Governor this Thursday and Friday

All--

I've been a fly on the wall to some of the planning Richard, Jeanna, Brian and Nick have been doing for their attempts on the Governor this Thursday and Friday. An excellent history of this wreck has been put together by Dan and his crew:

SS Governor.

Here is what I know--I thought it might be fun to put up a discussion for people to ask questions ahead of time (and, in the case of those like Dan that have been on it, provide some wisdom).

I've chatted with the crew that is doing the dives, they may pop on here and answer as they can--seems like there is just a wee bit of planning on this one.

Plan as I know it:

Four divers, Richard, Brian, Jeanna and Nick.

15/55, with 35/25, 50% and O2 for deco. The 35/25 keeps rock bottom manageable.

25 minutes of bottom time, 210 fsw average. I'll let them discuss deco a bit and gas decisions as well--that is beyond my training by a bit to say the least.

I know they've been busy filling larger (95s and 119s) sets of doubles for a while, I think they've taken the approach of having fills done ahead of time for both days for everything except some of the deco gases.

Nick flies in Wednesday, they meet the Dash in Keystone Thursday AM. Have clearances to dive Thursday afternoon and Friday afternoon. If people have questions/comments/thoughts, feel free to post them here and I'm sure they'll be answered . . . .

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Richard on July 13, 2009 at 8:29pm

Just hoping that our 13:30 Thursday and 14:45 Friday splash times work...

Permalink Reply by Brian Wiederspan on July 13, 2009 at 9:16pm

Friday we got clearance from VTS (USCG) for the dives.

Here's hoping for good conditions.

Permalink Reply by DWarter on July 14, 2009 at 10:32am

Weather looks good so far.

Permalink Reply by Jake Virnig on July 16, 2009 at 3:41pm

Well?

Permalink Reply by Douglas Steding on July 16, 2009 at 4:37pm

Rumor is "Epic."

Permalink Reply by Jake Virnig on July 16, 2009 at 5:06pm

Awesome! Glad to hear they made it. Good work!

Permalink Reply by Douglas Steding on July 16, 2009 at 6:55pm

Got a bit more info. Grappled rock next to wreck, made it on wreck (ran a reel for ~40 feet). Apparently, it was one of those look over your shoulder and see it right over there dealios.

Max depth 243 (to the grapple). Average was 230 ish with 17 minutes on the bottom. No currents at all first half of dive, then a bit of current second half of the dive.

Blew bag at 120, uneventful drifting deco (they went about a mile or so in the ~60 minutes of deco).

Total run time was 108 minutes.

Permalink Reply by Casey Ballard on July 16, 2009 at 7:21pm

Well, it was an awesome day. We ended up going through Edmonds / Kingston and meeting the Mark V at Port Townsend around 10am. Motored out to the site and after 4 grapple attempts, they found the rock next to the Gov. Melody and I helped the 4 of'em get geared up and they dropped on it at 1:55 pm. I had the honor of being safety diver, and after about 30 mins or so, we see the bag and I met them at 70 fsw. I saw a few devel horns from B and J, a fist bump or two, so I figured they had been on the Gov. as planned. After a visit by a dogfish in mid drifting deco, I headed up to let Mike, the captain know "all was well". Headed down again to 20 or 30 fsw, after qwent to their O2 bottles, I offord to take a few up early for'em, and they all felt comfy enough to just hang onto everything they had. I was apperently useless, but I guess that's a good thing. Thanks so much guys for the oppertunity to ba part of this!! Congrats to the FIRST FEMALE ON THE GOVENOR!!! Way to go Jeanna! Nice to meet you Nick!!

Permalink Reply by Lauri DeVore on July 16, 2009 at 10:23pm

Way cool! Glad all went well.

- Lauri

Permalink Reply by DWarter on July 17, 2009 at 9:58am

Nice work!!
We've grappled that bunch of rocks MANY times!! We should put up a permanent marker saying "Governor this way".

Good luck today!

Permalink Reply by Douglas Steding on July 17, 2009 at 11:57am

Hilarious--I thought I'd heard of those rocks before.

DWarter said:

Nice work!!
We've grappled that bunch of rocks MANY times!! We should put up a permanent marker saying "Governor this way".

Good luck today!

Permalink Reply by Richard on July 20, 2009 at 8:50am

Thanks for the well wishes, I don't think we actually grappled the rocks. I suspect we hooked the vertical side of the hull and when the current changed on descent (the skipper told us it changed ~2mins after we dropped) the hook fell off the wreck and dragged ~35ft. At the time we found it, it wasn't really "hooking" anything. We had pulled on it pretty hard to set it, and it wasn't set anymore. Nothing like planning for 5 months to have a gut check at 240ft seeing gravel. That really cut into our bottom time, but ~8 mins on the wreck is alot more than zero. Most noteworthy for me; seeing a basketball sized octo plastered to the hull in my first vision. The hull plating was surprisingly collapsed and ribs were exposed than I imagined.

Thank's to:
Matt den Haan for taking us out in February and inspiring us to try this.
Dan Warter's video and detailed descriptions of their deco methods, while we didn't use them they really made us think through our own drifting ascent plan.
Ensign McCann of the USCG for helping us complete the VTS paperwork.
Doug Steding and Scott Lundy for loaning us extra cylinders.
Ben and Ray of Dive-Xtras for loaning Nick a Cuda since our spare Sierra can't handle his video camera+lights.
Mike Ferguson for being such a capable skipper. I knew my splash time was a bit early and he was super helpful understanding by how much.
Melody and Casey for having our backs in-water and all the topside help.

I'm proud to be batting 0.500 on the one and couldn't have done even 1/2 of what we did without their support.