Читать книгу Deeper into the Darkness онлайн

131 страница из 184

By the time I strode off the boat, Ben and Greg were already down on the wreck. The trapeze had been lowered into the water, and it self-deployed as Paul and Brian took the transfer line down and clipped it off to the downline. As I hit the water and the white froth of bubbles dissipated, I looked across to the downline which I could see dropping vertically down into the depths. The underwater visibility out here in the Atlantic was just as I remembered from my last expeditions 20 years earlier – astonishing for Scotland, at least 50 metres. I could see Paul and Brian below me; Ben and Greg were already out of sight below.

Gary and I moved over to the downline and started our descent. The water was absolutely slack; with no current at all, we could just freefall beside the downline.

As I reached 30 metres, where the transfer line from the trapeze had already been safely clipped in by Paul and Brian, Gary unclipped the spare cylinder of deep bailout he was porting and we clipped it off on the transfer line. It was set up so that when we recovered the trapeze and transfer line onto the boat after the dive, all the spare bailout gas would come out with it. Although the bow and stern downlines would be left for the duration of the exped, we wouldn’t be leaving cylinders on them. Deep bailout gas clipped off, it was time for Gary and me to continue our descent.