Lermontov - Day 4

Today was the last day of diving. The rest of gang except for Nicole and Kristen who had to fly the next morning, had planned for 2 dives on the Lermontov. Hannah and I decided that we would do one long dive instead. Knowing that she might be cold at the end of a long dive, Hannah borrowed my DUI Xm450 gm drysuit undergarment...which I feared would be a permanent loan! :P

Dive 6
Hannah and I went over our dive plan. We would drop down to the entrance of the engine room, tied up a reel and explore the engine room. However, after finding out that Brent would be leading other divers to the room and would be tying a reel as well, we decided to use his line instead. We would communicate with him that we were still in the engine room if he saw a bolt snap on his reel. We descended on the mooring line, the surface was calm, visibility was about 8m, conditions couldn't be better! Found the entrance to the engine room, found Brent's line, and we went in. Seconds into the room, we decided to change our plan - the room was very silted out and we had no intention of spending our last dive on this trip trying to explore a silt out engine room... thus, we signaled to each other and exited the engine room. We knew we would be back again soon, and the engine room would be on the top of our list to explore the Lermontov.

Engine room

Outside the engine room, we tried to "talk" to each other where should we be heading next... well...you couldn't really talk underwater! :P I pulled out my notebook and we scribbled messages to each other before my pencil disintegrated into pieces! (Note to self : buy a one-piece lead for writing underwater, not cheap pencils).

After the short "conversation" underwater, we explored various places around the boat deck and the promenade deck. At the bow end of the promenade deck, it dropped down to 30+ meters and the places looked incredibly dangerous with all the silty, curtains around. We decided we would not be going further as we did not plan to go down the promenade deck in our dive plan. From the promenade deck, we went over to the Bridge of the Lermontov and had a quick peek before we called the dive.

Promenade deck

During their dives, Kristen has managed to get her hand on some plates from the Lermontov. There was enough for everyone on the trip to get one! Thank you, Kristen.

Plates from the Lermontov

Great dives, great company. As the Lermontov dives were part of a road trip, Hannah is responsible for writing the part where we were above the water... looking forward to reading those adventures. As for Mikhail Lermontov, we would be back shortly!

Bottom time: 67mins
Avg depth: 15m

All diving pics on the Lermontov are from Pete Mesley (http://www.petemesley.com/)