Ralph 20 June 06
It’s my birthday today and we awake to the best weather of the week so far; it’s sunny but with a fresh breeze that makes strolling around the deck in a drysuit very comfortable.
First on today’s ticklist is the Kronprinz, which I’ve previously dived only to see a wall of steel plate and rivets (which were less than riveting). As it was my birthday and Keith and I were armed with loads of gas, surely we were going to find the guns today.
Having agreed to dive on VPM-B tables, we descended to the seabed only to witness my HID torch make a feeble attempt to ignite. Note to self; buy a simple torch next time! The viz was awful but sharing Keith’s torch we started tracing our way along the periphery. It got darker and darker, we must have swum into the wreck I figured but neither of us was particularly concerned. Through the particles I could see the faint green glow of the way out and within a minute we were back outside. The rest of the dive was less eventful, but that’s how I like it with 30 minutes of ascent to clear. On the surface, Keith and I compared notes and agreed excuses. Overall it was a pleasant morning but a bit of a non-event in comparison to the previous day’s fun ferreting through the light cruisers.
During the morning’s dive the battery in Keith’s VR3 had expired and as a result of changing it lunchtime lost his RNT history. Also my single-gas Vyper was now bent and so this afternoon’s dive to the Gorbernador Bories would also have to planned on tables. Just to be on the safe side, we decided to limit ourselves to 30 minutes bottom time.
Even though the wreck was quite large, there seemed to be a particularly large number of swim-through traffic jams. The very enjoyable dive was concluded by a short wait on the ever increasingly lumpy surface. Fortunately Keith and I boarded before most of the others and before the sea and wind was at their worst.
