Scuba Diving the Yamashiro July 27, 2006
Posted by Andy Carroll in : WreckDiving , trackbackI recently mentioned that Cedric Verdier was planning to dive the HJMS Yamashiro, which is a Japanese warship sank during World War 2, and now lies in nearly 200 mtrs of water in the Phillipines. Cedric recentyl reported that he has made the dive, although everything didn’t quite go according to plan. After all the time, effort and money Cedric spent literally only a few minutes on the wreck. The question now is, will he go back? This from Cedric’s report;
180m. The line is horizontal, 15m above the bottom. I follow the line and discover a huge hull in front of me. My Halcyon canister light has flooded and I have to use a 10W HID light. The beam is narrow and hardly covers more than a few metres. When I finally reach the wreck of the Yamashiro, I’m already 14 minutes into the dive. A quick check at my handsets and my computers and I start exploring the wreck. It’s so dark and the wreck so huge that it’s difficult to have any clue about where I am. I see superstructures, a hull and it looks like the complete wreck sits on her side. After a few minutes on the bottom, my VR3 and my tables strongly remind me that it’s maybe the right time to start my ascent. Already!!
Slowly I pass all my deep stop before reaching the intermediate (longer) stops. Time to use my jon-line as my soft hands don’t really like grasping the rope…
Eveline is waiting for us at 40m. Pim will also act as a safety diver for this dive. He brings me a plastic bag with two drinks and FHM Magazine (the only magazine I found!). Eveline comes back from time to time to take some pictures. Everything looks fine, so far…
9m. The current is picking up full speed and I just turn and jump all over the place at the end of my jon-line. It’s made in Thailand so I hope it will not break. I try to find a comfortable position but I start to notice that my solenoid doesn’t inject any oxygen anymore. My oxygen tank is empty. Time to plug in my 11L of Nitrox 80. Easier to say than to do. I need one hand to keep my balance and the other two to disconnect the LP hose… okay it’s connected now so I just have to maintain my setpoint manually at 1.3 for the next 3 hours. But suddenly I feel very buoyant… Looks like the Schrader valve that was double-(triple) checked leaks. The pO2 is slowly rising and that’s rather good for me as it automatically compensate for my O2 consumption. The only problem is buoyancy control. I have to exhale out of the loop and loose quite a lot of gas. I try on the other manual injector (the diluent side) but it’s the same story and every time is an acrobatic performance (I’d better have four hands).
I ascend to the next deco stops at 6 and 4.5m and buoyancy is even more a problem. I try to open and close the tank valve according to my needs but it soon becomes boring and I still have 2 hours of deco. After a while I become used to it. Just before that my tank was empty. Where is the so useful support diver? Just above my head, at the surface, holding on the line because of the current. As I can’t move as I don’t want to spin around like a washing machine, I can’t signal the support diver to bring me more oxygen. So I use push on the purge button of my bail-out regulator to have an impressive stream of bubbles hitting the surface. It works and a few seconds later, Eveline comes to ask what’s going on. A few minutes later, she’ll bring a wonderful 7L tank of oxygen.
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