All next week I’ll be taking a cave diving class on my CCR down in North Florida. Cave diving has been a dream of mine since reading an article about Sheck Exley’s exploration of the Nacimiento Mante cave system in Mexico. At a time in my life when I almost bought into the idea that divers should not venture deeper than 130 feet, there I was, reading about a man who had plunged to a world record depth of 881 feet and returned safely to the surface after 14 hours of decompression. It was as if the wool that had been pulled over my eyes [...]
spiralbound.net
my digital notebook
Filed under Adventures …
Who Cares if the Rebreather Has Integrated Deco
For some time now, Innerspace Systems has been working on a Megalodon head called APECS 3 that supports integrated decompression. As with any major software / hardware engineering project, there have been some delays, which has Meg owners clambering for information about when it will come out. It’s amazing how so many of these rebreather divers are pestering the company and acting like a bunch of kids a few days before Christmas. What I don’t really understand is why people are so anxious. It’s not that I wouldn’t like to have integrated deco, but I really don’t see it as being all that big a [...]
Making a Connector for the Teldyne R22D Oxygen Sensor
If you dive rebreathers much, chances are you will have to repair or replace the Molex plugs and pins that connect your Teledyne R22D oxygen sensors to your head electronics. Many manufacturers are cool about sending you the parts so that you can do the repair yourself, but some, such as AP Diving require that you send the entire head back for this simple repair. If you are comfortable handling electronics, and you think it’s silly to have to send your head all the way to England or wherever just to have a couple of parts costing less than $1 replaced, you can get the [...]
How Scuba Tanks are Made
I was trying to talk Justin into getting a set of steel tanks so that he could band them together when we got onto the subject of how scuba tanks are made. He mentioned some videos of the process he had found, and sent them along to me. It’s really a pretty amazing process. Especially the way they extrude an entire tank out of a single block of aluminum. The first video shows how aluminum tanks are made, while the second shows the process for steel tanks. People who looked at this item also looked at… Gas Blending Disaster Rebreather Evaluation – Part 1 Rebreather [...]
Revillagigedo Archipelago Dive Log – Day 6
On our sixth and final day of diving at the Socorro Islands, We headed back to San Benedicto to dive at “The Canyon” and, we had hoped, another stone pillar rising up from the sea floor called “The Boiler”. By this time in the trip, the weather had turned fairly bad for Mexico, and we were dealing with quite a bit of swell. As usual, we got up and had our pre-breakfast breakfast (they feed you well on the Nautilus) and started getting ready to dive. Since this was my last day of diving on the trip, I had made up my mind to do [...]
Revillagigedo Archipelago Dive Log – Day 5
We steamed the better part of the night from Roca Partida back to the island of Socorro where we would be diving a site called “Cabo Pierce” and another stone pillar called “La Pitite Boiler”. Normally we would have made our way to these sites on Days 2 and 3, but we wanted to take advantage of the calm weather on those days to dive the much more exposed Roca Partida. As the Captain predicted, the wind and swell were definitely beginning to pick up and the relative protection of the island was certainly welcome. By now, however, I had found my sea legs, and [...]
Revillagigedo Archipelago Dive Log – Day 4
With only three days left to dive on our trip, I was admittedly wishing that we had chosen another dive site for the day. My primary goal of this trip was to spend a great deal of time on my rebreather, but the swell was simply too great, and I was diving open circuit to avoid the inevitable counterlung volume issues that came along with the conditions. I guess I should come out and say that I am a technical diver and thus, the greatest draw to me is deep water and not necessarily the interaction with animals for which Roca Partida is most known. [...]
Revillagigedo Archipelago Dive Log – Day 3
Roca Partida is not so much an island as it is a small lava plug from an extinct volcano that has otherwise been eroded away into the sea. This rock pillar is only about 300 feet across at its widest point, and it descends almost vertically to a depth of 250 feet, where only then does it begin to take on the topography of a typical mountainous volcano. Situated in the open ocean, 60 nautical miles from the nearest land, the only inhabitance of this failing island are a great many birds which is evidenced by the snow-like white shrouding of all but the most [...]
Revillagigedo Archipelago Dive Log – Day 2
After our last dive on “The Canyon”, we began steaming to Socorro Island. I can’t say exactly when we arrived because I was sleeping, but I seem to remember that the journey took around ten hours. Our dive site for the day was called “Puntatosca“, which was basically a series underwater lava flows that took the shape of walls. All the small details of the site are too numerous to write about, but by clicking on the little image of the whiteboard to left, you can see Sten’s masterful rendition of the site’s topography. Actually, while on the topic of Dive-master Sten, I should say [...]
Revillagigedo Archipelago Dive Log – Day 1
Our first day of diving at the Socorro Islands was was on the northernmost island of San Benidicto at a dive site called “The Canyon“. This site was chosen because of its general lack of swell and current, and was to serve as a warmup to the more challenging conditions to come. We were told this particular place had the potential of being either among the best sites we would visit or the worst. Some friends that had been to the islands before mentioned that they had not enjoyed their dives at this site very much, but we were lucky enough to see a giant [...]
Revillagigedo Archipelago Expedition
I’ve just returned from diving at the Revillagigedo Archipelago, also known as the Socorro Islands. This small and widely distributed Pacific island chain lies about 250 nautical miles southwest off the tip of the Baja California peninsula at roughly 18° N 112° W. Known for their unique ecosystem, these islands are sometimes referred to as the “Mexican Galapagos”, serving as hosts to a number of plant and animal species that are found no place else on Earth. Under threat from exotic species, the Mexican government established the islands as a Biosphere Reserve on June 4, 1994 in an effort to protect this natural treasure. Because [...]
“Titanbox” Titanium Frame For the Inspiration Rebreather
The Inspiration and Evolution rebreathers from AP Diving are really good rigs, but the design of their housing and harness systems have always limited the flexibility of the units to a degree. The housings are quite fragile, and because they do not use a metal backplate, clipping in side-mounts always seems to be more of a struggle than it’s worth. Top it all off with the fact that housing and harness are quite large and difficult to travel with, and you can conclude pretty quickly that there is a lot of room for improvement in the way the rebreather is attached to the diver. Indeed, [...]
Gas Blending System
With the help of my friend in Reno, I was finally able to get my gas blending system together and working. This system will allow me to connect nearly any type of industrial gas cylinder to any type of SCUBA or medical oxygen tank. I can even connect it up directly to banks of 4500 PSI air. When building these systems, many people decide to incorporate quick disconnects at the supply side to facilitate quick changes in gas for making custom blends. This allows for the adaptor to stay connected to the industrial gas cylinder, while making it easy to move the whip from gas [...]
I HATE people who say that these creatures are gross, ugly and or disgusting