Diving - The adventure continues!

UK diving in 2019

So after a busy May and June 2019, I had less planned for July and August, but being summer months there was always the chance something would come up.

All I knew of earlier in the year was a couple of days diving with NAS on the wreck of HMS Hazardous in early July and a return to the Dorst Shipwreck Project wrecks out of Weymouth, scheduled for a weekend towards the end of the month, but fairly soon I was being asked if I was free for a midweek visit to Wraysbury to help a Sports Diver student complete her training.

As I knew she was especially keen to take part in a weekend's diving in Swanage that I'd arranged for August, I was happy to tag along, mainly to act as an incapacitated diver during Rescue Drills.

The 4th turned out to be a lovely sunny Thursday with few divers, although there was a couple of minibuses full of teenagers, diving with their schools (presumably not your average Comprehensive!)

We did two 40ish minute dives and covered CBLs, DSMB launches, out of air Alternate supply ascents and a number of personal skill test (mask clearing, etc) and got Nicole over the line for her Sports Diver.

She'd done less than 20 dives at this point, but her buoyancy and awareness was very good, so it is always a pleasure to dive with her and I'm sure she'll go on to be a very good diver, progressing onto higher levels of training if she wants to.

Vis on the first dive was generally excellent, but after a break we went back in and obviously found areas where the students had been diving as large hanging clouds of silt reduced vis to a couple of metres at times, but we generally had a pleasant day out and achieved what we set out.

Hazardous Diving!

Whenever I received a mail about this project, I got a little concerned, but the reason for the title is that the ship, a 17th Century 2nd rate ship, was called HMS Hazardous!

It lies in Bracklesham Bay, just a few hundred yards off the beach and is a protected wreck.

The licensees were looking for some "Younger" divers to get involved, but as often seems to be the way with UK diving, most of those who did weren't really young (except at heart, perhaps!), but we were keen.

English Heritage funded the diving, with a view to recording more of the wreck, in association with MSDS and NAS.

We were based at the Red House Farm campsite and dived from Itchenor (near Chichester) on Wight Spirit, as we had for the Thorness Bay trail the previous October.

I drove down on a Sunday evening and pitched my two man tent, Dawn and Geoff from my club were also diving, but opted to get an appartment over a pub in Itchenor.

Alison from MSDS arranged a barbecue for Sunday evening and Ian, the licensee, came along and provided an overview of the wreck. We also did some revision on the measurement techniques from our NAS Course the previous summer (some of the others were still completing their course over the two days).

There should have been two days in June (when we dived Plymouth), but they had been cancelled due to the weather, so we made up the first visit.

I woke early on the Monday, with the birds, but did manage to doze after that until about 6:30. One of the other campers very kindly made me a cup of cofee and we arrived at Itchenor and loaded the boat at 8AM.

In a fairly unhurried day, we motored around to Bracklesham and met up with Ian and some other divers on their RIB. They dropped in on the wreck they know so well and set a shot line onto one of the cannons.

The first dive was just a familiarisation one, so we once again viewed a plan of the site, with its cannons and sparse hull remains, and identified where we would be once we reached the bottom of the shot.

Dawn, Geoff and I dived as a 3, but after a short while passing from cannon to cannon, we became disorientated in the fairly poor vis (under 3M in the main) and swam West, as I thought we'd swept East off the wreck site. After a few minutes, we turned and swam East, at Geoff's suggestion, and we refound the wreck.

Unfortunately at this moment, we lost sight of Geoff. Dawn and I looked around for a couple of minutes and then ascended to the surface. Being at only around 5M, we figured we'd meet up and drop straight back down to continue the dive.

Strangely, though, Geoff didn't surface. We signalled to the boat that we'd lost him and asked if they could see him.

We waited on the surface for some minutes, but still no sign of him, until those on the boat suggested we drop back down to the seabed and see if we could find the source of bubbles coming to the surface.

We did and swam around the perimeter of the wreck, but didn't find Geoff or any of the other divers.

When we resurfaced it was with some relief that we spotted Geoff already back aboard the boat.

