It has been pretty quiet on the site, so I thought I would write about today's dive on lookout express and let everyone know that the vis is not as bad as has been reported earlier in the week.

 I have just finished the utd tech 2 course and it was a blast. We are just trying to get our 5 schedules to align and seal the deal with an experience dive to 160 ft. next week.  So while we wait in anticipation for next week's dive, and since we have only done a handful of deco dives to 130 ft., Mike Barass and I decided to do a long deco dive on eanx 32 to 100 ft with stage and deco bottle as a tune up practice dive. We picked slack tide in the afternoon, I was bottom captain and we descended almost immediately and then headed straight out to the bay before turning the corner. We had both encountered strong currents on the point in the shallows so decided to go around deeper to avoid too much of a roller coaster ride. It took us 5 min. before we descended past 30 ft, and we then dropped to 100 ft. We were rewarded with a nice drift dive as the current gently moved us along the express so we could take in the sights. There was a lot of ambient light and I was pleased that the vis at depth was about 30 ft despite the heavy rain earlier in the week.

We used up our stage, took turns doing gas switches to back gas, and then continued along at 100 ft. While there were barren patches, we also saw a big puget king crab at 105 ft just hanging out on the wall, a big ling cod, lots of rock fish, and some nice sponges. At 55 minutes, Mike took over as deco captain and we began our ascent to 70 for 1, 60 for 1, 50 for 2, 40 for 4, 30 for 6. We swam through a school of fish and thought I was in cozumel for a second. At 20 we switched to O2, for 8, and to 10 ft for 5. Deco stops, schedules, and gas switches were smooth and efficient. We switched back to back gas and continued to slowly cruise in to the bay at 10 ft. Since the water was warm and the vis was actually good, we then decided to do some leash and bottle work. We were pleased that went well too! We wound up doing a 112 min. dive which is the longest dive on record for both of us!

A great tune up dive for the experience dive. Dirk, good luck with next week's tech 2 class!  Hope Todd creates a new definition of level 6 failures on you guys!

Alan