Dry Divers Under Pressure

7 divers, 40m dive, all get narked, and not one of us got our wet hair... How is this possible I hear you cry. Well it was all possible thanks to London Hyperbaric Medicine and their hyperbaric chamber (guess the clue was in the name!).

7 divers made the trip to Whips Cross Hospital last Sunday the 9th Nov to take part in a re-compression chamber awareness course. We arrived at the hospital around ten and met up with our host and instructor Jane and our chamber attendant Wayne. Jane and Wayne then ran us through the safety procedures for the chamber and what we could or could not take in with us. Which was very little including our cloths and to my surprise you cant take explosives in either! So I packed the semtex back into my bag and we all change into very fetching cotton scrubs so as not to be combustible when sealed into a small metal tube fill with pure O2... We were then loaded into the chamber and Wayne (our guide for the dive ) firmly closed the door and ran us through what would happen next. Which was that we descended to 40m in 10 mins ears popping all the way. The one major difference was that apart from the obvious lack of rubber and equipment the chamber became very warm 32 degrees to be precise. If you have ever felt a cylinder just after having been filled you will know what i mean. By the time we cleared thirty metres most of us were feeling the effects of narcosis helped along by the fact that all our voices sounded like we had be breathing from a helium balloon. Very funny!! once at forty Wayne got us to do some simple tasks and arithmetic to demonstrate how the narcosis had effected us. We spent 10 minutes at forty metres before being slowly brought back to surface pressure. For the last nine minuets of the dive we were all put on 100% O2 to flush out any nitrogen that we had built up (Thanks Matt for pointing out that "the pure O2 we were breathing is expensive and that we should make the most of it by taking very deep breaths"!). Of course on the way back the chamber had the reverse affect to the decent and got very cold. Fortunately Wayne had brought some jumpers but only enough for the ladies (smooth bugger!). Having all safely arrived back at the surface and packed away our DSMBs... we were unloaded from the chamber. Jane then ran us through the affects of DI and how to avoid getting one and how they treat it if you do get one, after which Wayne finished our trip by showed us how the chamber works.

I think we would all like to say a big thank you to Chris for organizing the trip and to say if you haven't done one yet think about going on the next trip it a great day out and a very fun dive...

PS. sorry about the photo it was take on a mobile phone so not great quality.