Diving - The adventure continues!
More 2020 diving - RHIB diving and Swanage Wreck Weekend
After the big adventure of the Arfon, my next few dives were more down to earth.
Over a couple of weekends, I dived off our club RHIB in the Portland area.
The first dive was a drift with Dawn, in Balaclava Bay on the 2nd August.
It was a rather murky, but fairly well lit, dive with the current picking up towards the end after a gentle start.
Lots of fish and crabs around and I spotted a very large Lobster living under a large rock.
The second dive that day was on what is often referred to in the club as "Mark's favourite wreck" - The Countess Of Erne.
The Countess is a small paddle steamer wreck, right by one of the openings in the Portland harbour wall and is one of those wrecks that is dived to death and frequently has awful visibility, having been stirred up by current coming into the harbour or novice divers dragging themselves through the silt.
As such, whilst I'm happy to dive it now and then, it's not a favourite of mine and I'm known to groan when it's suggested.
It's a wreck you can dive in poor conditions, often, as the wall protects it from Easterly winds, but on this day, they were Westerly and it was actually rather tricky to dive as the RHIB is pushed onto the wall as you try and pick up divers, even if they swim out.
Julian and Ria attempted to dive it first, but Ria had problems with her weighting and they were very quickly back on the surface and abandoned the dive. We got them back on board and headed back around to the outside of the wall, where Dawn and I kitted up to dive.
We dropped in and descended to shotline afixed to the large yellow metal marker buoy, but I was rather taken aback to find nothing but a crushed blue dinghy at the bottom of it!
Looking around we spotted the bow of the Countess looming over us and swam up and along the hull, skipping over onto the deck and then, finding the visibility manageable, if not remarkable, did some of the swim-throughs that are a feature of this easy to dive wreck.
We swam around, over and through the wreck for about 20 minutes, before reaching the bow again and taking the shot line back to the surface.
Back on the RHIB Dawn and I both agreed it had been a pleasant little dive, with some decent sized fish - Maybe the one time I'll dive it this year, but I was happy to have done so.
The following week, we did another drift dive in Balaclava Bay, heading north from Grove Point.
On this dive, Lewis carried out his SMB training, which went well enough until near the end of the dive when he indicated the SMB was stuck.
Diving with Dawn as a 3 on this dive, she lost track of us in somewhat murky conditions and surfaced alone, while Lewis and I had to swim back against the current to get to the SMB on the surface, it having caught around a mooring or Lobster Pot buoy.
After a quick lunch in Castletown, we headed out of the harbour, past the moored up cruise liners, including the Queen Mary 2 and another Cunard ship, in slightly choppy water, heading for the Blackhawk Bow wreck.
In good vis this is a lovely dive, but it was a little murky and, although we saw plenty of large fish around the initial part of the wreckage, we lost our way a bit and swam off it, just passing over sand after about 15 minutes. I indicated enough was enough after another 10 minutes and we surfaced.
A short video on the day's diving
On the way back, we stopped into a very busy Lulworth Cove, where Julian and Ollie waded ashore and returned with ice cream for us all, which was a nice way to follow up the dive.
I drove the RHIB back to Ferrybridge in much flatter conditions, passing closer to the cruise ships to take a look.
We finished the day with a beer at Billy Winters, the bar on the beach at Ferrybridge, and then headed home.
Swanage Wreck Weekend
This weekend, in mid August, was booked to coincide, as in previous years, with the final weekend of Swanage Lifeboat week, when bands play on the green above the pier with a BBQ and bar raising money for the Lifeboat.
It's a cause close to divers' hearts and has been an enjoyable weekend in previous years, although 2019's was blown out completely.
Sadly 2020's was pretty much destroyed by the COVID-19 pandemic, but 6 of us were still able to take up our boat booked with Swanage Boat Charters, who we always dive with at Swanage.
Due to an illness and change of plans, we were only 5 for the first dive of the weekend, a wreck called the "Baron Garioch", which is midway between Swanage and the Isle of Wight.
After a pleasant night's stay at "The Limes" and, for most of us, a first 'post-lockdown' trip to a pub for dinner, we started early leaving Swanage at 7:20AM.
I had booked us 4 wreck dives and this was the deepest at around 35M, just on the limit for some of the divers.
As there were 5 of us, I dived with Dawn and Ria, while Julian and Rohit dived together.
All the recent dives had meant that this also ended up marking my 500th logged dive, so I was quite pleased that it was a more interesting and challenging dive than, say, a drift off Portland.
The weather was murky, but there was little wind, so it was an easy ride out to the wreck site and calm as we kitted up.
Julian and Rohit dropped in first and the 3 of us followed.
It was quite dark, when we reached the bottom of the shot, but in our torch lights the visibility was quite clear, certainly in excess of 7 metres.
We landed amdiships, although it wasn't easy to tell, and headed aft, passing various parts of wreckage and coming to the steering gear that stood clear of the seabed.
Ria took a photo of me with a sign to commerate my 500th dive, but it's a bit blurry due to the darkness and then we headed on, only recognising the steering gear (and the aft of the ship) for what it was as we found no more wreckage.
We tried to get a shot of my 500th dive celebrations on the "Baron Garioch", but it was too dark
At this point, I turned us around, but we were all racking up some deco by now and so decided after a couple of minutes with no more wreckage in sight, to head up.
However, Ria seemed very unsettled and didn't seem to want to ascend - We got ourselves moving and reached 21M quite quickly, but then dropped down again - I wondered if she had lost buoyancy in her BCD, but it was to become clear what the problem was back on the boat.
