Diving - The adventure continues!
2022 Diving - Further UK diving August
More Project Oyster Dives
After my first outing with the Project Oyster team, I was keen to visit some more wrecks and hopefully find some more Oysters.
Andy Hunt offered me two days (4th and 5th August), but I could only take one up due to work commitments.
Although we were diving with Dave Wendes on Wight Spirit again, we were meeting a Southsea Marina this time, which is about 50% closer than Lymington (and offered free car parking).
I arrived in plenty of time for the 8:20 ropes off and we headed east around the Isle Of Wight towards Ventnor and our first site, HMS Boxer.
The weather was good, with fairly calm seas and blue skies, and we weren't going far that day.
HMS Boxer was a small WW1 era naval ship, notable mainly for its unusual Thorneycroft designed boilers, which are still on the wreck, which lies in around 20M.
Unfortunately, the vis continued to be poor and while we spotted and recorded some oysters, it was hard to see much of the wreck.
We did, though, get a good luck at the boilers and engine, including the Congers, Crabs and Lobsters living there.
Conger in one of the boilers.
Apparently there is a gun plinth there, but I don't think I saw it.
We had a bit of a disaster when we came to surface. The current started running, so, as I reached 70 bar, I tried to launch my DSMB.
It filled fine, but as soon as I released it, I noticed the line tangle around my reel - I tried to free it, but quickly realised I had to let it go.
Diving as a 3, one of my other buddies filled her DSMB and released it, only for her reel to also jam!
Luckily the 3rd diver in the group released his successfully and we surfaced together under it.
We planned to do 3 dives, with the other 2 in shallow water.
The first was called 'Hauler', a barge of some sort, it is believed.
It is a scattered wreck with a bit of current on that dive.
Lobster
We spotted a few Oysters and there were some possibles, but the highlight really was an inquisitve young Conger that came out to take a closer look at me at one point, but it was not a very interesting site as a wreck and 30 minutes was plenty of time.
A large Oyster shell, but native or Pacific?
We motored back towards Southsea Marina and stopped just outside to dive the final site, the 'Roway' wreck, a small dredger sunk by a freak wave, the crew being rescued in good health.
We dropped in by a Hazard marker post, finding the edge of the wreck was about an armspan away from it.
However, there was a strong current running and somehow we lost Esma, one of our 3. We (Jake and I) assumed she was on the small square wreck so swam around and over it to try and find her, but apparently she had missed the wreck entirely on decscent, resurfaced and, rather than wait for us to surface, descended with another two divers after a few minutes.
We surfaced, assuming she was on the surface, after 10 minutes of looking for her, plus 3 minute safety stop, but there was no sign of her and Dave didn't know she had joined other divers, so a dive cut short, but it wasn't a great dive, with terrible vis, so no great loss.
HMS Boxer had been interesting, we'd seen and recorded some Oysters, but generally it was more a day to enjoy being out on a boat than notable for the diving, if I'm honest.
There was a flurry of pool training with the club around this time as we attempted to train some relatives and a friend of Ollie's to Ocean Diver level.
Swanage 'Lifeboat Week'
As in previous years, I'd booked two days' diving to coincide with the final weekend of Swanage's Lifeboat Week and,initially, interest had been high with 10 people booked on to come, but gradually people started to drop out, Ria and Rohit travelling to India for a wedding (A reasonable reason), Emma not having dived for 4 years (perhaps a poorer reason).
By the Friday of the weekend, I was down to six people and then Paul dropped out because his regulators hadn't been serviced in time, so it was just 5 of us, Andy, myself, Chris, Dawn and Julian who were diving.
Fortunately, Ria, Rohit, Geoff and Emma had dropped out early enough for me to cancel the charter and just book the spaces as shuttle spaces and Bryan had managed to fill some of them.
I was camping for the weekend, so travelled down on Friday afternoon and met up with Dawn and Julian for fish and chips that evening.
After that we headed off to the gardens above the pier to have a couple of drinks and listen to the bands, all in aid of the Lifeboat.
Watching a band as the sun set over Swanage (Dawn's photo)
Next morning, the five of us headed along the pier to head out for our first dive, the Netley Abbey wreck.
The wreck is south of Portland, and it was fairly choppy on the way out to the wreck.
As we started to kit up, I looked for my fins and couldn't see them, so I asked where they'd been put as they'd gone in a trolley with my DSMB (which I had) and some other people's kit. It quickly turned out that they been put on a bench facing away from the landing SBC use and no-one had brought them onboard!
The weather looked good most of the weekend, but it was windy at times(Dawn's photo)
Unfortunately, they were no spares to be had, so I wasn't diving on the Netley Abbey that day!
Of course, the others did and reported it was dark, but an interesting wreck, as I knew having dived it a couple of years earlier on one of Cameron's project weekends.
We headed back to Swanage after the dive, across a smoother sea and then settled down to wait for the next dive, on the Borgny.
I had been trying to dive the Borgny for a few years, sometimes being blown out and (infamously) last year being dropped down a shot not on the wreck.
Luckily, today was to be different, but not without issue.
The Borgny is near the Isle Of Wight, so another long ride out, although it wasn't too rough.
Andy, Chris and I dived together and dropped in last after Dawn and Julian had released a 'pellet' to indicate we were on the wreck.
It was dark at 30M+, but we started off OK, finding a Conger near to the shotline. Andy was trying to get some video for a while and then when he moved off, it had hidden back behind some plates. When I came to move off, there were divers' lights everywhere and I couldn't tell which was Andy's and Chris's.
I started following a diver in a twinset, thinking it was Andy, but after a little while closed up and realised it was actually Julian and Dawn.
I thought I turned around and headed back, but it was hard to know where I was at this point and soon I found myself on my own, with no other lights, but still clearly on the wreck.
