Fourth Element Dive Adventures – The HMNZS Canterbury

New Zealand scuba divers have been given the opportunity to get out diving with Fourth Element Dive Adventures.
Fourth Element offered 10 spaces on Northland Dive’s super dive boat to get out and enjoy the wrecks of the Rainbow Warrior and HMNZS Canterbury – all in exchange for trip reports, photographs and videos.  My specialty!
And as I have been mostly out of the water for the last 5 or 6 weeks, getting the call from Pete Mes saying “girl get back in the water” was perfect timing.

Pete picked me up on Friday after work and we loaded all my gear in the car and headed up to Northland Dive, to the lodge known as “The Cowshed”.  The Cowshed is famous in New Zealand – not just as great accommodation – for Shane and Julia’s hospitality and for Julia’s cooking.

When we arrived everyone was already there, except for Skip who would be joining us on Saturday morning.
The crew for the weekend was Pete Mes, Andrew ‘Simo’ Simpson, Skip, Copper Phil, GregL, DaveK and DavidH, Glen and DavidF and myself.
Yup – me and 9 guys on a dive expedition!  Julia sorted me out with my own room – bliss

5 rebreathers, 2 sets of twinnies, 3 sets of single tanks.
Then there were 7 stage cylinders.  Plus 7 camera systems and DaveKs video rig.
Yes it did all fit into Sea D Sea – the RIB that we would be using for the next two days – with Shane as our captain and crew.

Saturday morning did not look too bad for our day out.  It took a little creative loading to get all of the above arranged nicely and to allow for 10 bums to be situated on the pontoons but we did it.  And we were off.
It only took around 15 minutes for us to blast our way around to Deep Water Cove from the launching bay and then it was time for the next logistical consideration.
Order of peoples overboard and making sure we had enough room to gear up.  Not a problem!
Rebreather divers first, then myself and DaveH with our twins, followed up by DaveK, DaveF and Glen on single tanks.

I headed over and down with Pete Mes, Phil and Greg.  We were headed to the bow.
Pete had already warned me that he was going to try and get a couple of well posed photographs – and here was my opportunity.  Underwater modelling is harder than it looks!  And I am not only talking about not having a face full of bubbles in each shot.  Face to the camera, chin up, eyes to the side, torch pointed at the dome …… phew.  I like the photograph from the machine gun turret room.

Dive One Details :

Depth : 29.5m  | Time : 60mins  | Temp : 20deg

Getting my ass back on to the RIB post dive was a hell of a laugh.
The boys have enough upper body strength, once they have launched themselves out of the water, to then pull themselves up and over the sides of the RIB.  Me, its a whole different ball game.
I can get most of the way up – and then I need to rely on Shane.  Who grabs my shoulders with what seemed like a large laugh in his belly and yanks me into the boat.  Hey, no one ever said that divers were all that elegant on land!!

Once everyone was back on board, we headed to a lovely sheltered beach for Julia’s huge sandwiches.  And by huge I mean that their size was only restricted by the size of the mouth that you were trying to stuff it into.
Scrambled egg, lettuce, ham, tomatoes, beetroot, cheese, cucumber …… oooooh I am making myself hungry again.
After nearly 2 hours on the surface for most of us, we jumped/launched/scrambled back into the boat and headed back to the wreck.  We had it all to ourselves this dive.

I dived with Greg this dive and we decided to head to the stern for a bit of a look.
Andrew and Skip were also down there and heading down into the ship.  I spent some time on the railings – photographing jewel anemones.  There were a lot more growing on the Canterbury than I anticipated given that she has only been down a couple or three years.

Dive Two Details :

Depth : 28.6m  | Time : 54mins  | Temp : 19deg

Post dive two – it was wine o’clock!
We headed straight back to the bay, stripped out of our dry suits and back to the Cowshed.
Make sure the rose is in the fridge, rinse the gear, place the tanks in the queue for yummy Nitrox fills, clean up a little and its time for drinks – and log books and checking the schematics and generally talking bollocks.

Pete decided to jump in the stream and take photographs of the super-sized eels.
I think Shane and Julia must have been feeding them Open Water divers.  A couple of these guys are massive!
Either Open Water divers – or the left overs from Julia’s amazing dinners.  Cooked chicken, huge green salad, potato salad, corn on the cob, sausages – washed down with a healthy dose of wine, good dive buddies and silly silly silly conversation.
It was a great night but by about 10pm, I could not keep my eyes open any longer!  I slinked off to bed with a big grin on my face and anticipation for the next days diving.

The next day bought sunshine – and fruit salad for breakfast!
We were ready earlier as all our equipment was in place and we just needed to load the refilled tanks on the boat and our drysuits and camera gear into the car.  Heading down to Te Uenga Bay, the water was flat and blue and we were all excited.

Dive One on Sunday and Greg and I decided to do the stern again.
This time we would spend around half an hour there – I wanted to dive all around the railings from port to starboard and then into the helicopter hangar.  I had planned my dive so I would get around 40 mins of bottom time on the stern before heading to midships and coming up to 20m, switching gas, photographing the crows nest and coming up the line to 9m for about 6mins of deco.  As it was, the plan worked a treat and as I hit 9m, I only had 4mins of deco to finish so I did a 3min safety stop as well – showing DavidH (who had also bought a Suunto Vyper Air) what the deco screen and change gas looked like.

Dive Three Details :

Depth : 29.5m  | Time : 63mins  | Temp : 20deg

Our last dive!  I really wanted to spend the last dive on the bow.
I knew that I would be limited on my bottom time by the dives yesterday, plus my mix was leaner, and I had already completed an hour at around 30m on the previous dive as well as a deco stop.
Plus I really wanted to see if the HD video would come out alright considering we were bathed in beautiful sun – and therefore some lovely ambient light.
We went straight to the bow and I started on the starboard side.  I was pleased with the photographs however the video is a little jumpy.  It was very well suggested that I might need a faster SD card so I will give this a go.  The video is on YouTube and I will embed it below.

Let’s just say, as a summary for Dive Four – in fact the whole weekend – it was so good that I did not want to get out!

I had 14mins of deco to complete when I left the wreck.
After switching to my deco mix, this dropped a couple of minutes however not enough.  I shall be completing my Advanced Deco/Nitrox as soon as possible!!

Dive Four Details :

Depth : 29.8m  | Time : 59mins  | Temp : 20deg

A big thank you to Shane and Julia for their hospitality this weekend.  It was the first time I had made it up to the Cowshed and even though Darryl was extremely rude (just kidding – we had our IE together), I’ll be back sooner rather than later.

And finally a HUGE thank you to Fourth Element Dive Adventures!
The idea of getting people out diving and keeping them diving – well it keeps our industry alive!  If you have not signed up online or joined the SDNZ forum, I suggest you do so.  Its not all about the diving – but you definitely meet some wicked people who will share some fun times with you …. and that makes you get your butt off the couch!

[View with PicLens]

Mikhail Lermontov Slideshow

images by Pete Mesley Photography