P-MAN XIV Update #25 - Flip departs, Derek takes over Progress Report duty. Short, weird, deep dive. No-joy shallow dive. Warren picks up dinner by remote control.

11 April 2012

Flip is on his way home, so Derek Abbey has picked up the update duty.

Did you ever get the feeling that you just shouldn’t do something?

Today we were supposed to meet Kut, a local fisherman who claims to have seen some airplane wreckage while spear fishing. We met him last year and went out to the location where he said he had seen the wreckage, but he was unable to relocate it. He told us when we got back to Palau this year that while we were gone he went back and relocated the debris and was ready to show us where it is. So we set the date and arranged the boat, but somewhere in the process didn’t get the time to Kut to meet us. So we found ourselves at the boat this morning missing the person we need to get us to the wreckage site.

Well, we had a boat full of tanks for diving so we decided to shift the day’s mission. We were planning on an afternoon dive at the area we covered with side-scan sonar a couple of days ago, so we decided to fill the morning with a dive in the Western Lagoon at the location we had worked with the Stockbridge High School ROV team. There is something of interest on the lagoon floor and we still haven’t had a really good look at it with human eyes. So we pushed off from the dock and headed over there.

Pat, Flip and I attempted to dive this site on the last day that the ROV team was here. It is about 120 feet deep and was a pretty spooky dive. When we dove it the first time we dropped a buoy on the location. We agreed that we would grab the line and descend as fast as possible to increase our bottom time. The order would be Flip, me and then Pat. So Flip went first and I was hot on his fins with Pat directly behind me. The water was crystal clear and we expected that we would see the floor quickly. We headed down pretty fast and oddly the floor was not coming into view, I checked my depth gauge quickly at 90-100 feet and when I looked back up Flip had vanished. I slowed and turned to look for Pat and he was gone too. Now that I found myself alone, I decided it would be a good time to level off. I was sitting at 100-105 feet and thought, “Well if I don’t see them in a bit, I’ll start my ascent.” The crystal blue water had disappeared and I was sitting in murky water and couldn’t see anything. After a few seconds, I saw some shadows and swam toward them. As I got within a couple feet, I recognized them as Flip and Pat (It would have been really odd to find someone else. No other knuckleheads would be here). Once, back together we canceled the dive and headed up. Since then we explained the odd visibility we ran into with some local divers. Some had seen it before and said it might be just a passing phenomenon and might be clear when you go back.

So here we were back at the site. I was not looking forward to the zero visibility at 115 feet, but maybe it would be different. We found the spot and Joe dropped a buoy on it. Oddly enough the boat was anchored pretty quickly and we began prepping for the dive. This is when someone or something started telling us that perhaps a dive here would not be a good idea. Pat was prepping his gear and had to replace two tanks because of bad O rings. No biggie, happens all the time. Joe ended up going through two tanks because his first two were 1000 pounds short on air, might need that. We finally all got our gear on and briefed the dive when we realized that the anchor had slipped and we started to drift. In the process the buoy line got caught in the engine prop. Spyce, our driver, raised the engines and went back to untangle the line before we could move the boat back to the correct location. While he was working, he slipped and fell off the boat. We got spice back in the boat and started to pull in our buoy so it could be reset when the weight got caught on something and shortly thereafter the line was cut, leaving the weight on the lagoon floor. About this time we looked up to realize that the tide had started to go out (when the tide is outbound, visibility drops as debris is pulled from the shore). This is the point when we thought that maybe we shouldn’t dive this site today. So we canceled our morning dive and decided to head over to the area we had scanned the other day.

Off to the location of Flip’s most recently lost sunglasses and spot of interest. The SSS had shown an interesting return. It had a straight edge and a long shadow, so it didn’t look like coral. We found the location quickly and anchored right on top of it. Quick prep (no issues this time) and brief and off the side we went. Down the anchor line and sure enough the anchor was right at the point. Coral can give long shadows and straight edges, that’s what it was. We swam around for 40 minutes in a grid pattern to look for anything else, maybe Flip’s glasses. We had seen some perfectly round returns and were curious of what they might be. Guess what? Coral give perfectly round returns as well. There were some beautiful samples of Cable Coral that had grown recently. They make large round fans on the ocean floor. Ultimately, no wreckage and no sunglasses.

Pat.
Coral.
No sunglasses.

We saw no need for another dive on the site so it was a short work day. We headed back to the dock and linked up with Flip. I failed to mention that Flip didn’t go out with us today. It is his last day in Palau and he had to prep to head home, plus you must not dive within 24 hours before flying, to ensure that you don't have any residual nitrogen in your system when you take off (the lower cabin pressure might lead to the bends - and an explosive decompression would surely give you the bends). Once we got back, we knocked out some administrative stuff and headed to dinner with our friends Pat and Lori Colin at Taj. Taj was amazing as always. It was a great dinner of conversation and good food. As we prepared to cash out and call it a night, the owner, Robert, came over to our table to announce that our money had been rejected tonight and the dinner was picked up by Warren Bruce. Warren as you know is a BentProp team member and an active-duty Marine, but he is not here with us this year. No, he’s not lounging in the U.S., he is deployed in the Middle East. Warren, like all of us, loves Taj and knows that we find every excuse for dinner there. He emailed Robert and arranged to pick up the tab next time we passed through. I guess we are a little predictable in our food choices. Thanks, Warren!

Upon returning to the hotel we stopped at the bar next-door for a final toast before Flip’s departure at 4 a.m.. We toasted to BentProp, our mission, friendship, and another great year.

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