Dive #11

Practicing at lake Kaukajärvi.

Diver count: 2
Dive time: 45 minutes
Start pressure: 220 bars
End pressure: 110 bars
Safety stop: 3+3 minutes
Maximum depth: 14 meters
Plan: Practice underwater navigation, buouancy control with drysuit/BCD, too much air in suit, remove mask underwater, emergency surfacing with buddy's octo etc...

Oh yes... There they are again, ascent warnings. I really should pay more attention for ascent-speed because it might be the reason for blood coming from my nose in addition to the *thing* the doctor found.

It was a hot day again (personally I'd be just fine in +15C degrees, but hey... You can't choose the weather) and sweat was strongly present while putting the gear on. After a short while, we managed to get them on without having a heat-stroke so we headed into the water for a quick relief.

Surprise buoy

We started by underwater navigation by taking a compass-direction for a buoy maybe 50 meters from the shore. Neither of us had been there so it was a surprise what would be beneath that buoy.
It was my "turn" to lead and therefore to read the compass. As always I started to lean the left and I had to do corrections all the time. After a while, about six minutes (from the chart), of diving and making wild guesses about the direction we surfaced and saw the buoy just in the correct direction, but 5 meters from us. Nice work, if I may...
We were still interested in what the buoy was for so we started descending. In about 7-8 meters was the cold layer and beneath it the visibility got much better, even surprisingly good for the lake! The buoy turned out to be a free-diver's buoy at 14,5 meters depth.

Practices

After the buoy check we headed to the small platform that has been built in the lake at five meters depth. It's a great place to practice stuff and make a deco/safety stop.
We practiced for example buouancy control, too much air in the suit, removing mask under water, emergency surfacing with buddy's octo and so on.

It's actually quite challenging to put just the right amount of air into the BCD when there's a buddy holding on to you (there's one more ascent warning!) One should always put air in very small increments. Yes, we were told that in the pool, but in the open water things just get forgotten...

These ascent warnings a probably the reason for 3+3 safety stop -minutes. Too much play and you get punished by the Suunto Vyper!