Let's take a moment and appreciate Bob Smith. This man is Key West. He is the Sheriff's department, the community college, ex head of the entire YMCA SCUBA Program, friend of every bar owner in the town, and just about every aspect of Key West imaginable.
So we meet Bob in his Cadillac, and he takes us straight to a seafood bar where the boats unload fresh fish in the back and half an hour later they're served on your plate. Delicious. We get precious little time to explore the Keys...
Smathers BeachIn total there are 15 people in class, 9 U.S. Army Corps of Engineer guys, one guy from Floriday D.O.T. guy, and one guy from South Florida Water Management. The four of us are in "Charlie" team for the duration of training, with the South Florida guy.
We quickly pass through traditional SCUBA and move onto tethered full face mask training. That means we wear a primary scuba tank, a smaller, second "bail out" bottle and a full face mask while being tethered to the surface while being in complete radio communication with the surface. We learned how to move and navigate in zero-visibility responding to nothing more than a series of tugs on the rope, known as line pull signals, given by our topside tender.
Zach, tending hose.
To practice this, we put on 30 lbs of weight so we could walk on the bottom with no danger of floating, and walk around trying to find objects on the bottom of the training lagoon. (Sidebar: the training lagoon is a pretty cool place. They've sunk a bunch of stuff down there, two cars, 32" diameter concrete pipes, a boat, and the highlight is an old school bus.) The guy before me on my team thinks he's found a pipe, but he didn't have enough air to fully explore it. We didn't really expect there to be a pipe so its new and cool and whatnot. I go down to the same location. After some searching drills, I manage to find the pipe. First thing, I can confirm, its metal, about 20 inches around. I follow it to one end and find and find its capped, almost like a hemisphere. hmm... Ok, I follow it to the other end, its two full arm spans, and about a half an armspan long, that makes it 15 feet. The other end tapers down, but is degraded pretty good. Had some radio comms with the surface. We're pretty sure this thing is an old torpedo. Its just about that time I give the high sign to haul my self up off the bottom. After a talk with the staff, they didn't know it was there, we figure out its an old dummy torpedo. US Coast Guard underwater explosive ordnance disposal practices in the same lagoon. Apparently they lost a torpedo and neglected to tell anyone about it.
Halfway through the 16 days, we switch over to the hard hats. Now these are what we'll use for work. Breathing gas is supplied to us from either huge SCUBA bottle called "K" bottles or by a compressor, or both. The air is pumped down a hose that is bolted into the side of the helmet. Along with the air, we have a secondary air hose, called a pneumofathometer, used for takign depth readings, a strength line so they can yank us back up, and again, a radio comms line.
First day in the hats - My camera died two photos after this.
This is where we did most of the cool stuff. By this point we've got the idea of how to set up and take down our dive stations. We've got down line pull signals and our team is proving to be more efficient and have far fewer errors than the other teams. The Army Corps guys did a recompression chamber drop. We put the 9 guys in the chamber and pressurized it to simulate 132' of water. It was hilarious. They're fine, they're fine.. dropping through 50', dropping through 75', fine... doing fine.. through 100'.. still good, 125' doing fine, 130' everyone's great. Now to the point of the exercise. In the simulated depth change of two feet, we gave them all Nitrogen narcosis. The whole group started simultaneously giggling like a bunch of middle school girls talking about the most recent crush. They were high as a kite from the pressure. We started bringing them back up and as they came back up to 125' all nine were sober as could be again. We did the Men of Honor test. We had a timed race and all did our own impersonation of Cuba Gooding Jr. bolting the pipe flanges together underwater.The last two days we lifted the school bus.
Before we get to the bus, we finally got our night dive in. We'd been trying to get this dive in for some time. It was first scheduled for Tuesday. We showed up, walked there in the rain to wait outside the boat while they had a vibrating shaft. Right shaft troubles. i get it. Anyway, they cancelled, we "explored the town." We had a few drinks at one bar. Then another bar. There was a third bar, at which point I went home, while there was another bar. Wednesday may or may not have been a little rough. Thursday we showed up and tried again. First they took us out to the shipwreck. The "Cayman" was a 140' long schooner that had been wrecked in a storm. She was lying in 90 feet of water. We're back to SCUBA for the fun dive. I partnered up with Frank and one of the USACoE guys. We made it down about 40', my regulator started breathing a little shallow. 50', i pretty much can't pull a breath out of it. I check teh gauges, they're probably a little lower than they should be, but still plenty of air. I give an I'm-in-trouble-but-I'll-be-ok sign to my buddies and switch over to my backup. We continue the dive, though I stick far closer than usual to my buddies. We get to the deck of the ship. Its awesome. Lots of fish, really cool debris and the vis is great. I check my air. There's not a whole lot left. From a starting pressure of 3000 PSI, I'm sitting at about 1000 PSI left. I motion to my buddies, they're still around 2000 PSI. We decided to continue and I'll keep a close eye on it. We get a little further from the descent/ascent line. I've dropped another 200 PSI and they've only dropped 100 PSI. Somewhere, I'm leaking air. I motion, we're going up, and going up now. Normally you aim to get back on the boat between 500 and 1000 PSI. By the time we were back on board, I was well below 300 PSI. I swapped out the gear before the second dive. On the boat ride, I overheard someone talking about this quarry in Pennsylvania. I couldn't help but lean over and ask if she was talking about Dutch Springs. Turns out Kierstin, the girl I was lucky enough to overhear, is from Philly and used to live in Manayunk. Damn, small world. The second dive was a shallow dive on a reef. We saw all kinds of coral, eels, lobsters, crab and two nurse sharks. We had about an hour underwater for this dive. We came up a little far from the boat and had a bit of a swim. Got back to the dock, went out for a few beers.
