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Complete Wreck Diving

Designed to address wreck diving. The principles of basic wreck diving are applicable whether diving in shallow or deep water.

by Henry Keatts and Brian Skerry
An interesting lot indeed, these wreck divers. We spend thousands of hours of preparation on repairing drysuits, charging lights, tuning regulators and checking lift bags for holes, winding hundreds of feet of line onto an ascent reel, adjusting weight belts and always checking manifolds for leaks. We awake at 3 am, drive for hours, carry truckloads of gear onto a dive boat and steam miles offshore in heavy seas to get to our destination. We sleep in the equivalent of a torpedo tube in a damp sleeping bag or, more often, do not sleep at all; but get up the next morning to dive anyway. We enter the water and swim with the weight of a suit of armour on our bodies to spend a brief 20 minutes on the bottom. We will jeopardize our financial security by taking off endless days frm our jobs so that, if all goes well, we can return home that evening with a brass valve handle, 'prized artifact' that we will spend an entire weekend during the winter, locked away in the basement, fashioning into a belt buckle. Those of us not interested in the 'material wealth' of such riches, instead pursue wrecks to uncover archaeological mysteries and will spend a lifetime carefully excavating a square yard of buried wreckage with ping pong paddles and dental picks to find missing pieces of a clay pot. We anxiously seek each other out since others never truly understand us, but do not talk too much lest we give away our treasured secrets. Ah yes - an interesting lot indeed. For many, exploring shipwrecks is a passion. It consumes their every waking thought, and subconscious thought, too. It is a drug of sorts that many find themselves addicted to, always wanting more. The wreck diver's soul is rich with adventure. It is a gypsy soul, willing always to pick up and move on to the next shipwreck in search of 'fortune and glory'. We are wanderers; continually pursuing the adventure .it is the journey which we savor, not the destination. COMPLETE WRECK DIVING is about this journey. It is designed to be a handbook used to guide the reader through the various stages of this trip. Wreck diving is a term used to describe everything from a leisurely swim over a sunken runabout in 15 feet of lake water to a complex mixed gas dive to a freighter in 400 feet of water in the North Sea. This vast range of extremes within the same heading, makes it difficult, at best to address every possible wreck diving scenario. COMPLETE WRECK DIVING was designed to address wreck diving. The principles of basic wreck diving are applicable whether diving in shallow or deep water. If a wreck diver wants to venture to great depths, t hen the diver must become proficient at deep diving. If the wreck diver wishes to choose enriched air or mixed gas as a breathing medium, then the diver must learn the intricacies of these specialities before employing them. The essentials of wreck diving, however, are what we have addressed. They do not change with different depths of water, nor are they useful only to the beginner. With a firm understanding of these essentials, a wreck diver can then branch out into more complex areas of diving if that is what he/she wishes. Let the journey begin ï¿½. Soft cover, 270 pages, size 14x31.

Price NZD$ 45.50 29.50 (inc gst)
(excludes postage and packaging which will be added at checkout)