We struggled to keep her at the 6M mark, as she sank regularly and we had to bring her back up, bouncing between 9 and 4 metres throughout our deco stop.
Eventually though she seemed more focussed and we all completed our stops and returned to the boat with air.
It turned out that she'd suffered an attack of vertigo, with Dawn and I appearing to spin around - It wasn't clear what caused it, but it seems possible that it was a symptom of nitrogen narcosis or 'narking' which can occur below 30M and manifest itself as euphoria (a bit like being drunk) or paranoia, but I'd never seen vertigo before.
We were more successful back on Vyper
We had a decent break, until 1:30PM, before the next dive, so we changed out of our drysuits and headed into town to get a cup of tea and a brunch.
We found a nice cafe in the centre of town, where we ate and drank for an hour or so and then Nicole, our 6th diver, joined us after we returned to the pier.
Our afternoon dive was to be the "SS Kyarra", undoubtedly Swanage's most famous wreck and often cited as the most dived wreck in UK waters.
Most of us had dived it in excellent conditions a few weeks previously and we were all hoping the vis would be good again and Bryan, our skipper, said he thought it would be.
We dived as two groups of 3, as Dawn and I had agreed that dealing with Ria's vertigo had been better with two people to help than just one - Fortunately, the symptoms didn't show themselves on any of the remaining, admittedly shallower, dives.
When we got to the bottom of the shot, the hull of the Kyarra was clearly visible and we all swam right, towards and alongside the bow.
Dawn and Ria explore the bow section
Windlass and anchor chain on Kyarra
For some reason, even in good conditions, I've never really grasped how huge the Kyarra is, but it was evident on this dive as we passed over one of the massive boilers, huge, deep box sections that, if we'd reached first, I would have been tempted to enter to explore a bit.
Part of the huge boiler
The ship, as ever, was alive with large shoals of fish and we all agreed it was one of the best UK dives we'd ever done.
Deco stop - This trip was unusual as most dives incurred some deco time
After our return, we had our cylinders refilled and waited for Bryan to return from another dive to load them back on the boat.
Then we headed back to our hotels for a much needed shower and relax before heading out for another pub dinner, chatting about the day's diving and looking forward to the next's.
Most people were so enthusiastic about the Kyarra that the idea of diving it again, instead of the Valentine Tanks I originally planned as the final dive, was raised.
The next morning I asked Bryan if it was practical and he confirmed it was with just a small change of ropes off time, so we all agreed to dive the Kyarra a second time that afternoon.
First dive, though, was the "Venezuela".
This is another wreck out towards the Isle of Wight, at around 30M, and one that I had dived before, but long ago and I recalled it being a nice wreck with lots of fish.
On this dive, I dived with Nicole, and our first job, as last pair in, was to send the shot weight back to surface on a lifting bag. It was a heavy shot and my first attempt on lifted it a couple of metres, but another burst of air from my spare regulator soon saw it heading for the surface.
The shot had been in alongside the engine and directly ahead of it were the twin steam boilers that powered it and we saw a couple of conger eels here.
All around the wreck and outside were the big shoals of fish I'd remembered.
I had got narked on this wreck before, but not this time and, although I'd enjoyed it last time, I wracked up a huge amount of deco. This time we explored the wreck, it being small enough to go around a couple of times before we clocked up a few minutes deco and started heading for the surface.
As we'd surfaced from the deco stop at 6M we could see heavy rain on the surface and, sure enough, we emerged into heavy rain.
Vyper awaits our return - Julian and Rhoit already back aboard
Back on the boat, everyone agreed that, while a little dark, it had been a nice wreck to dive, with the relative intactness and small size making it easy to navigate and understand.
With the Kyarra swapped back in in place of the tanks, we were heading out again at 1:30 for our final dive.
Meanwhile we'd had another brunch at the same cafe as Saturday and a bit of a rest after, as it was still raining.
The second dive on the Kyarra wasn't quite as clear as the first, but it was still an excellent dive.
Nicole and I headed towards the stern on this dive, swimming out onto the seabed where the mast and some wreckage was scattered and then returning up to the hull.
One section of fallen plate made a swim through and I spotted two small Congers swimming in here, something I've only ever seen on the Kyarra.
Deck bollards on SS Kyarra
We swam back, passing the steering gear, a part I recognised as I've seen it many times on murky dives, and then on and up and around the port propeller shaft, sadly lacking its propeller.
Steering gear is a section I recognise from many dives on Kyarra
Portholes bottom right, deck bottom left to top right, with hand rail and bollards above
Then we headed forward along the side of the shift, passing a section with portholes, hand rails and bollards that I recognised from a previous dive in excellent vis. We backed off a little here to really take in the shape of the ship, before moving on forward.
Large shoals of fish abounded on all the wrecks
We saw a section with tiles, part of the cargo apparently, that we'd seen on the first dive, before our deco started racking up and Nicole launched her DSMB and we headed back to the surface.
Large collection of tiles, probably cargo
Once again, everyone was delighted with the dive and raving about the sheer scale of the wreck - It really is a great wreck to dive in good conditions.
A final drink and a bit of cake in the sunshine to celebrate a great weekend's diving - L to R Rohit, Nicole, Julian, Me, Dawn, Ria
So, that was it, at last we'd had a Swanage 'Lifeboat week' weekend unhampered by poor weather and the diving had been so good that no-one minded that the entertainment had been cancelled.
