Helium!

In the midst of my marathon training, there was one tiny wrinkle. Sonny and I needed to get our Trimix dive certifications re-done. There are two ways to do this: send in your dive log with the appropriate number of dives done at that level of difficulty (deep with a perfect deco profile) or go on a few dives with an instructor to prove you still can complete all the necessary skills and drills. Since the past few years have been both very busy and a bit more financially strapped that we'd hoped, we did not have enough dives to go with option 1. Therefore, we tried to schedule a time with Jamie from Tech Dive NZ to do our re-cert. Sonny's PhD put some restrictions on when this could happen, and then exam marking got in the way, and the next thing we knew, the end of the year was approaching and we had two possible time slots - the week before my marathon, or the week after. I was understandably concerned, but knew we needed to do this. I eventually decided to do it the week before because in the long run, I had paid more money for the Trimix, and didn't want to screw that up by being so exhausted from the marathon that I couldn't do what I needed to do. So, the first week in December, we packed up the van and drove north to Tutukaka and the Poor Knights!

Our favorite place to stay, they have a dive gear rinse shed!

The first day we went out just us, for a "shakeout" day where we practiced our ascents and other drills. We got to dive Northern Arch on a great viz day, and though we had to stay shallower than 32 m (105 ft) as we were on Nitrox, it was still a fantastic dive. Unfortunately, I have no photos as we didn't bring the camera for the course. We got in our practice drills though, and hoped that we would look smooth and totally awesome in front of Jamie the next day.

Some well deserved relaxation at the end of the day

We were up bright and early the next morning. We met Jamie and got our gear ready, then analysed our gas - both our back gas and our deco bottles. Today we would be diving on 32% Nitrox again while we did drills and proved to Jamie we could handle a perfect deco profile. If we did so, then the next day we would execute a real Trimix decompression dive. All these different gases mean lots of tanks!

Poor Fawkes was a bit loaded down...

On the first dive, Jamie stressed us by forcing us to swim farther and faster than we normally do - with an extra sling tank! The end result was we both got some hypercapnea or CO2 toxicity. This is a common danger in diving, and easily affects divers working harder than they know. It makes doing the simplest tasks very difficult, and causes tunnel vision as poor Sonny found out when Jamie stole his stage bottle right off him! I discovered a cool side effect of all the running, and wasn't affected as much. We managed to complete our simulated decompression, but it wasn't very pretty, and our buoyancy swings were more than we wanted. Jamie promised on the second dive he wouldn't make us swim as much, but instead he planned on making us perform valve failure drills while deep enough that we were severely narc'd. We made it through, but I honestly couldn't have told you what I did or why I did it after the dive. Our ascent drill was better, but I made a mistake this time, and didn't send up an SMB even though we surfaced in open water. Unfortunately for me, this is one of Jamie's pet peeves, and so I heard about it. Luckily, he said he was satisfied we could dive using trimix the next day!

I really wish we had photographs of the next day's dives to show. It was easily THE BEST day of ocean diving I have ever done. Our first dive was again at Northern Arch, but this time we got to go down to the bottom of the arch, at 42 m (138 ft). I was having the time of my life, looking up at all the other divers 20 meters above me, while schools of fish swirled past. The rocks at the bottom of the arch hid several rays and eels, and the entire arch is encrusted with sponges, fans, anemones, and other things. We didn't do much swimming at all, mostly because I just wanted to sit in awe of the views right there. I may have even cried a little bit. Our deco was fantastic UNTIL we accidentally miscalculated and didn't stay the entire 1 minute at our 15m stop. Crap. Oh well.

The next dive was at a site I've never been to, Ngaoi Rock. Its a smaller conical rock that juts above the surface, then below the water it drops away into a gorgeous wall with one long  finger pushing out perpendicularly into the sand. Open water divers mostly circle Ngaoi Rock, and spend some time on the upper reaches of the wall. As we could go deeper, we dropped straight down over the wall and then cruised along the finger. I was leading and I had to keep a close eye on our depth as the finger goes all the way down to 60m (200ft). When we hit 45m (148 ft), I turned us around and we went back up the other side of the finger, slowly decreasing depth. Its hard to describe what made this site so beautiful. The huge wall behind us, reaching 100 ft straight up, with what looked like peaks thrusting toward the surface in a sporadic line. The thin serpentine finger curling out before us, like some strange highway with white sand - flat and monotonous - on either side. Our decompression was done slowly paddling around the cone, peaking into the crevices or gazing straight down at the sand nearly 100 ft below. I pretended I was skydiving or a superhero, flying next to a mountain range. It was kinda the best. :) There were no errors and it was a textbook dive. What a fantastic end. To make things even better, we found out that thanks to Dive Tutukaka's loyalty program, we each have a free dive!

We packed up and slowly started heading south toward Auckland. We stopped in Waipu at Pizza Barn for amazing pizza and craft beers. I used a cool new app to find a freedom camping site close to Auckland where we slept soundly then woke up early to go pick up the dogs. What a great trip!

SO GOOD

Pretty little free campsite

The only bad part of the whole trip was when my biggest worry came true. During the first day, the seas were a bit rough, and so the boat was pitching around a bit. At one point, I almost lost my balance and in trying to regain it - with twin tanks on my back - I wrenched my knee a bit. It hurt a bit, but not too terribly. However, over the next few days I could feel it simmering angrily. I was hopeful that some ice and NSAIDs would solve it, and that I wouldn't affect my running.