Diving - My Continuing Adventures underwater
More UK Wrecks
I had expected my next dives to be at Swanage at the end of August, but events meant I was to get an unexpected weekend of wreck diving in before that.
Plymouth
The club runs a trip to Plymouth most years and I've been most times, but when it was decided that this year's trip would be in August, I decided I wasn't prepared to face the slow chug to Plymouth, down the A303, in the midsts of the school holidays.
However, a couple of days before the trip, Ria had to drop out due to a throat infection and was offering her place to anyone, free of charge.
I felt sorry for her, so we agreed to split the cost of the trip, so that at least she wasn't completely out of pocket and I decided to go.
To be honest, even as I said yes, I started to regret my decision. Would the drive be as truly awful as I expected?
As it turned out my decision to leave after dinner was a great one. We left my house around 6:45 and were in the hotel bar enjoying a beer by 10:30, 3 hours and 45 minutes, including a 20 minute break for Rohit to have something to eat at Exeter services!
We dived with In-Deep as we often do, but the Mount Batten accomodation (which was quite basic and very hot on our last visit) is undergoing (very slow) renovation, so for the last two years package diving with them includes a stay at the Leonardo Hotel in town and very comfortable it proved to be, too!
The downside is that you have to drive from the centre of Plymouth out to the Mount Batten marina. Added to which the boat now leaves from the Marina, meaning a bit of to-and-froing to get cylinders filled and back on the boat.
Panther was full with 12 divers on the Saturday and, if I'm honest, it's uncomfortably cramped with 12 divers with most on twinsets.
However, we had to make do and travelled out to Eddystone Lighthouse on a fairly calm sea under blue skies, although it clouded over later in the day, meaning it was never too hot in a drysuit.
Lovely weather for diving
I've dived the Eddystone once before and wasn't particularly impressed (The sighting of a Ling being the only noteworthy event).
Sadly the same could be said of this visit.
I found it quite exciting to be up close to the iconic lighthouse and the ruins of the earlier one, but the actual diving was pretty uneventful.
I dived with Dave, who was new to his twinsets, and we dropped in last.
Some video from the Eddystone dive
Vis was fairly good at 8M or so, but aside from a lot of Wrasse and a few Pollock, we didn't really see much to excite us on our 42 minute dive.
We initialled descended to 25M or so and then gradually worked our way back up the pinnacle, but it was very overgrown with kelp, so it was hard to spot any life that wasn't swimming above it.
I shalln't be rushing back to dive the Eddystone again.
We motored back to Whitsand Bay at a much reduced speed due to a problem with one of the engines, with the aim of diving HMS Scylla.
It was a nice day, the sea was fairly calm and we enjoyed a warm pasty for lunch and a post-dive cup of tea as we travelled.
However, when we arrived, another boat was just picking up their divers, which meant at least a 15 minute wait before the crew could shot the wreck for our dive.
We were offered the option to wait or motor over to the nearby James Eagan Lane, which we planned to dive the following day; simply swapping the two second dives around.
Most agreed the JEL was the better choice, but as we arrived a 'gin palace' parked itself over the wreck
They weren't even fishing, they were just sitting there but did, seemingly grudginly, agree to move when the skipper explained we were putting divers onto a wreck they'd randomly stopped over!
I'm sure the JEL was once an incredible dive and I have had a couple of really good dives on it, notably one where Dave Twyford and I swam the full length of the wreck, including the stern and back to the bow.
However, I'm never that enthusiastic about diving it these days. Perhaps because I've dived it on every trip to Plymouth I've been on or maybe because s may rave about it and yet it doesn't seem that different to many other UK wrecks now.
As Dave and I descended it was clear that, while not terrible, this wasn't going to have the kind of vis that dive had had.
However, we were rewarded almost instantly with the sight of a decent sized Cuttlefish.
We then moved on to the side of the hull, which had a section that was still reasonably intact, but I realised I was moving forward, so we dropped back down inside the wreck and started to swim aft.
On a good day you can see from one bulkhead frame to the next, giving the skeleton of the ship a real form, but today you couldn't see that far.
