Andrey Chistyakov and his Diving Team in Dahab have completed autumn 2008 Deep Trimix Program by the 205 meters dive. Our congratulations to Boris Kulish. There’s one more diver in Russia now, who’s successfully reached 200msw depth. For Andrey it was the fourth dive below 200 meters.

Full store narrated by Andrey Chistyakov.

All dives were made as planned. None of us felt any signs of bends. Boris came back home next day after our final 205 meters dive and I’ve started a new course.
Boris had already taken part in my Deep Trimix Program before. Last year we finished our program by 160 meters (530 fsw) dive. Boris is one of the best students I’ve ever collaborated with, otherwise I won’t ever think of making such a dive. He was absolutely ready to the program which we successfully completed.

We started from the 7th till 21st of September 2008.
As usual all of our dives were made without using any trail lines. I find it too artificial regarding Dahab sites conditions and I’ve never used them here. My Blue Hole diving experience enables me to find the desirable spot without using any special gear.

Equipment
I used:
Steel 15 liters twinset by Faber with bottom mix
Aluminum 11.3 liters stage bottles with run-gases and deco mixtures
Drysuit by DUI. I don’t use any additional bottle for drysuit inflation, due to its’ redundancy whenever you don’t use argon. That’s why I usually inflate my drysuit from EAN32 or EAN50 stage bottle.
OMS Larry Green 45 lbs single bladder wing + OMS aluminum back plate with classical Hogarthian harness. I put some small D-rings on the bottom edges of the back plate (thanks, to Larry Green) and modified the lights canister fixating buckle. I find this configuration very ergonomic for carrying a number of jump reels.

Stage bottles mounting

In my deep dives sometimes I use this D-rings for stage straps mounting. A small D-ring on the lights fixating buckle enables to clip stage bottle to the right side. It’s needed not so often but sometimes desperately. I don’t use a D-ring behind the lights canister.
In most of my dives I clip all the stages to the left side and carry additional ones on the stage straps clipped to left waist D-ring or small edge D-rings on the backplate, if more than one strap’s needed.
Lights - Salvo 21w HID 10,5 Ah Li

Boris used:
Steel 18 liters twinset by Faber with bottom mix
Aluminum 11.3 liters stage bottles with run-gases and deco mixtures
Double bladder wing by Dive Rite – Dive Rite Super Wing
Semidry suit by Aqualung
Harness - OMS Comfort

Stages Mounting

Boris used classical configuration mounting 2 stages to the right side and two to the left. As far as you’ve got limitations of a number of bottles carried in this way one of Boris’s EAN50 stages I carried on my stage strap (whenever we used two EAN50 bottles). In all dives deeper 180msw level we considered to be safer to have the whole number of deco mixtures excluding oxygen with us. I don’t appreciate such configuration, but let Boris dive the way he got used to. Please note that stage strap is very nice piece of gear enabling you to carry more bottles, sometimes I use more than one strap. I finally gave up the idea of using back mounted “four’s” because it’s bulky and doesn’t make any sense when you need to carry more tanks.

Support Divers

In all dives except the deepest one we were assisted by Anna Kozlova, our support diver with Submerge DPV at 30msw depth. There’s no need to involve many support divers, so as make it seem cooler because finally they won’t make the dive safer. Redundant gas supply, team work at depth plus collaboration with support divers at depth of switching to deco mixtures is the most effective scheme. Support divers monitor divers state, at 22msw they take from us used bottles with run-gases and we get oxygen bottles in exchange. In our 205 msw dive there were two support divers – Anna Kozlova and Alexey Grishin, always helping me in complicated dives. 

Decompression Model

We used Buhlmann deco model modified with Pyle’s stops as the most tested and reliable model. Anyway we also modified dive plans according to VPM. VR3 enables to correct deep stops turning to Use Tables mode, but keeping calculations using Buhlmann model. In 186 msw dive we made the 1st deep stop 10 meters shallower than calculated by VR3, but still we could use it in Use Tables mode.

Gauges
I used VR3 with 30% conservatism like in all my dives and Galileo Sol in Gauge Mode. Boris had similar VR3, Tusa IQ700 and Uwatec bottom timer.

All mixtures I’d prepared myself.

Training Schedule
 
07.09.2008 – 1st dive, the next day after Boris’s arrival. The Arch 60 msw – Tx 18/30, EAN50, Oxy..
08.09.2008 – Blue Hole, 85 msw – Tx14/50, EAN50, Oxy
09.09.2008 – Blue Hole, 110 msw – Tx 12/50, Tx 20/30, EAN50, Oxy
10.09.2008 – Deep Canyon, 126 msw – Tx 10/60, Tx 20/30, EAN32, EAN50, Oxy
11.09.2008 – day off
12.09.2008 – Blue Hole, Northern Wall, 150 msw – Tx 9/65, Tx 18/35, EAN32, EAN50, Oxy
13.09.2008 – day off
14.09.2008 – Blue Hole, Northern Wall, 170 msw – Tx 8/68, Tx 18/40, EAN32, EAN50, Oxy
15.09.2008 – day off
16.09.2008 – day off
17.09.2008 – Blue Hole, Northern Wall, 185 msw – Tx 7/73, Tx 14/55, Tx 18/38, EAN34, EAN50 (2 bottles 11.3 liters), Oxy (2 bottles 180 bar – 11,3liters + 5,6liters)
18.09.2008 – day off
19.09.2008 – day off
20.09.2008 – Blue Hole, 205 msw (Boris) and 203 msw (me) - Tx6/78, Tx14/58, Tx18/38, EAN33, EAN50 (2 bottles 11.3 liters), Oxy (2 bottles 180 bar – 11,3liters + 5,6liters)

At the beginning of 205 meters dive during in-water check I found the inflator’s corrugated hose damage. There was a big whole in the rubber part. But Alexey Grishin changed it so that I didn’t even have to take my double’s off. Regarding this I’d like to ask all equipment manufactures and OMS especially to follow the standards of their own set up quality, because recently this problem of inflators’ corrugated hose damage reveals itself more frequent as far as the problem of installing it to the bladder. Your equipment is a life-support system!

All deep dives were started with EAN32, followed by switching to bottom mix at 30meters. We also switched to EAN32 from the normoxic trimix at depth of 40 meters. I don’t follow the ‘counter diffusion’ concept at such kind of switching since I don’t let dramatically END jumps at deep switches.

I highly appreciate the work of my team: Anna Kozlova, Alexey Grishin and Ahmed. You’re true professionals and I’m proud to work with people like you.

And finally, my best regards here to Boris Kulish for the two impressive diving weeks. You trained hard, were prepared for it and succeeded.

Andrey Chistyakov. TDI Advanced Trimix IT 9838, TDI Full Cave Instructor.
www.diverclub.ru