Divers: Brenden, George, Fred & Mark

Surface crew: Ben, Youri, Push, Danny, Chris & Justin

Technical diving is never easy and it takes a lot of planning & logistics to make it happen, this dive took more than most. We mixed the gas for the dive back in February, we put aside every free weekend we had & it still took until last Sunday to get the dive done. But it was certainly worth the wait!! The conditions were perfect as we drove out of Western Port on Action, we cooked up our traditional bacon ‘n egg rolls with hot coffee for breakfast before setting to work preparing the boat for the dive. The depth of the Alert is 76 metres if you swim under the stern, so we had an 85m shot line to prepare and then the ‘deco’ station which has to be dropped in at the same time. We have done this a quite a few times now and the boys have the system down pat. Arriving at the site I’m a bit nervous about hitting the target as the Alert is possibly the hardest site to ping, although it stands about 4 metres off the bottom, it does sit down in a narrow ditch which means it does not show on the depth sounder very well. As luck would have it we hit the first time & the shot line & deco station go in like clockwork. Our plan is to start at the compass binnacle and then swim clockwise around the ship back to the shot line. This all works well for us and what a great dive it was, we are back at the shot line with a minute or two to spare. I had brought my Intova camera with me & although it is only rated to 60m it worked fine at 75m.

Mark