After a lengthy surface interval, we did a second dive, but this time we were practice measuring some of the guns.

Equipped with a slate, premarked with measurements to take, a pencil, a tape measure, a large pair of wooden callipers and a folding ruler, Geoff, Dawn and I were sent off to take measurements of two cannon, resting side by side.

Using the callipers, Geoff did some measurements on one gun, while Dawn and I measured the second with the tape measure.

Once we finished, I took the callipers from Geoff and started measuring the diameter of the gun Dawn and I had measured at 10CM intervals starting at the muzzle. I found this really difficult and only got about half way along the gun before I was starting to get low on air and we all surfaced.

Back on the boat, I asked Geoff if he'd done all the measurements of diameter on his gun and he revealed that he hadn't done any, as it proved too difficult, so I felt less bad about only doing half of them!

It had been an interesting and challenging day and later, back at the campsite, we transcribed our measurements onto the official sheets and identified which guns we'd measured on a map of the site.

We ate a tasty Chilli, once more provided by Alison, and carried out some trilaterion/tie measurements on a mock up of a wreck to prepare us for more measurements the next day.

After a good night's sleep in my tent, I packed it all up and headed off to meet the boat back at Itchenor at 8:30.

This time we headed to more or less the same area, but to a little way away from the previous day's diving, where, back in 2014, another 9 cannon had been found and roughly sketched, with little additional information.

Again, Ian's team laid a shot to put us in the right area and then we set off to find an measure a gun of our choice.

This time, Geoff dived with another diver and Dawn and I were last team in. We found cannons, but they were all already tagged with the latest tags, part of our job being to tag the guns, and it took us a while to find a gun not already measured.

When we did we started measuring and fairly quickly finished it, with plenty of air left. We could have gone off and found another cannon, but with only one slate, it seemed easier to stop there.

Instead we both did a circle of the gun with a GoPro and couple of lengths over the top too, to capture images for a Photogrametery exercicse, where computers stitch many images together to form a 3D image - We've yet to see if the results were usable.

That done we headed back along the line and up the shot back to the boat. Later in the day, we were told that we may have found a new cannon on the site and asked to measure from it to another, previously marked gun on the next dive.

The second dive was more or less the same, although we started, as requested, measuring and taking a bearing from the gun we'd measured in the morning to a gun with a tag from the original dives. Again, it seemed that this gun wasn't previously shown on the map, which was quite exciting.

We also found another trio of guns lying close together and measured them. One we failed to get all the measurements for somehow, but we certainly captured a fair amount of information in a near 1 hour dive.

That done, we motored back, bid our skipper, Dave, farewell and adjourned to the local pub, where we enjoyed a drink and completed some more documentation of our findings of the day.

Alison let us know that the cancelled two days were being rescheduled for late September and asked if we'd be able to come back - If it happens I plan to as it was, as with with Shipwreck Project, a different slant on diving, providing its own challenges and rewards.

If it proves we did discover a 'new' cannon on the wreck, it will be even more exciting!

More diving, Portland and Wraysbury

The next diving was out of Portland on the Wey Chieftan IV again, with Richard and Sue.

The plan was to dive the Brandy Wreck and Alexander again over two days, extending the area scanned and maps, but things really didn't go well.

Firstly, the Saturday was cancelled due to poor weather, so I turned up Saturday evening to find we were down to just 5 divers for various reasons, meaning only two teams.

Aside from Cameron and I, no-one had practical experience of the diving, but were still hopeful we could get some useful scanning and recording done on the Sunday.

The weather was pretty good and we motored the short distance out to the 'Brandy Wreck' and kitted up.

Cameron, Emma and Howard (A diver from Richmond BSAC) went in first and laid a line, but it took them a long time to find the correct reference point and so Thanos (another Richmond diver) and I waited some time, until the signal to dive was finally given.

We dropped in and descended onto the shot line. At around 10M I looked back and he was descending just above me, so I continued down to the seabed, where I found myself alone. A couple of the other team were just visible, but visibility wasn't great a at around 2-3M.