As Chris had continued a dive alone after losing contact with me and another buddy, on a previous occasion, I decided they would carry on, so I decided to spend a bit of time on the wreck. Not the wisest decision, but with one dive lost, I didn't want to call this one short.
I was delighted to find the inverted stern, complete with rudder and prop and the ribs visible, with the ability to swim through. In better light, this would have been a great dive.
Very dark video of the Borgny and the others setting off for the Netley Abbey
Spotting some more lights and then what looked like Andy's hired drysuit in the poor vis, I found myself on the boiler, but the lights were two elderly women, putting up their DSMB, so I decided it was time to do the same, and headed up, switching to my deco cylinder at 20M and then surfacing.
On the surface I could hear female voices chatting, but with high waves it took a few moments to spot the two women about 20 ft behind me.
Of course, when I got back to the boat, I found Chris and Andy had surfaced and weren't too happy I hadn't.
Some of the others, too, were unhappy that they'd spent a good 15 minutes on the surface before Sinbad, the skipper, had seen to have spotted them, but everyone was picked up safely.
The run back was rough and very slow (down to 4kts at times) and we had to rush straight from the pier to the Ship Inn for dinner, but we had a good evening, before heading back to our various accomodations.
The following morning (after being awoken in the middle of the night by shouts from a running battle in the streets nearby!), I dissasembled my tent, loaded the car and was on the pier about 7:30.
The wind had dropped significantly and we didn't have our first dive until 11:10, so it was a relaxed start before we headed back to Viper to go out to dive The Holmtown.
Chris and Andy examine the Holmtown's boiler
This is on the way to Portland, near to the Aeolian Sky, but it was a far smoother ride out than the previous morning's.
We dropped in and descended to the wreck, finding ourselves directly alongside the engine, right behind the boilers.
While it was still quite dark at 35+ metres, the vis wasn't too bad and we navigated around the wreck fairly easily in our 3.
The Holmtown was sunk in 1918, by a U-Boat, just east of the Shambles bank and is a wreck around 54 metres long.
I think this is the Holmtown's engine
From the boilers and engine we headed astern, finding the propellor in place still and then headed forward to the bow.
Andy hovers over the Holmtown's propellor
Most notable from this dive was the life. There were big shoals of fish, but also lots of very large Conger Eels and Lobsters and Crabs in abundance.
One of the many congers on the Holmtown
Chris was on his rebreather and I had 50% oxygen to decompress on, but Andy was on air alone and after 25 minutes or so on the wreck, he had around 30 minutes deco time to complete.
Anchor on the Holmtown (possibly a spare?)
This decreased a little on the way up, but we still spent at least as long decompressing Andy at 6m (I had only 7 minutes deco to do) as we had down on the wreck, which I didn't enjoy, if I'm honest.
Due to the tides, our last dive, on the Firth Fisher AKA Castlereagh didn't depart until 5:45 PM and Dawn and Julian decided to go home instead of staying.
No-one else had taken up the available spaces, so it was just the 3 of us on the boat as we took the short journey (about 15 minutes) out the site, on a flat calm sea under a clear sky.
Conditions wise it was the best dive of the weekend and I'm tempted to say it was the best dive all around.
We waited a few minutes for the current to drop and then dropped in to dead still waters.
Despite being close to the Kyarra, I've only dived this wreck once or twice before, it's bigger neighbour always seeming a more tempting site (as well as offering the opportunity of a shallower dive or a rising profile), but after this dive, I wondered why.
We descended and found ourselves right by the boilers and the engine.
Vis was OK and it was reasonably light and we managed to navigate around the whole wreck before Andy and I reached our agreed 10 minutes deco time (both diving on air for this dive - I wasn't sitting on a deco stop for 25 minutes again!).
Shrimps on the Firth Fisher
There wasn't a lot of life onboard, but we found the propshaft, with no prop, and the bow, from where we ascended.
The wreck is upright and level on the seabed, so it was easy to find our way around.
A winch on the Firth Fisher
We surfaced and completed our deco stop and then headed back to Swanage, happy to have stayed for this last, possibly best, dive of the weekend.
Even the drive home was fairly uneventful and, despite being a late departure, I was home before 10PM.
BSAC Diver Coxswain Assessment
The following week, Julian, Dawn and I headed down to Portland and took the RHIB out to undertake Dawn and my BSAC Diver Coxswain assessment.
Years ago, I paid for my RYA Powerboat course as, at the time, it was agreed in the club that this was sufficient for people to drive the RHIB.
For a while after that, I was accepted as a Cox and drove the RHIB unsupervised on a number of dives, before Cameron took over as Diving Officer and intepreted the BSAC rules as meaning only those who had the near identical BSAC qualification were qualified to drive the boat.
This irked me (especially as I was expected to pay for that too), so I just refused to do it, but now we have more qualified instructors in the club, Julian was able to run the assessment himself on our own boat and the club bore the cost (the benefit of having more Diver Coxswains should be more trips for divers!).
A rest between mooring exercises in Portland Marina - Julian's photo
It was a lovely clear day and we mostly carried out a series of exercises in Portland Harbour (and a few out towards Grove Point, down the Bill), including high speed and low speed manouevres, coming up to a buoy, man overboard drills, coming alongside a pontoon and a few diving specific ones, such as diver drop off and recovery and shot deployment and recovery.
Most of the exercises were things I'd either done on my Powerboat 2 course or had experience of from diving from the RHIB, but it was all a useful refresher and we also used the anchor at sea, which is something we'd never done in my time with the club, so was especially interesting to me.
We both came up to the required standard and it hadn't felt like a stressful exam. In fact, it had felt like a very pleasant day out messing about in a boat and picking up a few new tips, so I really enjoyed the experience.
