Saturday July 28, 2007 Diving on the Dantor with Southern Florida DIR! 

Team One was me, David and Skids.  David is a long time cave diver and Skids just finished Tech One with a Provisional.  David calls himself "Strokie-Hoover" and I told him that we're all "strokes" and that it's just a matter of degrees and how we can get less "strokie" as time and training goes. ;-) (Stroke: a derogatory term for an untrained or unskilled diver)

These are some awesome photos that Matt took.

Here's Matt's writup of diving the Dantor.

The anchor was set and after our pre dive checklist of GUE-EDGE (goals, team, exposure, equipment, deco, gas planning and environment) we were off.

Max depth 115 feet, 85 degree water, viz at 75-80 feet!  And this was not one of their better days! Man, these boys are spoiled. I was in a .5 mil wetsuit, single tank setup sling a stage bottle on 32% Nitrox as we all were.  I was getting spoiled too. Diving in Monterey with 50 degree water, in a dry suit involves a lot more equipment.  Our deco was 1 minute ascents from 60' to 20', then at least 3 minutes at 20' and 3 minutes at 10'. We did a 2 minute stop at 60' as agreed.

Descending on the wreck was quite a site as I could see most of it due to the great viz. There was some good penetration possibilities, but our plan was to stay on the outside and we followed that. After a bit of sightseeing, at around 25 minutes we got back to the anchor line and started our ascent.  At around 30' as planned, Skids practices does a valve drill. The plan was to also practice shooting an SMB (surface marker buoy) which he does. While on our 20' stop, we see Team Two consisting of Jody and Matt on their Gavin scooter say Hi and go by to the wreck. Darn, I wanted to hitch a ride. Next time I come down this way, I'm going to call George and see if I can rent/borrow a scooter to dive with these guys. I don't know what it's like to dive scooters in 75+ feet of viz.

Getting back to the boat, we pulled anchor as soon as we spotted Team Two's SMB (surface marker buoy) and drifted along with them during their deco.

Here are the video shots I did:

A really nice view of the wreck, David and Skids.

This one shows the cargo hold of the shop and shots of David and Skids.

I'm doing a Helicopter Turn on this one and learn that while doing video I should go a lot slower. This does show some of the abundant sea life on the wreck along with shots of David and Skids. Also shows some good penetration opportunities.

4-Skids kicking along and David asking if I was OK.  Yea, kinda, I really wanted to go inside. ;-)

The bow section, Skids and David

Skids and David. Notice how still David can get. Pretty cool! No wasted motions!