I busied myself securing the line around the grapnel, to make it easier to recover, and I could see that Thanos was pulling on the shotline, so I waited, assuming he would appear at any moment.

A few minutes passed and he hadn't appeared, but the line was still moving, so I waited. Another few minutes passed and I thought I needed to head up and see what was happening.

The shot stopped moving, too, so I ascended up it and saw no sign of him by 10M, so I launched my DSMB, completed my safety stop and surfaced.

There he was on the boat! Turned out that he hadn't been able to submerge (although he said he'd reach 9M initially) and had been trying to duck dive and pull himself down the line when it was moving. In the end, he gave up and went back to the boat. So, dive 1 - 15 minutes...

We headed round Portland Bill in lovely sunshine, but it was a little choppy, and got to just off Chesil Beach. Richard commented that we were pretty much at the limit of the conditions for the kind of diving we were doing, but getting in and (thankfully) down was no problem this time, when, after 20 minutes, we finally got the signal to follow the first team.

The plan was for them to locate one cannon and then swim off West to another where they would lay a Northerly line and we would them scan a couple of areas off that.

When we reached the bottom of the shot, the distance line from it was heading 45 degrees towards the surface! A moment or two later, Cameron, Emma and Howard appeared giving exagerated shrugs.

Cameron wrote on his slate that he thought we were on the wrong cannon and should head south looking for another, so we all headed off.

The 3 of them surfaced shortly afterwards, while Thanos and I continued South for a short while, but it was soon apparent there was nothing there. I turned west and then circled back, hoping we'd find some of the wreck to look at, at least, but in reality all we saw was a lot of sand, a few unworried flat fish and some crabs.

After 40 minutes we were back on the surface and on the boat, with nothing achieved at all on the second dive.

Back on the boat we came to the conclusion that we had been on the correct cannon, but in the poor vis ther other team had failed to find the second cannon and so we went the wrong way on our dive.

So, as you can tell, a pretty unproductive day's diving.

At least, the sun was out!

I had ordered myself a new drysuit from Leeds based Seaskin back in April and, being made to measure, had been given a despatch date of 2nd August.

So I was pleasantly surprised to receive a mail in late July to say the suit was on its way.

It arrived and I was a) very pleased with the look and quality and b) very relieved to find it fitted well and I hadn't got any of the dozen plus measurements wrong!

So, I needed to give it a try out, before we headed to Swanage in mid-August and, fellow club member, Olly and I turned up at Wraysbury on the last Saturday in July.

Reports on the vis earlier that week had been very discouraging and, even at 9:05, the car park was packed with scores of trainee divers there.

I needed air, but as soon as we could, Olly and I got in the lake, hoping to beat the rush.

We dropped in from the pier away from the shop and found the vis, while not great, was at least only poor, with the occassional patch of 3M or so.

Over a 45 minute dive, we managed to stay together, navigate around pretty well, taking in the various wrecks and avoid most of the hoardes.

Most importantly, my usual weights of 6KG for fresh water worked fine (maybe a tad heavy) with the new suit and the suit was both dry and comfortable.

After one of Wraysbury's always excellent bacon sandwiches and a mug of tea, we headed back in, this time behind the shop.

We found the bus easily enough, but the vis was somewhere between zero and 2 metres. We swam through the bus, but Olly obviously missed that I'd swum out through the door on the left and continued straight on through the windscreen and swam away!

We both surfaced and joined up again to descend, planning to head northish to the Cave Complex.

Somehow (my compass seemed to have developed a mind of its own on this dive - I'm not great at navigating, but having got us around successfully on the first dive, I know it wasn't [b]just[/b] me!) we got turned around a few times and never found the caves.

We did find the milk float and plenty of platforms and, remarkably, ended the dive at the bus and were able to exit at the same point we'd entered, but there was no doubt that the mass of trainee divers had been doing their bit to destroy what vis there was!

So that was July's diving, after 2018's visit to Swanage to dive over the lifeboat week end of week weekend there was huge amount of interest to repeat it in 2019, so we had a full boat chartered for that weekend this year to look forward to.

Read some more of my diving experiences, by clicking the icons below.

 

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