Diving - My Continuing Adventures underwater
The club RHIB returns
A bit of a break from diving followed.
Darren kindly agreed to tow the boat to Portland where we had decided to store in their Drystack, a kind of multistorey car park for boats, with a precarious looking fork lift raising and lowering boats.
The Drystack (courtesy of Google Streetview)
It's compelling to watch, but I assume it's much safer than it looks!
Test launching the boat
The weekend after that, I gathered 4 divers, Geoff, a very experienced diver, and 3 new to the sea divers, Rob, Adam and James, to do a bit of a trial run of the boat in the drystack.
We didn't really know how the process worked, so the day was going to be interesting.
I booked a launch for 9AM, but when Geoff and I arrived about then, the boat was still in its bay, 4 levels up.
Louise called to say that they had contacted her and what time were we arriving, so in the end the boat didn't get launched until around 9:30.
This wasn't a problem on the day as the others had been delayed en-route and we were only planning to dive in the harbour due to wind and people's experience levels, but was something we would need to consider on days when catching a slack tide was critical to diving wrecks out to sea.
Once the boat was down and in the sea, we quickly readied it for sea and set out.
The plan was to dive the Countess of Erne first, return to the Marina for a gas and food fill and they do one of the other wrecks on the harbour wall, probably the Spaniard.
The wind meant it was quite a bumpy crossing of the harbour, but when we reached the area where I thought we'd find the Countess's substantial buoy there was no sign of it.
Lovely weather at Portland, despite strongish winds
We dropped James and Adam in on a couple of buoys over what looked like a raised obstruction, but immediately Adam was squealing that he was wet! We took him back aboard and found that his silicone next seal was not properly fitted. Luckily we were able refit it properly without the correct tool and dropped him back in, but they reported nothing but Lobster pots.
We gave up, but as we re-crossed the harbour I started to think I may have gone to the wrong break in the harbour wall. It was only when we got home that Geoff mentioned that he thought that was the case, but didn't want to call me out on it! Not much help, really, as it would have been far better to have done so and found the wreck!
So, two people had been in, we'd fixed a leaking drysuit, but we'd found no wrecks.
Back at the Marina, we moored up where they'd indicated we should do and James and Adam got air fills, while the rest of us headed to the restaurant in the Marina complex.
Food isn't cheap there, but was quite good.
Geoff chatted to a woman on the next table and she said that vis on the Countess was much better than on the Spaniard the previous day, so we headed off to the correct break in the harbour wall and, sure enough, there was the buoy we'd expected!
I dropped Adam and James in again and there was no repeat of the drysuit dramas, so I told Rob and Geoff to get ready, so that, even if the others did return, we could ensure they had a dive.
It took Geoff, who hadn't dived with us on the RHIB for a while, some time to get kitted up, but the others were still underwater, so it was no problem.
I dropped them in and they both descended. I circled in the boat, keeping an eye on both sets of bubbles.
About 15 minutes later, I could see two divers on the buoy, but when I got there I was surprised to find it was Geoff and Rob. Apparently, Rob's weight belt had come loose and it was around his knees by the time he was alongside the boat. We managed to get the belt off without dropping it and got both of them back on the RHIB.
While this was happening, two DSMBs appeared together, some way off.
James and Adam's bubbles had tracked so far south that I assumed they'd come off the wreck, but when they got back aboard they confirmed they'd stayed on it, for the whole dive.
The second dive had, mostly, gone well, Rob's weight belt issue excepted, and we returned to the Marina, after I showed the others a few other sites along the harbour wall.
We returned to the harbour and after rinsing down what we could have of the boat on the water, we were able to depart and leave the returning of the boat to the drystack to the marina operators.
Overall, a successful day out, we learnt from taking the boat out and 3 new divers got their first experiences of diving from the RHIB and in the sea.
