Cordova Dive Blog

Thursday, 28 February 2019

Third Open Water Dive on the Eastern Ledge off Tower 17 with Megan Gauthier



Megan came to the apartment about 6:50 and we got underway about ten minutes later. I parked one space before my usual parking spot behind Tower 17. We geared up and got in the water about 7:35 am, then we spent the next 30 minutes swimming out to the ledge where we would make her Alternate Air Source and Controlled Emergency Swimming Ascents.

Megan on the surface

We descended at 8:19 am. I had overshot the ledge so we had to swim back to find a place to tie off the flag. That was a little more difficult than I had expected, but we got it done.  Then we prepared for our alternate air source ascent.









Megan and I kneeled on the sand across from each other. I indicated that she should signal that she was out of air and needed to hare air. She did, and we started the ascent by taking a deep breath of air. I wanted to demonstrate for her that we could use our breathing to ascend. Took about a minute to get to the surface, which was fine as we could both breath out of my tank, but was a little slow for an ascent from 33 feet.





Once we made the surface, we immediately descended. This time we were on our knees across from each other and made one breath, a second breath and on the third breath we dropped the regulators from our mouths and headed for the surface demonstrating a Controlled Emergency Swimming Ascent. This ascent took less than a minute even though we started out quite slowly.




After the CESA, we descended to retrieve the flag and headed back to the beach, this time swimming underwater. Martha got only one good shot of a fish, and that was the shot of a Blue Tang below.

We came to the Lion sitting just East of the Lost Knoll and it took a moment for me to recognize it. Could not remember where it was relative to the Big Coral Knoll, so I slowly headed West and a little North. Did not see anything I recognized, but we swam in to about 4 ft of water to surface and were right in front of the Life Guard Tower.

Dive time was 44 minutes, maximum depth was 32.4 ft, bottom temperature was 77 degrees. My SAC rate was 18.46 psi/minute and my RMV was 0.48 cubic feet per minute. Martha's pictures of the dive are posted at the following link:
28 February 2019_Easter Ledge off Tower 17