Underwater Wakulla
By RUSTY MILLER
Well as I promised here is the continuation of my journey into the beginning tech diving with side mount. We walked down to the spring and entered the water; I have to caution you that if you have never been there you will find it has some slippery rocks. My instructor was a great help for me to get down to the edge of the water. I have an issue with my feet, I have a very small left foot because of several amputation surgeries so the bottom of it is sewn to the top of what’s left and my right foot is missing my big toe. So I only can count to 14 using my fingers and four toes. Anyway from the edge I jumped into the spring then went to the ledge where my cylinders where waiting for me to hook them to my harness.
This is where it gets interesting at least for me. This is the first time that I have ever tried to attach the tanks to the harness. So picture if you will the T. Rex on “Meet the Robinsons” animated movie when the bowler hat guy goes to the past to bring the T. Rex back only to find it wasn’t the smart thing to do and he asked why the T. Rex couldn’t reach his victim and all the T. Rex could say is, “My arms are too small.” That is the way I felt trying to get the tanks connected to the back rings of the harness. I didn’t think I could stretch my arms backwards enough but after about a dozen or more tries and some colorful words to myself I was able to get them attached on the harness. The front connection was a piece of cake because you do that first.
Once the regulators on both tanks are checked for breathing and leaks it was time to try out this out. My instructor said we need to go under the water head first and do what she calls the dog shake. The dog shake will get the tanks in their proper place on the harness so they won’t move around during the dive. It seemed kind of weird at first but it worked remarkably well. At this point my instructor was very patient with me so it was time to get underwater and check out my horizontal buoyancy. Remember I said this is not like learning to open water scuba. It is a whole different experience of diving.
I was totally surprised to find out being horizontal was not as difficult as I thought, in fact it was a very relaxing position even with two aluminum 80s. It felt very balanced. The first real skill was to swim around and monitor the air consumption out of both tanks. You really have to feel comfortable with switching the regulators about every 200psi, like I instruct all my students to exhale tiny bubbles as they remove the regulator from their mouth. You have to do the same here with this skill, the nice part is one of the regulators has a lanyard attached around your neck so it’s very easy to do this skill as you swim.
You do this continually throughout the dive to maintain the same psi in both tanks for balance and to have plenty of air in case you have to let your dive buddy use one of them in an emergency. I found myself occupied with watching both my gages during the dive, it’s not a bad thing but you really have to concentrate on your kicking skills also. I know this because when I looked at my instructor I could sense her eyeroll when I finally looked around I had messed up the spring with silt and algae so the visibility was pretty crappy. Fortunately there is enough flow that in a few minutes the spring was back to clear. This was the easy skills for me but wait there’s more; I really have difficulty as I progress so stay tuned for next week’s article. So make bubbles.
Russell Miller is the manager at Wakulla Diving Center in Medart. NAUI Instructor #59999