Diving - My Continuing Adventures underwater
Into the depths - More South Coast diving
The week after our OD trip to Swanage, I was back there to do some more 'serious' diving.
We were to dive two deeper wrecks, the SS Venezuela (at 25M) and the Kyarra (at a maximum of 30M).
I had dived both before, the Kyarra often, but it had been a while since I had dived the Venezuela.
With my aircon out of action and in a May heatwave, Caroline had offered me a lift, so we set off early in her Tesla (the first time I'd been any distance in an all electric car).
We arrived about 7:45 and found plenty of space on Swanage Pier (in contrast with last week, when it was full when I arrived just after 8, there was space until about 9AM this week!) and we parked up and set off to get a coffee.
After a coffee and a lovely Belgian bun in the Italian Bakery, we made our way back to the car and kitted up.
We were on Vyper today as the Venezuela is nearly as close to the Isle of Wight as Swanage, but, as the previous week, the sun was shining and the sea was calm, so it was a pleasant journey out and it seemed only a short time until the skipper, Sinbad, was telling us we should start kitting up.
Originally, I'd planned to do this trip with John, who only has single cylinders, but Caroline was keen to do the dives as full ADP dives, so I bought my twins along and borrowed a 70% stage from her for the deco stops, so that we were on the same mixes.
We dropped in after a couple of other diver pairings had gone in, but found two divers coming back up the line as we dropped down.
We followed the line down and found ourselves on the side of the hull.
The Venezuela is quite broken up now, but the hull outline was easy to follow and we initially swam forward.
The Wreck tour gives a good flavour of what we saw on the dive.
The vis was limited, but light wasn't terrible, so we could see 3M or so ahead and found it easy to navigate around, especially as we weren't in a great risk of swimming off the sides of the hull.
The wreck petered out at the bow, so we turned around and found ourselves at the two decent sized boilers.
Aft of those we were quite surprised to find two distinct engine blocks, usually wrecks this size only have one engine regardless of the number of boilers.
We swam aft and reached the end of the wreck, turning around and exploring the engines and boilers again, before swimming forward to the derelict bow and then I deployed my DSMB and we started our ascent.
A video from the Venezuela dive
We switched onto our rich mixture for deco and completed the stops as required before surfacing back into the sunshine.
The vis hadn't been great, but equally it wasn't awful and we'd both quite enjoyed diving on a wreck that we hadn't often been to (Sinbad commented that it wasn't a wreck that they often visit either).
It's certainly worth a dive.
We headed back into Swanage, which seemed to take longer than the trip out and chatted with a group of divers who were down for the weekend from near Stanstead airport.
After changing back into regular clothes, we headed over to Gee Whites where we grabbed some lunch and then an ice cream at the fantastic Forte's ice cream shop by the theatre.
When we returned to the pier we found Ria and Rohit had completed their morning drift dive and were having their lunch at the pier cafe. They were going to join us for the Kyarra dive.
We sat and chatted for a while and then changed back into our dry suits and collected our topped up cylinders for the next dive.
Our Kyarra dive was a bit late, ropes off at 16:15, and it took a while for Sinbad to successfully attach the large buoy to the smaller permanent shot line buoy.
There was no perceptible current running when we dropped in and we quickly reached the wreck.
Caroline turned left, heading towards the aft of the ship.
It's easy to forget just how big the Kyarra is, and to underestimate just how much there is to explore.
At 415ft and 6953 tons, you can swim end to end on a single dive, but you'll find something new on nearly every dive you do on her.
We headed aft, at one point I dropped into a section of overhead hull and passed along the starboard propshaft. Finally we reached the stern where we looked at the huge rudder posts that once held the rudder, although that is long gone.
At this point we started to detect the current picking up, pushing us towards the bow, so we turned and headed along the wreck.
For most of the time, the current was gentle enough that we could stop and examine things as we went, including two large cuttlefish resting under a plate, but visible through a porthole (The brass bit having long been pilfered by less enlightend divers).
One of the Cuttlefish on the Kyarra
We paused to look at one of the boilers and were starting to rack up some deco (I think I saw 8 minutes maximum, even with 70% nitrox to deco on) when I spotted something in an overhang.
Some years previously, I'd been with a couple of divers when one of them recovered a bolt of silk from the wreck. I've recounted the story many times and what I could see in the overhang looked very much like the item I'd seen him recover that day.
I reached in and pulled it out, wondering as I did if it was in fact some kind of case, but it turned out to be exactly what I thougt it was.
It was far too heavy for me to take it to the surface (that diver had used a lift bag to send it up), but I unwrapped a bit of it to get the video footage as a memento of my discovery and then left it atop the plate.
I could just make out Caroline ahead of me, rising up and looking around, seemingly looking for me, so I swam up after her and gave her fin a tug.
I could see she'd already deployed her DSMB, but as I reached her, she pointed at the real and I could see that the line was rapidly unreeling and then suddenly it was gone; reel, 50M of line and DSMB.
We had been ascending slowly all the time and continued to do so as I deployed my DSMB and we must have passed out of the worst of the current, because mine went up without any issues.
We continued to ascend, switching to our rich mix and decompressing at 6M before ascending and returning to the boat.
