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 - Meeting VIII
01.-04.05.03 Wreck Diving in the Baltic Sea
Thursday 01.05.
Our sleep ended shortly before 7 a.m.! We were jolted awake by the captain's voice over the PA, who greeted us with: "Goof mornig passengers, wakey wakey!. Please be informed that a safety drill will be held on deck at 7.30 a.m.. Following that, all dive gear has to be secured for storm travel !" SECURED FOR STORM TRAVEL - where are we, on "Das Boot"? What a cheerful wake-up call! More or less awake
Securing the tanks
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we dragged ourselves on deck half an hour later to learn about putting on a life vest and where to find the survival suit. Then came the hard part: how were we to secure all the equipment (including at least 8 double tanks) so that they were storm-proof? After we had solved that conundrum, we devoted ourselves to eating breakfast, while the ship set off.
Due to the storm we couldn't actually get to any wrecks on that day, but anchored in the sheltered bay of Kap Arkona, Ruegen. At least we could go diving there, although it proved to be spectacularly unspectacular with a maximum depth of 12m and the sea bed consisting just of mussel-encrusted sand and mussel-encrusted stones. The visibility was quite good, 15m, bit unfortunately there wasn't really much to see. The highlight of the dive was when our team found a huge anchor with a chain attached and we could see where it had dragged
Getting ready for the night dive
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across the sea bed. The chain even led to a ship - not a wreck, however, but back to the Artur Becker, where hot tea was already waiting for us divers. Not all divers were put off by the lack of sights and some jumped right back in after dinner for a night dive in the 5° C cold water. In contrast to the earlier dive I noticed that all the mussels were now open. That was all - not a fish in sight!
The majority of us had decided to give the night dive a miss and go straight for the decompression beer. Be it tekkie or air aficionado - they all agree on the medical properties of a decompression beer! Once again it was proven that the Taucher.net people are a friendly bunch and although most of us didn't really know each other, it took only a few minutes (and some beer or coke) for us to swap stories and experiences. With Anke and Brian as "representatives" of Britain, one of the main topics was the differences in British and German dive practices. We particularly discussed the question, of why the use of Nitrox is less common in Germany.
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