Diving - My Continuing Adventures underwater
Normal service is resumed - Back in UK waters
I thought it was time to get back into my drysuit and some cold water and so, on the 1st March, I headed to Wraysbury with Ria (trying out her new drysuit) and James (logging dives to meet the minimum for his Red Sea liveaboard in September).
It was a gloomy day and Wraysbury was quite busy (Caroline had been the day before and found it very quiet), so we dropped in from the car park pier.
Vis was mixed, in places it was excellent, but in others near zero.
After 25C dives, even in my Hunter drysuit (worn because it's thicker than my Seaskin) it felt chilly at 6-8C, but we managed a 45 minute dive.
We went to the lifeboat, swam through it and then headed along towards the shipwreck graveyard.
On the container nearby, we spotted 7 or 8 of the big Carp, the most I recall seeing and the vis around the wrecks was very good.
We headed what I though was back towards the nearby bank, but eventually found ourselves at the 'cave complex'. Vis here, unusually, was very poor and we lost Ria briefly.
She indicated she was cold and we started heading back, but it seemed to take forever to see anything I recognised, which was the pit (we didn't go in today).
Finally, we surfaced and had a short swim back to the pier in the car park.
We planned a short second dive after bacon sandwiches and warming up, but I didn't seat the wrist seal on my right arm properly and was quickly feeling the arm filling up.
We tried to find the plane, but the vis had worsened significantly over the first dive and we didn't find it.
We spent a lot of time looking at bare lakebed and I don't recall what we saw, a few small boat wrecks seem familiar.
After 20 minutes or so we reached the diving bell and, as I was now getting wet and cold, I thumbed the dive at that point.
It was nice to be back in the water, but I can't say I greatly enjoyed the cold!
Next up was a trip to Vobster Quay for some twinset playing.
Phil was keen to extend his experience with his twinset, having carried out a twinset course at Wraysbury, so I suggested we go down to Vobster.
Andy joined us with his twins as well and Rob and James came along as well. 'Maybe Saby' bailed (as usual) on the day...
For our first dive, Andy, Phil and I decided to descend to the deepest point that we know, the small boat at around 34M.
We dropped in in front of the shop, but Andy's regs immediately free-flowed and nothing would stop them.
Phil, already in the water, shutdown his cylinder, and Andy decided to use that reg to breathe off.
We descended past the platforms and into the pit, where the vis was surprisingly good.
Sadly, it wasn't as good elsewhere, but we swam past the Jacquin and found the ropes descending to the small boat.
About half way down, vis was near zero and, although I landed on the boat, I couldn't see it or the others when I reached the bottom.
I started to ascend and then spotted a torch, which turned out to be both of them on the rope.
A video from James of the plane
Once regrouped, we headed back to the Jacquin, swimming through it, although I couldn't get out of the hole in the cabin roof, so we had to turn around to get out.
Then we swam to the wheelhouse, swmimming through that and then over to the Sea King, which we swam through. Vis here wasn't great either.
From here we swam to the bottom of the crushing works and then into the tunnel.
We swam up to the safety stop and completed our stop before exiting to the shelter we'd been allocated space in.
After a break, we decided to try and find the boat on the far side of the lake as Andy had never seen it.
Andy dived on Phil's single cylinder as he discovered his twins were 6 months out of test on trying to get them filled!
We swam to the wheelhouse, down to the caravan and then took a northerly bearing to the far wall, where we ascended to around 12M, where there's a ledge on which the boat sits.
We turned right initially, but after a while hadn't seen the boat and I had a feeling we'd gone to far, so I indicated we swim back.
A video from James of the glider trailier
We passed a lot of fallen rocks and even a couple of trees, complete with their roots, which had clearly fallen into the lake since Phil and my visit to the boat the previous year.
However, we never found the boat and both Phil and I were getting lowish on gas, so indicated to Andy that we needed to head back.
We swam up the lake and then across, reaching the wall and ascending to the safety stop.
This dive didn't feel as cold as the first, possibly because we started off cold from our first dive, although the sun was out at times which certainly changed the vis (generally not bad on the far side of the lake) when it shone.
The diving wasn't remarkable, but the sun was out most of the time (it did rain heavily for a short while and the area had clearly had a lot of rain in the previous days) and we all felt we got a decent couple of dives, given the still cold water and the far from great visibility.
A number of the club were off to Vobster the following weekend, for twinset training, but were almost certain to find the vis even worse.
My only April dives ended up being a couple of Ocean Diver training dives at Vobster, as a trip to the wreck of the Venezuela was, as seems so often from Swanage, blown out...
For May, I had a couple of days booked with Swanage Boat Charters, but my first couple of dives were back in Wraysbury, running a Drysuit SDC for one of our members, who was an experienced diver, but needed a drysuit certification for a trip.
Wraysbury was surprisingly quiet and the vis, probably as a result, was very good for May.
We could, for example, see the full length of the bus clearly and, on our second dive, the corrugated tubes as the south end of the lake were visible for their whole length.
Water temperature was a comfortable 12C and the morning was quite pleasant, especially once we completed the drills and just got on with the diving, which my student, Sam, managed without any issues.
Swanage Diving - To the Sea!
Finally, on the 23rd, we had some sea diving planned and not cancelled!
This was our 'early season' Ocean Diver (the entry level for qualified divers in BSAC terms) suitable trip with Swanage Boat Charters.
I'd chosen the Valentine Tanks and a drift over Peverill Ledges for our two dives.
This was the start of a spell of great weather and the sun shone on a flat sea as we made our way out.
We dropped in and descended the shot without any issues, finding ourselves in around 2-3M of vis, but close to the tank that used to still have its turret in place.
This was my first visit since some idiot tore it off (Andy, our skipper, reckoned it was a cruise liner and it would certainly need to be something big to lift a tank's turret - A fishing net from a small boat would probably have just snagged on it), so I was interested to see the turret now lies on its right side alongside the tank.
It looks less obviously a tank now (I wonder if English Heritage could reinstall it?), but the sea life didn't seem to mind as a couple of large Wrasse were swimming inside the hoop of the turret (it's never had a top to it since I've dived it).
There were also a lot of, some quite large, Conger Eels around this first tank and a couple of decent sized Lobsters and a few crabs.
Phil and I followed the line to the second tank, but by the time we got there a few people had already stirred the seabed up, so visibility was much worse here.
Again, there were some Congers and a Lobster and I pointed the nearby turret out to Phil, on his first ever sea dive.
We had a decent amount of gas, so followed the line back to the first tank and had another quick look around before looking for the shotline.
In the poorer vis, though, we couldn't see it, so I deployed my DSMB and we surfaced on that.
Unfortunately, Phil lost control on his ascent and couldn't maintain his safety stop, but he was safely on the surface when I ascended.
A video
After a leisurely break for lunch and to refill our cylinders, we returned to Mary Jo for the short trip out to the Peverill Ledges.
I did once have a really nice dive here, but on this occassion there didn't seem to be much life around, but maybe my eye just wasn't in as Phil spotted a decent sized Spider Crab which I missed and after the dive mentioned a Dog Fish that I'd failed to see!
Otherwise the dive was pretty uneventful and uninspiring, drifting across the small rock walls that make up the ledges.
Vis was OK, around 5M or so, but there didn't seem much to see.
Despite a gentle drift, Phil got through his air very quickly on this dive and we surfaced after 30 minutes.
With my aircon not working, it was a bit of a gruelling drive home, but it had been great to be back in the sea, especially in such good weather and, better yet, we were back the following week for some deeper dives!