Back to the bus. Yes, buses are heavy, and this one was 40' underwater. I realize this, but underwater things are a bit lighter underwater and we had some pretty cool air balloons called lift bags that can raise 4000lbs each underwaterThat was pretty sweet. We dug down through a foot or so of silt to get underneath the bus. Matt and I were tasked with rigging the slings around the axles. He got the first one on the front left side before I could even get there. I had to clear myself around a line, and he had the second one in the front by the time I had walked around. The dually back tires were a little different. We couldn't reach behind them. We had a Silt Height Indicating Tool. Guess what they call it in the field. Since you can't push a rope, Matt fed the sling around tool for extra reach and I tried to climb under the bus to the inside edge of the back wheels. I realized I could get farther under the bus feet first since my spare air bottle kept my head from going under. Vis at this point is down to inches. I was lying on the bottom. Out of curiousity, I wondered how far I could see. I put my hand all the way up to where I was touching my mask. I still tell the difference. OK, i gave up. I let my head fall right down into the silt. If I can breathe in a helmet in water, I can breathe in silt too. Even with half of myself underneath, I still couldn't reach the stick. Our time was up so we headed back to the surface.
Before we get to the bus, we finally got our night dive in. We'd been trying to get this dive in for some time. It was first scheduled for Tuesday. We showed up, walked there in the rain to wait outside the boat while they had a vibrating shaft. Right shaft troubles. i get it. Anyway, they cancelled, we "explored the town." We had a few drinks at one bar. Then another bar. There was a third bar, at which point I went home, while there was another bar. Wednesday may or may not have been a little rough. Thursday we showed up and tried again. First they took us out to the shipwreck. The "Cayman" was a 140' long schooner that had been wrecked in a storm. She was lying in 90 feet of water. We're back to SCUBA for the fun dive. I partnered up with Frank and one of the USACoE guys. We made it down about 40', my regulator started breathing a little shallow. 50', i pretty much can't pull a breath out of it. I check teh gauges, they're probably a little lower than they should be, but still plenty of air. I give an I'm-in-trouble-but-I'll-be-ok sign to my buddies and switch over to my backup. We continue the dive, though I stick far closer than usual to my buddies. We get to the deck of the ship. Its awesome. Lots of fish, really cool debris and the vis is great. I check my air. There's not a whole lot left. From a starting pressure of 3000 PSI, I'm sitting at about 1000 PSI left. I motion to my buddies, they're still around 2000 PSI. We decided to continue and I'll keep a close eye on it. We get a little further from the descent/ascent line. I've dropped another 200 PSI and they've only dropped 100 PSI. Somewhere, I'm leaking air. I motion, we're going up, and going up now. Normally you aim to get back on the boat between 500 and 1000 PSI. By the time we were back on board, I was well below 300 PSI. I swapped out the gear before the second dive. On the boat ride, I overheard someone talking about this quarry in Pennsylvania. I couldn't help but lean over and ask if she was talking about Dutch Springs. Turns out Kierstin, the girl I was lucky enough to overhear, is from Philly and used to live in Manayunk. Damn, small world. The second dive was a shallow dive on a reef. We saw all kinds of coral, eels, lobsters, crab and two nurse sharks. We had about an hour underwater for this dive. We came up a little far from the boat and had a bit of a swim. Got back to the dock, went out for a few beers.
Back to the bus. Yes, buses are heavy, and this one was 40' underwater. I realize this, but underwater things are a bit lighter underwater and we had some pretty cool air balloons called lift bags that can raise 4000lbs each underwaterThat was pretty sweet. We dug down through a foot or so of silt to get underneath the bus. Matt and I were tasked with rigging the slings around the axles. He got the first one on the front left side before I could even get there. I had to clear myself around a line, and he had the second one in the front by the time I had walked around. The dually back tires were a little different. We couldn't reach behind them. We had a Silt Height Indicating Tool. Guess what they call it in the field. Since you can't push a rope, Matt fed the sling around tool for extra reach and I tried to climb under the bus to the inside edge of the back wheels. I realized I could get farther under the bus feet first since my spare air bottle kept my head from going under. Vis at this point is down to inches. I was lying on the bottom. Out of curiousity, I wondered how far I could see. I put my hand all the way up to where I was touching my mask. I still tell the difference. OK, i gave up. I let my head fall right down into the silt. If I can breathe in a helmet in water, I can breathe in silt too. Even with half of myself underneath, I still couldn't reach the stick. Our time was up so we headed back to the surface.
Dive Station, featuring Frank and my floral print shorts.
Back on the surface we devised a new plan and rigged the back axle differently. The next team got that part done. The next day we connected the air manifold system and inflated the lift bags. The bus came to the surface. To complete the training we set it back down and disconnected the whole system. I was the guy swimming around on the surface to let the air out of the bags. Not a bad job, I actually got to swim a bit, enjoy a bit of decent vis and go let the air out. So what happens when you let the air out a system holding up 12,ooo lbs of bus. It's a little freaky when all the ropes you're swimming around take off like a horse out of a gate for the bottom.
We had one more night of exploring the town. By this point, we haven't hit all, but certainly most of the bars in Key West. We left out the 800 block. For those who know where that is, you'll understand. We took one last stroll through the town and headed back to the house.
The next morning we took our final test and had one final "lessons learned" lecture. We're done at 2:00. Matt and Zach's flight leaves at 3:30. Frank and I have one last drink at the airport and head home, back through Atlanta.
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