Diving - The adventure continues!
2022 Diving - Further UK diving June/July
UPSAC training at Vobster
The next diving was another BSAC SE region training event for the students of Portsmouth University (UPSAC).
This time, we headed for Vobster Quay, to attain more depths for some of the exercises.
We started with a bit of compass navigation training, I worked with a young woman called Cherie.
We swam on the surface out to a buoy and then back to a point on the shore (picking a ladder in the school kitting up area). Then we dropped back down again a carried out a reciprocal bearing and returned to the shot line for the buoy (marking the car in the pit).
After that we swam onto a platform at 9M where John carried out a long and rather convoluted DSMB deployment exercise, starting with each of the 3 students demonstrating their ability to get a DSMB out of a bag...
It lasted 40 minutes, which was rather dull to watch and at the end of it none of the students had deployed a DSMB as they would from the sea bed, John insisting that they tie their reels down to the platform before deploying the DSMB...
Both Dawn and I found this a little strange, especially as the students were all SD trainees so almost certainly would have already deployed DSMBs during their OD training if not in later dives.
John's justification that they could tie off on a wreck to reduce the risk of ascent during deployment was fine, but you don't always deploy a DSMB from a convenient bit of wreck!
For the second dive, I went in with Julian and a couple of other trainees.
This was a straightforward skills review and dive leading exercise with a couple of the students.
Both completed the exercises on the 9m platform without problems and then the 4 of us swam across the pit and onto the road leading across the tunnel entrance to the top of the crushing works.
Here the students swapped leadership of the dive and continued through some concrete tubes to the plane and then around, back past the Ford Escort and to the exit slip area where we carried out a 3 minute safety stop.
Vis was decent, if not stellar, all day with realtively few divers midweek and the students were again glad to have got a lot of training signed off towards their Sports Diver qualifications, which they had been struggling to do within their club.
One thing I did benefit from the day was that I became convinced that my shoulder dump wasn't venting air properly as I ascended, so I stripped it down and washed it through with clean water and reassembled - Future dives would show if it made a difference.
Project Oyster dives
My next dives weren't with the club. Instead, I joined other BSAC divers on some Project Oyster dives on Wight Spirit, out of Lymington.
The project is ultimately aiming to reintroduce native Oysters into UK waters, where they can help with water quality. Initially, though, our objective was to spot and record Native Oysters on South Coast sites and we set off past the Needles to a wreck I've tried to dive a few times, the Clan Macvey.
Glorious day for diving
Whenever I'd tried to dive it with Swanage Boat Charters, the tides have always been against me, so I was keen to dive the wreck, as well as look for the Oysters.
As it turned out, neither my buddy, Jim, nor I spotted anything that looked like an Oyster, although we were thoroughly briefed before the dive by our onboard experts and others on the boat did see a number on the wreck!
The wreck is very flattened out, but we spotted a couple of Conger eels, a lobster and some crabs and spot a fair amount of time exploring the wreckage for any sign of Oysters.
Vis was pretty milky, but acceptable on a Spring tide.
We headed back to the Needles to dive a very interesting sounding wreck, SS Warknight, which lies in shallow water close to the Needles' south side.
Waiting to reboard Wight Spirit at the Warknight
It is an interesting wreck of a Steam turbine cargo shop, sunk in tragic circumstances (a collision with a tanker in the same convoy) in WW1.
Sadly, the vis was terrible, so although we never came off the wreck, it was difficult to navigate around it and neither of us saw the turbines.
We did, though, find a number of live and dead native Oysters, which was the main objective of the dive.
One to return to, though.
Oysters recorded!
After cleaning my shoulder dump valve, I was pleased to find that I had no unexpectedly floaty ascents or safety stops, so it seemed I had found and resolved the issue.
The RIB is back!
In the meantime, the club had tried to get the RIB fixed, but a trip that I couldn't attend had resulted in total engine failure again and no diving, but faulty ignition coils had been identified, replaced and the boat declared fit after a trial run, without divers.
We had an early start to dive White Nothe early and then to dive the Binnendijk wreck in the afternoon.
Andy and I had a rather disappointing dive on White Nothe, with milky vis limited to 3m or so.
We didn't see much life, mostly a few Blennie and Wrasse.
White Nothe life.
We did see one quite large fish, sitting on the seabed, but seemingly healthy, I believe it was a Gurnard.
It was an OK dive, but not up to the standard of previous dives on the site.
After a brief air fill and lunch, we headed out in increasingly choppy conditions to the Binnendijk.
The vis wasn't great, but good enough to find our way around and lots of life to be seen.
We were on the bow part with lots of lorry tyres and some, what looks like, outer hull.
Dive on the Binnendijk.
We saw numerous Conger Eels, crabs (both types) and a number of Lobsters, large and small.
There were also the usual collection of fish, Blennies, Pouting, etc.
It was an enjoyable, if not remarkable, dive.
Lundy Island - Diving with Seals
Ria had organised a trip to Lundy. It's quite expensive, as the run out from Ilfracombe is a long one, but the reward (we all hoped) would be some quality interaction with seals.
We'd been some years before, in terrible conditions, and seen a few seals, but not had the level of engagment that many other divers' videos recorded. Would the long journey be justifed by more time with the seals, this year? Only time would tell!
I drove down with Tim. He was staying in a shared apartment (very nice it was, too) with some others, while I was camping a few miles out of Ilfracombe.
The weather was glorious when we arrived and we had lunch and then went up to my campsite, where I setup my tent, and then returned to get access to the apartment, where I enjoyed a much needed cup of tea!
Home for the weekend.
Most of us had dinner in a cafe opposite the Ilfracombe theatre and then we returned to our various accommodation.
