Diving - The adventure continues!
2020 Diving continued, after a fashion
The next couple of weekends saw us trying to get some of our trainee divers qualified.
With no access to pools or most inland sites since March, some of their final skills training had been on hold.
A couple of Ocean Diver trainees, Ben and Jack had 4 Open Water dives left to complete, which we'd normally have done at Vobster or NDAC due to getting a bit of depth and visibility being better, generally, than Wraysbury, but in the end we decided that it was Wraysbury or nothing.
We also had a PADI AOW diver, Tim, looking to complete his Drysuit training and progress towards Sports Diver, so he came along to dive with me, while Dawn and Julian took the OD trainees.
The visibility was on the poor side for Wraysbury, meaning it was zero in most parts.
I'm told the OD trainees did well and completed their drills without too many issues, although a few issues occured due to the terrible visibility.
Meanwhile Tim and I carried out some drysuit exercises (inversion-drill, etc) and just generally explored as best we could to get him used to a drysuit.
It went fairly well, we found the bus and the remains of the Triumph Spitfire, got to a container for some exercises and then worked our way in a sketchy zero-vis circle back to the bus where we saw a couple of big Carp resting in the front.
On the second dive, we entered via the pier in the car park, hoping vis was a bit better here. It was a bit, but it's all relative and was a couple of metres in a few spots at absolute best.
We started with a mask clearing exercise on a 5M platform, but Tim swallowed something (not sure how as, at that point, I was demonstrating the mask clearance) and bolted to the surface, coughing and spluttering, he also had a free-flow which wasted a chunk of air, maybe that was what happened, who knows...
After a few minutes resting on the surface we returned to the platform and successfully completed Alternate Source ascents with Tim acting as both donor and recipient.
We then headed towards the southern end of the lake as we'd been told the huge orange lifting bag down there was supporting the Boeing 737 cockpit section that had been resting in the car park for the previous year.
We had no real navigation issues and found the cockpit, explored it as best we could in 0.5M vis and then surfaced to discuss what to do next.
We decided, with Tim getting a little low on air, to head back underwater towards the pier and then attempt the mask clearance exercise again.
This we did, passing a few more of the items dropped into Wraysbury along the way.
The mask clearance went fine this time, boosting Tim's confidence and ending a successful, if rather murky day's training!
Binnendijk Wreck, Portland
The following weekend we decided to take the RHIB and do some more challenging diving.
Our target was the Binnendijk, a WW2 wreck that we had dived before, but was in easy reach of Portland (on the East side of the Bill, importantly, in Westerly winds) and sitting at nearly 30M.
I dived with Julian on this occassion with Dawn diving with Cameron and Paul Thompson doing the driving for the day.
As we descended it looked like it would be a dark, murky dive, but we landed squarely on the boiler and after a few minutes our eyes adjusted to the light and we actually ended up having a very enjoyable dive.
As well as the boiler there was plenty of other wreckage and cargo (notably lorry tyres), but it was the abundance of Lobsters and Conger Eels that made this an enjoyable dive, with especially large examples of both as well as many smaller ones and a pletheroa of fish all over the wreck.
We stayed long enough to incur a couple of minutes deco time, but conscious of the limited slack water, headed back to give Dawn and Cameron a fighting chance of a current free dive, which we managed.
After a break in Castletown, Dawn and Cameron did a very brisk drift dive along Portland Bill. Heading South we started to wonder if we'd see them shoot past the end, but they surfaced short of it by some distance,although both commented that it had been a very quick drift once the current picked up.
With the time getting late, Julian and I declined a second dive and we headed back to Ferrybridge for a beer and then headed home.
Diving with the Aldershot Dolphin
The weekend following that, we were back to dive in Portland again, but this time it was to hopefully get Jack signed off as an Ocean Diver and Tim some more open water experience and Sports Diver training completed.
The first dive was a fairly uneventful dive in Balaclava Bay.
Dawn and Julian took Jack in first and explored the 'park', after completing exercises.
Cameron, Tim and I then dropped into around 20M of water further down the Bill and swam (the current was so slight it was hardly a drift) around.
Initially, we drifted East, but this was taking us inexoriably deeper, so I swang us north as the dive continued to get us some more No Deco Time.
However, just as we reached the edge of a reef, Tim, who until then had been doing well, started to struggle to maintain his buoyancy (he might have started to use more gas, as we'd started to swim into a slight current or he may simply have put too much air in his suit as he was using it mainly for buoyancy on this dive at Cameron's suggestion - Not something I agree with, but there you go).
With a tuck roll, he managed to get back down to the seabed, where there was a particular abundance of sea life, notably 3 large Cuckoo Wrasse.
However, he indicated he was down to 50 Bar, so we immediately started to surface, but he again struggled with the safety stop and surfaced with it incomplete.
By the time were back on the boat he had just 20 Bar, but he was OK.
After lunch, we decided that a trip to the Black Hawk Bow was too far to go with it getting fairly late, so we decided a trip out to the often silty Countess of Erne wreck might be a good place to take new to the UK divers.
This was Jack's final qualifying dive and Dawn and Julian took him in first.
As we waited for them to surface something dark burst onto the surface. My instant thought was 'Wow! They came up quickly', but just as quickly I realised it was a Dolphin (quite probably the same one we'd seen for a few moments in Castletown harbour the previous week).
Within a couple of minutes it became apparent that it was returning to our divers on the shotline as they completed their safety stop.
