March 2004
Vestal + Petaling – wreck diving day

Purpose of the project:
To get more information about two wrecks in the Phuket area: M/S Vestal and Petaling. Our aim was also to test different dive tables for deep diving on our repetitive deep dives.

Description of the dive site:
Description of these dive sites was already given in the stories above. Together with our German dive-buddies we decided to dive both wrecks during the same day. We were thinking and discussing about profiles and dive plans for a long time. We decided to make the first 70 m dive with trimix and being skimpy the second 60 m one with air (per liter price for helium being very high…). None of the technical divers we asked about doing safely these 2 dives-one with air, one with trimix, did not seem to have very good answers. The general opinion was that the GUE Decoplanner we were using, was not adequate for planning repetition dives, especially not planning 60 meters dive with air and most especially not if you plan to do one dive with air and another one with trimix. Somebody told us that V-Planner software was better for planning these kinds of dives and someone else of course told that V-Planner was the last thing to use planning anything at all…

So we made some kind of preliminary plan and concentrated on our first dive to Vestal which was more demanding and interesting.

Details of the dive:
The dive to the Vestal started with a fast decent to 70 meters. The wreck was in front of us and it felt great to see it in almost daylight, visibility 10 meters and no current. We spent 20 relaxing minutes going around the wreck and gathering some souvenirs such as a few small items and ceramic slates. The only disturbance on our otherwise easy dive was dozens of lionfish. This was the best wreck-dive we had done and our appetites for new dives at the same site are growing. Even a 65 minute decompression stop did not feel so long after such a nice dive. This time we got quite a clear understanding about the shape of the wreck and were happy with the results.

After thinking a long time about our dive to Petaling, we decided to use the Deco-Planner, leaving longer time for decompression than was needed. The dive itself was not half as good as the first one. We decided to have 17 minutes bottom time with air, having a little-bit arrogant feeling after the first successful dive to 70 meters at Vestal. After an extra fast decent we felt a bit of a nitrogen narcosis (read: a really bad one). Conditions also differed from our first dive: visibility of 2 m, quite a strong current on the bottom. We attached our reel to the decent line and started swimming against the current towards the wrecks stern. The equipment we were using were two single tanks, bound together, as we did not have enough equipment for doubles (the boat not having a compressor). So halfway through the dive we had to change regulators. There were a lot of small problems during the dive: reel getting knotted, not finding the pressure gauge, getting caught in lines and other things, not counting the nitrogen narcosis… By the time my light suddenly went out, we decided to start the ascent, having a strange feeling about the whole dive. We decided that an air-dive to 60 meters was ok as an easy reef dive, not on the wreck though with bad visibility and a strong current (we were not interested in writing a book “The last dive 2”). We did not get anything out of our wreck dive, as most of our time went to sorting out small things. To our great pleasure we found out something unexplainable after the dive: we both had torches full of water!?

Gases used:
Dive 1: Bottom gas trimix 17/30, deco-gas EAN 60
Dive 2: Bottom gas air, deco-gas EAN 60

Equipment used:
Wetsuit 5mm + hood
2 X 12L aluminum 200 bar tanks
2 X 12L separate aluminum 200 bar tanks
2 X 6L aluminum 200 bar deco-tanks
2 X ScubaPro MK25 + S600 regulator
Diverite backplate, harness, wings
Reel + SMB
Diverite HID / Beuchat dive lights