SS Undola 09-08-08

We hadn't visited the Undola for a while and conditions looked favourable for this wonderful wreck. So we loaded up at Wally's wharf and headed out of Port Hacking. The seas weren't too bad at the start but as we passed the headland into the more open water the wind picked up and whipped the sea up as well. WE battled on into the wind and sea, getting drenched. I was wearing my dry suit so that kept me warm and dry but the crashing of the boat in the seas was not good for my back at all. It took a while to get there. We had 3 attempts to set the anchor, each time we drifted away from the wreck and had to haul the anchor up. We finally thought we had it right and with the boat sitting directly over our mark we headed down. We took a drum full of water with us, the idea being to attach it to the mooring that we had left there so that we could set it up again. At the bottom, then anchor was in the sand, 5m from the wreck so we moved it across and secured it. we found the end of the wire from our mooring - it appears to have been cut. We sent the drum back up the anchor line. The wreck itself looked fantastic, covered in nannie gai. There was a lovely juvenile wobbie resting beside the toilet when we got there, morays around the boiler top and in the tubes. There was also pike and a few other fish that I didn't recognise. IN my dry suit I was using a lot of air - I kept having to add more. Later I realised that I had the vent wide open and was probably losing air that way. We unhooked the anchor and put enough air in the left bag to keep the anchor off the bottom. The idea is to let the boat drift with the anchor sitting enough off the bottom that it will not snag. When you start pulling the anchor in the lift bag expands with the reduced pressure and brings the anchor to the surface.

I was ascending quite well, having (I thought) adjusted my vent valve for ascent. At about 20m I started to rise rapidly and my dry suit was very full!! You know you are rising too quickly when you are going faster up than your bubbles. I hit the surface surrounded by anchor rope as I had tried to slow my self by hanging onto the anchor rope. I had simply pulled the anchor up and the drum that we had put up the anchor was not on the surface as we expected but had got tangled in the cross over line. On the surface I quickly worked myself out, deflated my dry suit and went back down to the deco bar at 5m. I ran out of air while ding my deco and swapped to my pony. We also have a tank with 2 regs hanging on the deco for emergencies. While doing my 15m deco I realised that I had had the vent the wrong way. When I thought I had to closed it was open and when I started to ascend I had closed it. There was air coming out but I think that was due to excess pressure in the suit.

I learnt a lesson on dry suit this day. Needless to say I did no more dives that day and luckily suffered no ill effects from my rapid ascent.