A video from the Kyarra dive
I'd really enjoyed the dive and was excited about my discovery of the silk as well as spotting the cuttlefish.
We hoped that Caroline's DSMB had been recovered to the boat, but it (and that of another diver) seemingly hadn't surfaced.
The skipper did motor back looking for it, but neither of the lost DSMBs were spotted and the feeling was that the reels, hanging on extremely long lines had snagged on something, preventing the DSMB from surfacing.
Another diver had recovered his lost DSMB and some line, but the reel was no longer attached to it, suggesting the theory was a fair one.
Ria and Rohit had enjoyed their dive, but Caroline was, understandably, unhappy about the loss of an expensive reel and DSMB.
Whether the delay putting us in had really made a difference is debatable, I guess we'll never be sure.
Overall, it had been (for me, at least) an enjoyable day of what one of the Stansead club described as 'grown up' diving.
I was scheduled to join a dive on HMS Swordfish, a submarine lost in WW2 off of the Isle of Wight on the 1st June, but sadly the condition prevented the dive going ahead, so my next diving was going to be training dives, back in Vobster.
Training dives
The week after the Kyarra and Venezuela dives, I was back to Vobster to carry out some Sports Diver training dives for some of our recently qualified Ocean Divers.
Some had had their first taste of diving in the sea on the first Swanage trip of the year, but some were still strictly freshwater divers.
As with those divers who progress straight from PADI Open Water to Advanced Open Water, with no experience in between, I remain somewhat skeptical about pushing people straight from Ocean Diver training to Sports Diver training, but, at least, with BSAC the training for the next level involves a lot more skills and takes a little longer (and demands a certain nummber of dives in different conditions).
On the day, it was just Konrad and myself training, with 6 students and I was assigned to James and Phil.
The first dive was SO3 for James and Phil
We dropped in in front of shop and swam out to boat buoy.
We then descended to the Jacquin II wreck, where we carried out distance line drills for both James and Phil, which they both managed with no issues.
Then we had a brief swim around, before returning to the Jacquin where we ascended the shot line, carrying out a 'simulated deco' stop at 6M for 3 minutes.
We encountered no problems on the dive, but it was surprisingly cold at 20M and Phil got through his air remarkably quickly, mostly, it seemed to being too heavily weighted.
As Phil had got through a lot of air on first dive, I decided to carry out the next lesson (SO4), with both compass and DSMB deployment drills, separately as I worried we wouldn't get through the drills for both before his air ran out.
James and I dropped in and did a surface navigation with the compass and then picked the wheelhouse buoy to carry out the underwater navigation via compass. getting close enough to see the shotline.
We descended onto the wheelhouse and then towards the helicopter, although I realised it was going to be too deep for the 20M limit of the dive and turned around and headed back, past the Jacquin wreck to the APC which we swam through and then returned to the wheelhouse roof, where we carried out the DSMB deployment drill.
I hoped to launch the DSMB with restricted air space, using a peg, but the peg disappeared and the DMSB filled, so we both ascended and the deflated the DSMB on the surface, before descending and getting James to repeat the drill, without any issues.
A good dive with all the drills successfully completed.
The final dive of the day was SO4 for Phil.
We did the surface navigation drill and then took a bearing for a second location and navigated underwater successfully.
Then we descended to the wheelhouse and had a short 20M dive, before returning to the wheelhouse where I deployed the DSMB.
Phil had his own DSMB (a club one), so I demonstrated the deployment and then he successfully deployed his.
We then ascended together and completed a safety stop at 6M.
With less weight this dive, Phil came out with a decent amount of gas, but I still think it was a good plan to split the lesson as there was a lot to cover for two divers on one.
Overall, a successful day, although the water was cold below 10M (18C on the surface, down to 8C at 15M) and the weather was pretty poor throughout the day, after two lovely weekends diving at Swanage.
My final dive of June 2026 was an unexpected one.
After the 35C heatwave, I felt I could do with a dip in some cool water and I visited Wraysbury for a bimble with Leanna, one of this year's Ocean Divers, but recently qualified as a Sports Diver and keen to increase her experience.
Air and surface temp was around 29C, so I wore little under my drysuit and felt reasonably comfortable in the shallows.
Even below 4M, the temperature dropped quite quickly, but was a quite tolerable 17C at worst.
Caroline suggested I let Leanna lead prior to her diving on the forthcoming trip to Lundy.
We set off from behind the shop and found the vis was still OK, away from the shallowist areas as we were one of the first divers in.
Leanna did a good job navigating and took us to the 'wreck site' where we swam around looking at all the various boats there.
We often see Pike or Carp here, but there were none to be seen here or elsewhere on the dive.
We swam around the lake for quite a time, before making our way back to the ramp behind the shop.
Both Leanna and I had over 100 Bar left, so she suggested we try and find the plane. I led, but we didn't find it, although we did find plenty of other things.
Our dive ended looking at the diving bell and then in the nearby shallows, where we found an inquisitive Perch, one of only 2 fish we saw on the whole dive.
We surfaced at exactly 1 hour, by the pier in the car park.
As we both had things to do later in the day and had had a long dive, we elected not to bother with a second one, but it had been an enjoyable bimble.
