Diving the Mighty - O

After watching the Oriskany sink, I finally got the chance to dive on her a couple weeks ago. Mike Darrah was in town for the his HH-65 transition course and had a free weekend, so we booked a trip on a charter going out Saturday morning and headed for Pensacola on Friday to stay with some friends. Saturday morning was pleasantly cool, and after finding someone kind enough to move our tanks to the boat from the rental shop (would have been nice to know before we got there!) we drove to the marina. Sixteen people showed up for this trip, which maxed out the boat and gave a good illustration of the popularity of the dive. We steamed out through Big Lagoon and Penscola pass into some mild seas. Quick peeks over the boat captains shoulder gave Mike and I the chance to exercise our deep understanding of the six-minute rule, and after playing that game for about two hours we found ourselves over the Oriskany.

On our first dive of the day, Mike and I descended straight down to the flight deck...a max depth of about 137 feet when I placed my depth gauge on the flight deck. We spent only about three minutes there, long enough for me to realize that there was some minor problem with my primary second stage. It was giving me perfectly good air, but every breath sounded like I was breathing through a ripped diagphram, so I switched to the octopus to avoid the noise. The vis wasn't great, maybe 50-60ft, so after flying like an airplane over the flight deck, we proceeded up the conning tower. As we went we began planning our second dive...a quick descent to the bridge for some pictures and back on up to the surface. About this point, I noticed that my air was running out quicker than usual. Then I noticed that my second stage was leaking air. Never good, but we were on our way up, so I started keeping a close eye on my air. I wrote a note to Mike on my slate while we at our safety stop letting him know about my reg. He started to write back, but at that point I could see that I was about out of air and I could feel that tightening sensation that indicated I didn't have a whole lot left in the tank (thank you Navy dive training!). I signalled to Mike that I was cutting my safety stop short (about 20 seconds) and began an easy ascent for the surface, breathing slowly and calmly. I figure I had about two breaths left in the tank when I made it. Mike was writing to let me know that my high pressure hose had also starting leaking through a few pinholes. Fun.


After a nice long surface interval and some work on my sick rental reg (good reason to use your own gear when you can) Mike and I were ready to do our second dive. Given that my reg was suspect, we planned a very, very conservative second dive and I resolved to stay within a breaths length of Mike. We dropped down to the bridge, took some pictures, then worked our way up. We swam through a couple of the open compartments in the tower, took a couple more pictures with the American flag, and proceeded to the surface. I could see that my air was dropping a little more than normal, but it was manageable and we surfaced with over 1K in the tanks. It was a great day to dive, not too hot and the water was still warm, about 74F on the wreck. Apart from the regulator, it was about perfect.