As they surfaced, it was clear that it was rubbing past them, belly up. After a few more moments, it was pretty clear it was a male Dolphin and it wasn't just its belly it was rubbing against the divers! It seemed especially keen to rub itself against Dawn!
For about 10 minutes we struggled to get into a position where we could get the divers out of the water; partly because they showed little desire to get out, partly because we worried about running the prop with the Dolphin so close and partly because the Westerly wind kept pushing the boat back to the harbour wall.
Dawn, Julian and Jack with the dolphin
Eventually we got the 3 excited divers back aboard the RHIB, buzzing about the incredible experience of diving with (and being sexually harrassed by) a wild Dolphin.
As the 3 of us kitted up the Dolphin disappeared and we assumed he'd had enough of diving and headed off to hunt some fish or play with boats.
We descended the shotline and, as the others had finally mentioned, it was pretty cloudy with disturbed silt - Another club I'd spoken to in the boatyard had been there that morning and I'm sure other divers, too, throughout the day.
We gathered on the bow deck and then moved along it, losing sight of one or the other of us at some point, but managing to regroup.
Suddenly, I saw a dark shape sweep down and bounce of Tim to my left and immediately realised it was the Dolphin back.
Cameron was looking at something on the deck in the light of his torch, so I shook him to quickly get his attention, in case the Dolphin's visit was fleeting.
He saw it and for a moment, it seemed the Dolphin had gone, but it quickly returned following us around the wreck, rubbing itself against us, nuzzling my bright yellow fins and generally playing with us.
Tim, not unsurprisingly, struggled a bit to stay on the deck under the Dolphin's attentions and it seemed to delight in lifting him away from the wreck a number of times, but each time he found his way back down.
To be honest, the vis was pretty poor and with the Dolphin returning after a few minutes absent each time, it was pretty hard to do much exploring. We did a couple of swim throughs and reached the stern, before dropping down to the keel and swimming along the hull, but vis was even worse here, so we worked back up to the deck and arrived at the shotline just as Tim indicated he was at 60 Bar.
We completed our safety stop with our 4th Dolphin club member constantly jostling us and then struggled again to get back in the boat.
Dawn's video of us returning to the boat, with the dolphin
Of course, what would normally have been a rather disappointing dive on 'The Countess' had turned into one of the greatest dives I've ever done and for it to be Tim and Jack's second only UK sea dive was incredible!
Eventually, our friend disappeared from our wake as we headed back towards the boatyard, everyone excitedly chatting about a very rare encounter with a dolphin, right on our own diving doorstep!
So long and thanks for all the...errrr....
What a day!
If there was a disappointment, it was that, being a seemingly routine day's diving, no-one had an underwater camera with them as those images would surely have been treasured ones!
We were back in Portland the following Sunday, when Cameron, his daughter Lizzie, Geoff and I took the RHIB around Portland Bill with a view to dive the James Fennel or Gertrude wrecks (or both).
It was a fairly lumpy ride out that restricted our speed a bit, but once around the bill the going was smoother.
We planned to dive the Fennel first, but the skipper of local boat, Scimitar, warned us that there was a current running on it, so we changed our plan to dive the Gertrude.
This wreck runs up a slope from about 20M to 7 or 8 and my memory of diving it before was that there were a few plates and some flat pieces of machinery, so my expectations were pretty low.
Geoff and I dropped in first and were quite surprised to find a significant section of wreckage after a few minutes.
It stood 3 or 4M off the sea bed and soon became apparent that it was a whole section of hull, under which we could see, if not quite swim.
We swam around the back of this section and up the other side, finding a long section of intact hull right down to the keel, lodged amongst rocks.
Surprisingly, given how much wreckage there was, there was little life, a few fish, but no crabs, lobsters or congers were spotted.
Diving on the Gertrude
We swam up along the wreckage until we neared the 6M mark and then, with some gas remaining, back down to explore a little more, mainly along the other side of the hull.
Overall, we were both surprised by how much wreckage remained with the wreck being over 100 years old and resting right up against the cliffs of Portland Bill in shallow water.
Cameron and Lizzie had a very short dive as she couldn't equalise the pressure in her ears, so we headed back towards Castletown with the intention of filling our cylinders, but, when we arrived, we found the shop by the Aqua Hotel was closed!
Geoff then tore the wrist seal on his suit and we suggested that Lizzie and Cameron try her ears again on the shallow (and nearby) Countess of Erne.
We got out to the site quickly, but despite seeming to reach the wreck and start to move along it, they were up again within 10 minutes as Lizzie couldn't equalise between the bow and the deck.
As I still had 100 Bar in my 15L cylinder, I suggested to Cameron that he might like to stay in the water while I quickly kitted up and we had a short dive and this is what happened.
Geoff towed Cameron gently back to the wreck and I kitted up with Lizzie's help and then I dropped in and we descended onto the wreck.
Visibility wasn't good, but we could see enough to make our way around and do a few swim-throughs below deck.
We got to the stern and I had 60 Bar remaining, so we quickly returned to the bow and did a safety stop and I was back on the boat with 40 Bar remaining after a 20 minute dive, so at least Cameron could say he'd had a dive!
The journey home was marred by very heavy traffic, but it had been an enjoyable, if slightly fractured day, with the lack of air, slow running around the Bill and Lizzie's equalization issues.
Still, the sun had shone and I'd got a couple of dives in, so I wasn't complaining.
