Now that we’ve passed the instructor examination and are open water scuba instructors, the stress levels have dropped a bit, and the fun begins. We’ve earned our Open Water Scuba Instructor (OWSI) certification, and we are now in the Master Scuba Diver Trainer (MSDT) program. OWSI lets you teach a number of courses (open water diver, advanced diver, rescue diver, and divemaster, as well as a few others), and in MSDT we learn to teach a number of specialties, such as drift diving, nitrox, navigation and wreck diving. Today we did our wreck diving specialty, and we actually penetrated a wreck, so I thought that was worth discussing.
I’ve dove plenty of wrecks, but the cardinal rule of diving a wreck for the average sport-diver is that you do not penetrate the wreck. Typically you just swim around the outside and check things out, and perhaps swim through wide openings where there is no danger of getting trapped inside. It takes special training to actually penetrate and swim inside of closed areas, and it can be quite dangerous. You have to pay attention to safety and make sure that you don’t get trapped inside or lost. Today we did this training, and I made my first wreck penetration.
I would describe this experience as a mix of super-fun and scary as hell. It is fun for obvious reasons. You’re inside a sunken wreck, exploring areas that haven’t seen sunlight in years, getting to places that most scuba divers don’t even go. It is exciting and cool. On the other hand, there is a reason that most divers do not go in, and that is the danger involved. You’re swimming through multiple rooms on multiple levels of the ship, and if you can’t find your way back out, you’re f*cked. Also, there is lots of silt inside the wreck, and as you swim through these narrow hallways and rooms, it is quite easy to stir up the silt, leading to a silt-out where there is absolutely no visibility at all — you can’t see your hand in front of your face. Again, this adds to the danger, and can complicate the egress from inside a wreck.
So how do you penetrate a wreck? By using a wreck-reel, and following the line that you’ve laid out to find your exit route. It’s not particularly complicated, but it’s also not foolproof – the line on your reel can break, and you’ll have a hard time finding your way out. And even if you do have the line, you have to trust it, especially when there is no visibility at all and can’t see the exit when it is right in front of you. Of course, dive lights and dive buddies are important factors as well, as is proper planning and keeping your head during the dive.
So today I penetrated a wreck for the first time — the wreck of the Tracy. I was inside the wreck for a total of 8 minutes. We have a big class and people could only go in 2 at a time, and since the wreck is sitting in 75 feet of water, you have a maximum bottom time of only 30 minutes, so time was pretty limited. It was a very quick experience, and it was both cool and scary. It was great to do something I’ve never done before, but even in the course of 8 minutes the fear was there. By the time we got to the third level of the wreck we were in the middle of a huge silt-out, and there was ZERO visibility. To find my way out I literally had to trust the line and pull myself out. Of course, I made it, and the dive was successful. And it was a lot of fun. But scary.
So we continue our MSDT training until Friday! And for now I need to get to sleep to get ready for more diving tomorrow!