was feeling pretty good about the dive. It was touch and go as to if we would get to the Afron as we had no GPS co-ordinates, so were looking at maybe the Alex Von Opstal. But skipper Graeme managed to get in touch with base, we got the numbers and headed over.

Joe, Marcin and I had run the numbers thorugh our respective planners and agreed on a profile for our dive. We would do 40mins and planned it as a square profile with 2mins at 19m to take account of the gas switch. I had also looked at varuious combinations of 5mins at 19m to take account of possible delays in the switch, but theay all worked out near enough the same. Marcin was going to lad the dive and I would shoot the bag. Despite our agreement on the surface it became apparent that we had not really planned the dive as a team, and when we got ot the wreck there was a pause while we looked at each other and sort of did nothing. Then it was off for a swim around the Afron, an old converted Admiralty trawler. We already knew that the gun had gone and most shell casings had been taken - by Graeme - but hey, we'd take a look.

It was dark and the vis was about 3m. We started at the boilers that housed a massive congor that was definitely bossing the area. Behind the boilers there was an engine and then there was props. There was some superstructure left, but not a lot. I think we lapped the thing about three times. Twenty mins on the bottom would have been enough, but we stayed for the 40 to justify our deco procedures, and it was a nice enough dive. There is some pretty fixed life and there were a few fish.

I started preparing the bag early, shot it quite well with minimal bouyancy issues and we left spot on 40mins. ALl good. It then became apparent that our plan was not a team plan but rather three individua plans we had all agreed on. We made it to 21m a litle slower than we had planned and spent a little longer than we needed to on the switch. From here on I found myself between Marcin above and Joe below, sort of piggy in the middle between their hand signals that Iwas not fully understanding. Anyway, we did a decent ascent, albeit not all at one level. It turned out that Marcin was doing runtime while Joe had planned stop time. I sat in the middle and figured I was OK so laong as I was between them. We had a little spat on the boat, no more than a minor learning curve tiff and went away with a lesson learnt about dive planning. Tomorrow we could see if we would do any better.