When I awoke Saturday morning, I found the campsite was in a cloud!
I headed down to Ilfracombe, dropping my kit on the harbourside and then parked my car near the BSAC club where we would be refilling our cylinders that evening.
The run out to Lundy was pretty calm and uneventful under overcast skies and we soon saw the seals on our arrival in a sheltered cove.
As was becoming fairly regular, I dived with Andy, and we ropped in and, as advised, surface swam towards a rocky outcrop with seals on.
The skipper advised that the seals would be more interested in us if they saw us on the surface first.
A couple of seals dropped into the water as we approached, so we descended and very quickly we were joined by the seals.
My video of the first of our Seal dives
We spent around 20 minutes here, constantly being joined by seals who played with us a bit, nibbling on our fins (especially Andy's translucent white ones) and then swimming away, either to return or be replaced by some other seals.
Seals love fins!
After that we swam along the wall of the inlet, heading south(ish) towards open water, again we were constantly buzzed by and joined by seals, every now and then our fins would get a tug and we'd turn around to find a seal nibbling on the fin.
We turned around after around 45 minutes and headed back (spotting a decent sized Lobster on the way) and then surfaced around the same spot we had submerged at.
A great hour underwater and an experience never to be forgotten.
After a break the skipper took us a little way out to a wreck site.
The Robert was a small cargo ship that sank in 1975 when its cargo shifted.
We dropped in and descended the shot to find a very intact wreck lying on its starboard side.
We were at the stern to start with and descended to the seabed.
There I spotted a hatch leading up/across from a companionway and light coming in from above.
I got Andy's attention and he swam up inside to take a look, then moving up.
We passed through a number of rooms/corridors (mostly filled with silt and showing no light) before reaching the port side where the light was entering from a number of holes, none of which looked large enough to exit through, so we turned around and descended back towards the seabed.
I spotted a doorway out a short way in, so exited through that, but Andy went all the way back down again and we regrouped there.
Our dive on the Robert
From there we swam along the seabed and found a large open hold, but with little of interest to see in it.
At the bow, we swam around up to the port side and swam along there, sptting a large crab hiding in a rusted hole.
Back at the stern, we spotted the rudder, but no propellor and the anchor chain heading into the seabed.
We headed back to Ilfracombe, but found the annual Birdman event prevented us bringing our cars to collect our cylinders, so we had to carry them all the way to the BSAC club, where the local club were very friendly and we had a beer and a chat with them, leaving our cylinders for a fill overnight, and then heading off to a pub for dinner, very close to my campsite (which was still in a cloud when I stopped off to change!).
The pub, the Crown Inn in West Down, turned out to be a great find by Dawn, with a table for all 10 of us, good food and drink and a nice atmosphere, where we shared our enjoyment of the dives and a few laughs over dinner and a drink.
Overnight the wind changed direction and around 3AM I awoke to wind and rain battering the side of my tent, my car no longer working as a windbreak. The tent was fine, but it was a less relaxing night than I'd had the one before and when I got up, I had to take my tent down in rain!
On arriving at the harbourside, we all wondered if it was going to be too rough to dive again, but the wind eased a little as we waited and collected our cylinders from the dive club.
In the end, we set off, but it was a bumpy, rather unenjoyable ride back to Lundy and I developed a headache on the way.
Once again, our first dive was in shallower water with some seals.
We moored in a small bay, one along from where we'd dived the previous day and repeated the exercise of a little surface swimming, followed by a descent.
We were told there was a wreck in this bay and, after some hunting, Andy found what definitely looked like a man-made structure in the kelp (with a large seal nestling under it!).
Once again, throughout the dive, we were repeatedly encountering seals, who found us very entertaining.
Inquisitive seals again found us very interesting!
I wasn't feeling too great after the crosssing, having developed a bit of a headache on the crossing (probably because I wore my drysuit, done up, for over 2 hours before getting in the water in a noisy, bumpy crossing - I didn't feel seasick, though), so Andy led us back across the bay to a wall, where we met lots of other seals and saw the jewel anenomes.
There is the wreck of the SS Salado here, but it's extremely broken up and covered in kelp, but Andy did locate a section, under which was resting a seal.
Eventually we turned back and headed along the wall, surfacing a little way inside the bay (We'd seemingly ventured a little out of it on the way out) and swam back to the boat.
Seals love fins!
Another enjoyable dive with the ever present seals, which I enjoyed in the moment, deciding not to take my GoPro on this dive, lasting nearly an hour.
Dawn had lost her GoPro on the Robert the previous day, but hoped to find it if we returned, but the rest of us fancied a different dive, so she and Julian dived the Robert again, failing to find the GoPro, unfortuately.
Once they were up, the rest of us dive The Pinnacles.
This was very like one of the Thilas in the Maldives, if less exotic, colourful and warm...
We descended fairly quickly to the bottom, where we saw a very large Lobster wandering around on the seabed. There were also plenty of large Wrasse and other fish around.
From there we worked our way up gradually, looking at various things along the way.
Andy managed to find a tiny Sea Hare (I'd only seen photos before and didn't realise how tiny they were!) as we got near the surface.
We completed a safety stop and popped our DSMB to surface - An interesting final dive, with plenty of things to see (if not stunningly exciting) for the weekend and a nice contrast to the shallow seal dives and the wrecks of dive one.
Ironically, the journey home, with Dolphin escort at times, was on fairly calm seas in pleasant sunshine and despite doubts about the Sat Nav's predicted 2h 45m journey time home, we achieved pretty much that exactly, adding to the pleasure of a well organised and highly successful trip.
10 very happy divers!
Overall, a really enjoyable weekend, despite the roughish weather.
