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Carl D. Bradley - Inspirationdiver - 07-27-2005
Just got back from a fantastic trip diving the Carl D. Bradley in Lake Michigan. We had planned 5 days of diving but due to weather were only able to get 2 dives in on the bow. What a fantastic ship, it's in amazing shape but you can really start to see the zebra mussels taking over. We had a good 60 ft of visability at depth.
I have to make a plug for rebreathers here as well. We had 4 divers doing 20-30 minutes bottom time at a max depth of 340 ft, total run time was around 3 hours in the water. Each diver used about 10 cu ft each of diluent and oxygen for each dive. 40 cu ft total for 6 hours in the water!!
Here are some still pictures taken from the video we shot. All photos are copyright of John Scoles and Inland Sea Corp.
Re: Carl D. Bradley - Inspirationdiver - 07-27-2005
Re: Carl D. Bradley - decoeric - 07-27-2005
Absolutely incredible pictures, congratulations to your team for successful dives. Please post more pictures.
Eric
Re: Carl D. Bradley - Inspirationdiver - 07-27-2005
Re: Carl D. Bradley - Chuck_Northrup - 07-27-2005
ID,
Did you take the MMII with you or did you think 320 might be pushing the rated depth a little TOO far
Re: Carl D. Bradley - Inspirationdiver - 07-27-2005
I'd thought about it but decided that it wasn't worth risking it. I have had it down to 270 with no problems before.
All of these pictures are stills captured from the video we shot with a PC350 in a Gates housing. We had dual 50W HID video lights to go with it. Those things were insanely bright. It was like diving with the sun down there with you.
Re: Carl D. Bradley - john j - 07-28-2005
Thanks for posting the photos here. Some of the more significant points of this years expedition in my opinion are:
(1) Frank Mays, the last survivor of the wreck of the Bradley, joined us in Manistique and accompanied us to the wreck site for the first dive. It was just thrilling for me to have him along. He is very interesting to talk to.
(2) First ever penetration dives on this wreck. Team members penetrated the bow crew cabins and also the pilothouse.
(3) Use of heliox (no nitrogen mixes) along with special decompression procedures that John S. and I developed from literature research, input from Greg Such and many test dives we conducted at Wazee. We were able to reduce decompression time by more than 15% compared to the models we used last year while reducing the chance of inner ear decompression illness. The deco time on the second dive for John S. and I was about 170 minutes for 33 minutes of bottom time. With the standard decompression models in the VR3, the required deco time would have been around 195 minutes for that dive.
(4) Use of better lights. You can't have too much light. Visibility was great, but it's still very dark down there.
(5) Finally got video footage of the bell. Beautiful!  Last year the pressure at that depth was causing trouble on the viedo camera by pushing control buttons, turning the camera off randomly. Seems that while the camera housing was rated for that depth, the function of the control push buttons on the housing was marginal.
To do a dive like this on open circuit, you would require something like 460 cubic feet of gas (without any reserve), even at a relatively low consumption rate. As Inspirationdiver stated previously, we used 20 ft3 per diver per dive, a reduction of more than 20x over open circuit. For 4 divers doing 5 dives each, you'd need a semi trailer to carry all the tanks.
For those that are interested, we're planning on doing a presentation and discussion of these dives at Scuba Dive and Travel sometime in the next 2-3 months. We will post on MNSCUBA when we have the date.
Re: Carl D. Bradley - decoeric - 07-28-2005
John,
Please make sure you post the dates of your talk at SD&T. I will be there for sure. I know you and I have chatted via email but once again congratulations to you and your team for successful dives on the Bradley.
Cheers,
eric
Re: Carl D. Bradley - Mark Y - 07-28-2005
What did he have to say?
Re: Carl D. Bradley - Inspirationdiver - 08-02-2005
Frank had a lot of good info to share, I bought a copy of his book (If we make it til daylight) and had him autograph it for me. It was really neat to hear his first-hand accounts of the sinking event and the 15 hours he spent on the liferaft before being rescued. He said that he and Elmer started getting warmer after they had a coating of ice over them. :o
As we reviewed our video after the dives, he shared comments about where he was standing while he was preparing the liferaft and when a huge wave came and threw him from the ship.