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Dive Logs for Vance Stevens
PADI open water scuba instructor #64181
Dives 365-366
November 23, 2000
Inside Bateen Breakwater, Abu Dhabi

Diving with: Marina Divers
Dive sites: Inside Abu Dhabi Bateen Breakwater
Dive buddy: Mark Kindermann
Others in dive party: Al Sharifi and Naser and various divers
Conditions: mild
Water Temp: 26 C
Visibility: not great, 2-3 meters
Wetsuit combo: typhoon top
Weight: 6 kg, or maybe 4.5 (Al says what I've thought were 2 all along are 1.5 each ??!!)
Diving from: Al's boat, Al at the helm, with flu

Training conducted: Bob Campbell's first PADI Open Water dive (tour for pleasure; no skills) plus optional third tour dive for Mark Kindermann (Mark had completed academic session 1 and confined water dive 1)

Dive 365

Data from dive computer:

Time started down: 10:54
Max depth: 8.5
Time started up from chart: no chart available
Dive time from computer: 00:21
Min Temp: 24 degrees C
Nitrox 21% (normal air), no deco

PSI/Bar in: not recorded
PSI/Bar out: not recorded
Pressure group out, from tables: C

Description of dive:

Mark elected to go with the dive despite unstable weather conditions around Abu Dhabi, and because he had done two excursion dives with me, I agreed to let him do two 20 min dives toward his open water certificate, as he already had accumulated sufficient experience. Vis was abysmal, only a couple of meters. On the first dive, we did the required skills and I had him do an out and back compass heading to and from the anchor. We had already practiced that on one of his experience dives. He did fine, at which point I took a bearing on the breakwater and hit that in about 20 kick cycles. The place we intersected the breakwater was pretty nondescript so I left an orange dive slate at that point and we headed left. Again I counted kicks for as far as we traveled and I continued to a rope in the water and followed that out and decided to turn around and head back to where I'd left the slate. On the way back we encountered Al and his group, and Al hands me my slate, which he figured I'd just dropped. So I continued, still retracing kicks more or less, and looking for a plastic bottle I'd seen in the sand just down from where we'd left the slate. End of the kicks and I still hadn't seen the bottle, so I went a few more and decided to head the 20 kicks back to the boat. We saw no anchor, but at the end of 20 kicks I decided to surface, and we were just up from the boat, as expected. We ascended on alternate air source.

We did cramp removal and tired diver tows during the surface interval.

Surface Interval from dive computer: 7 minutes
Pressure group in, from tables: C

Dive 366

Data from dive computer:

Time started down: 11:26
Max depth: 8.4
Time started up from chart: no chart available
Dive time from computer: 00:23
Min Temp: 24 degrees C
Nitrox 21% (normal air), no deco

PSI/Bar in:
PSI/Bar out:
Pressure group out, from tables: I

Description of dive:

Al had rigged a buoy near the boat and we descended on that and at bottom did an Emergency Swimming Ascent where Mark ran out of air on the way to the surface, so we aborted and descended and redid the exercise to perfection. We then did a compass to the breakwater and followed it along to the rope and out to the sand. There we did our dive 3 exercises, finishing with disconnecting our low pressure inflators, orally inflating bcds, and re-establishing buoyancy with fin pivots. We swam around a bit and then did a buddy breathing ascent. We still needed a bit of dive time to finish the 20 min, so we descended and swam up the breakwater a bit. Then we ascended and Mark took a bearing on the boat and almost banged his head on it. There he removed and replaced weight belt and then handed it up. Then he removed his bcd and replaced it. Somewhere in there he had done a snorkel reg exchange. And that was about it. A pair of solid skills dives.

Vance Stevens, vstevens@emirates.net.ae | http://www.vancestevens.com/
Page updated December 22, 2000 in Hot Metal Pro 6.0