We came across what I think are pipes stacked high and also a lot of thick timber that looked quite like railway sleepers, although I guess they could have been part of the ship. I didn't recall seeing them before, but having done a good few dives on the wreck now, it's possible I have.
The James Eagan Lane dive
We also found, briefly, what I think was the engine, visible through a bulkhead, but I wasn't able to work my way back to it.
There was a lot of life on the wreck, especially fish (mostly Bib and Pollock, with some impressive looking Blennies).
At one point we dropped into one of the holds and looked through into the still covered part, although with limited gas and Dave's inexperience, we didn't venture in on this dive.
We reached what I think was the stern end of the main part of the wreck before starting to get low enough on gas to ascend.
A decent and enjoyable enough, if not remarkable dive on the James Eagan Lane to end our first day's diving.
It wasn't far back to harbour, so we changed out of our 'dampsuits' (I'm sure mine had a leak through both valves at this time) and unloaded our cylinders to take them back to the gas station for a fill ready to be collected the following morning for our second day's diving.
Having done that we headed back to the hotel, had a quick shower and headed down to The Ship on the Barbican where we had a couple of beers with the rest of our club divers and then headed over to an Indian restaurant that Rohit had booked and rated highly for the authenticity of the food.
I nearly ordered the much vaunted Thali, but in the end his enthusiasm for the Goat Curry swayed me. It wasn't bad, but the meat had a lot of bone on it and, if I'm honest, I found it a bit bland. I was disappointed and probably should have either had a Thali (which did look quite good) or a Jalfrezi which Bryn had and looked pretty good.
The next morning we had an early breakfast (I elected for a light one after the full English of the previous morning) and then checked out, drove over (with the speed limiter locked on 30MPH after getting TWO speeding tickets in Plymouth on a previous year's visit) to the Mount Batten Marina, picked up our refilled cylinders and loaded them onto the boat.
The engine still wasn't fixed, so we had agreed to dive the small Minesweeper, HMS Elk, instead of the Rosehill, to save time as our first dive.
The sea was almost totally flat, with just small ripples rather than actual waves and we were quickly past the breakwater and at the site of the Elk.
Beautifully calm sea on Sunday
As it turned out, this 'consolation prize' dive turned out to be a highlight of the trip! If I'm honest, although quite short, this was my favourite dive of the trip.
The crew struggled to put a grapple into the wreck (My view is that their grapples are too light and float away from the wreck on the descent, I'd seen exactly the same issue on our last visit) and ended up dropping a heavy shot weight, which fell a few yards west of the wreck.
As I descended, I could see it was on the seabed, but that there was a dark shape to my left - Checking my compass I confirmed the shape was east of me, as the skipper said the wreck would be if the shot wasn't on it and after a few find strokes, there was the unmistakeable shape of a small boat.
All of our other divers were already on the wreck, so after taking a quick look at a huge Conger nestling under some decking, I swam down along the starboard side of the boat, reaching a maximum depth of 31M, before swimming back up over the gunwhale to swim along inside the open wreck hull after passing most of the divers on the forward part.
The stern was impressive, with 8 or so Spiney Lobsters nestling up under the edge and waving their feeler around.
I dropped over the back and swam off a few metres, to get to a shot of the whole stern.
We then swam forward, dropping down below the deck level of the wreck to explore a bit more.
HMS Elk
At one point I disturbed a resting Cuttlefish by almost putting my hand on it, not having noticed it resting there, but it shot off unharmed.
We saw a lot more of the Spiney Lobsters, too and all around the boat were large shoals of fish.
Having circled the whole wreck, I suggested to Dave we surface to save some gas for the second dive of the day and he agreed.
I set off for a few minutes looking for the shot line, but as I couldn't quickly see it, I got Dave to deploy his DSMB.
He was fine reeling up until we reached the safety stop, where, as I've seen with him before, the task loading of hold a reel, monitoring his depth and controlling his buoyancy seemed to overwhelm him and he gently floated to the surface, seemingly powerless to do anything about it.
I completed my safety stop as I could see Dave above me and he'd given me an 'OK' signal.
When I surfaced, we signalled to the boat and reboarded it together.
The Elk had been a lovely dive (The video doesn't really do the light justice), which made its late inclusion seem like a bonus, although I'm sure we'd have enjoyed the Rosehill if we'd dived that.
