By Diver Dave
Monday, 03-Apr-2000 12:58:42
My first trip to the Doria - definitely not my last!!!
Seas were calm and it was a smooth, although long ride on the
Le Petomaine out of Fire Island.
We tied into the bow and it was a little longer get down the ascent
line than I expected. Some of the divers had problems equallizing,
and one went back up with his face mask full of blood.
One diver must have inadvertently filled his tanks with Nitrox. At
about 140 feet he started to seizure. I managed to grab onto his
"Spare Air" bottle and one of the other divers grabbed his left fin
and we tried to drag him up the line, but he kicked so hard that the
bottle came off his belt, the fin came loose, and he was quickly
swept away by the current. Luckily, his lift bag was attached to his
fin strap, and we wrote a quick message on the fin to the surface
folks, and filled his lift bag with a little air and up went our
message. (As a PS to this portion of the story - his body wasn't
found.)
I got a little narced about 150 feet down, but was able to keep my
composure fairly well. Most of the divers were on tri-mix, but I
braved it with my compressed air. I used twin 120's, with an
additional pair of twin 120's on a line that I tied off to the bow
of the Doria. We hung a pair of 100's at the 15 foot safety stop
with a pair of first stages.
I was using my 1/4" wet suit and it was a little cold until I got
narced, at which point I felt fine. I forgot my cold water gloves
and ended up diving with a pair of reef gloves. After a few minutes
of cold, my fingers got pretty numb and didn't bother me anymore.
Visibility on the wreck was really quite good. 30+ feet in the
interiors, before we kicked up some silt. We entered the Promenade
deck through the doors on the port side, about 15 feet above the
gash left by the Stockholm crash. We worked our way down the hallway
to the First Class Ballroom.
For those of you not familiar with the Doria, the First Class
Ballroom is directly over the Purser's office, which is on the Upper
deck. We had found a set of plans for the Doria and found out there
was a faux floor in the FC Ballroom, which we were able to move with
our crowbars to gain access to the Purser's office.
In the purser's office we found the safe that has been much reported
on. It was pretty badly rusted and it took only a few minutes to pry
it open. Inside we found lots of muck - papers that had disintegrated.
However, we also found 9 gold bars that we later measured at 14 pounds
each.
We changed to our second sets of twin 120's and decided to go down to
the sand to hunt for lobsters. The crustacean take was pretty good
that day, with a couple of 4 pounders and one 7 pounder. Personally,
I got several in the 2 - 3 pound range, as well as a couple of large
scallops.
One of the divers in our group had a problem when he scraped against
the side of the Doria and it broke off the manifold on his tanks. He
went shooting past like a jet engine before any of us could react and
he was gone. He was carrying 3 gold bars and he dropped them, so we
were able to at least recover the gold. Shame he won't be enjoying it
with us, but we later decided to give his share to his family.
To give you an idea of how the narcosis affected me, I couldn't fit
the lobsters and the gold bars in my game bag, so I left the gold and
started going up with the lobsters. I couldn't understand why the
tri-mix buddies were motioning to me and my bag, however they were
luckily paying attention and they grabbed my gold bars and put them
in their bags. We divided our treasure up equally on the surface.
We didn't see any pellagic's or even larger fish down there - just a
few blackfish, cod, ling. There were a few flounder down in the sand,
but nothing worth mentioning.
On the way up, one of the divers in our group must have had an exhaust
valve failure. His suit started to fill up with air. He was going up
faster than the rest of us, and one of the divers in the group swam
as hard as he could to grab him. He reached for his flashlight, which
was hanging at the end of 3 foot strap, but accidentally grabbed his
weight belt buckle. I guess we were at about 140 feet when the weight
belt came off, and another diver was lost as he rocketed to the
surface. When we made it to the boat, we found that they had
recovered him, but because of the speed at which he went up, he had a
traumatic body explosion. Luckily, the cadillac of drysuits, his DUI
200, kept the boat nice and clean.
We did a 3 hour stop at 18 feet until we sucked the pair of 120's
almost dry. Then, back to the Le Petomaine to celebrate an enjoyable,
yet dramatic, April Fools Day Dive trip to the Andrea Doria.