The final dive was HMS Scylla. We had a cup of tea and a pasty while we off gassed from the relatively deep dive on the Elk and then the skipper put a shot onto the Scylla.
Leanna had gone home after the first day's diving and Dave's wife, Claire was planning to dive with us , but she had ascended from 15M or so without stopping on the Elk and, probably wisely, decided to skip the Scylla as a result.
Before we went in I asked Dave if he was happy to do some swim throughs on the wreck - This is where you enter the wreck, but can clearly see the exit across the ship. Due to its intentional sinking as a dive attraction and artificial reef, it has many such places where this is possible. He said he was happy to do so and I said I'd see what the vis and condition of the wreck looked like and decide if it looked safe.
We dropped in and descended the shot, finding ourselves, as predicted, just aft of the bridge.
Claire's video of divers dropping in on HMS Scylla
We swam forward and dropped into the bridge, entering from below and behind it, something that was totally impossible when I first dived the Scylla 14 years before; it's decay over those years is significant, but I think it's still a great dive.
As Dave had never dived it before (And his father had been involved in its launch!), I made this a bit of a 'greatest hits' tour.
After the bridge, we dropped onto the bow, passing the missile launchers and dropped over the bow, to see the anchor chain leading down to the seabed.
We then swam along the starboard side of the hull, before finding the first swim through.
The light was clear from the far side and there didn't seem to be much sediment disturbed inside, so we swam through, Dave seemingly comfortable as we did.
From there we swam on a little way and then did another swim through, this time passing through the one where you can look (or go) down to the engine room or up through the funnel opening.
We then swam further back and found another swim through, and another which led us out into the roofless hangar and onto the expanse of the after helicopter deck.
From there, I dropped down over the stern and we swam under it, seeing the rudders and propshafts that stand proud of the scour beneath the stern. It's always a little sobering to think how much ship is above you at this point, so we didn't linger!
Video from the Scylla dive
We swam up the side of the hull, by now getting towards the end of our gas, despite decanting gas into our twins between dives.
I swam up onto the top of the superstructure just forward of the hangar and tried to unclip my DSMB, but while I could reach and operate the clip, something was preventing the reel from detaching - I think it was somehow caught between the D-ring it was on, on my harness, and one on my cylinder, but, of course, back on the boat, it unclipped instantly.
I knelt on the deck, intending to ask Dave to try and unclip it, but looking around I couldn't see him!
He'd been there a moment before and vis was a good 6-8M. There was no way he could have gone down, we were in the middle of the top of superstructure and I couldn't see him above me anywhere. It was as if he'd vanished and Dave is no small man to disappear!
I felt quite stressed and spent more than the recommended minute looking around for him as I felt sure he must be close and I kept seeing divers and being convinced one of them must be him!
Eventually, though, I had to concede I'd no idea where he was so, still unable to release my DSMB, I swam over to the shotline that I'd noticed nearby while looking for him.
I thought maybe he'd lost sight of me somehow and seen the shot and gone up it, but he was nowhere in sight when I surfaced.
More worryingly, I couldn't see him on the dive boat either!
Eventually, though, as it came in to pick me up, I could see him sitting onboard, seemingly unworried.
He explained that he started to float up as we came to the top of the superstructure, but said he managed to stop himself at around 3M, before surfacing and reboarding the board, although he hadn't put up a DSMB.
He had dropped a kilo off his weight after the first dive of the trip and probably should have retained it as he cylinders were far emptier at the end of the second dive.
Those issues aside, though, we'd both enjoyed the dive and the whole weekend as it seemed most of the group had.
Happy divers once again!
We motored back to Plymouth, unloaded kit, returned borrowed cylinders and set off on the long drive home.
Despite the journey to Plymouth on a Friday often being bad, the journey back on a Sunday afternoon is usually fairly free and this proved to be the case this time, taking around 3 and a half hours, albeit without any stops.
So, in the end, I had an enjoyable weekend's diving in Plymouth, although I suspect I will skip it next year, unless some remarkable dives are on offer. Rohit and I discussed the possibility of having a 'twinset-only' trip and taking in some of the deeper wrecks, possibly as a second trip of the year.
