Diving - The adventure continues!

Diving Scapa Flow, September 2012

Read the first part of my diving experience in Scapa Flow

Kronprinz Wilhelm - 13/09/2012

The wreck on the excellent Scapa Flow Wrecks site

Adele had asked what I wanted to dive on my last day's diving and when she'd suggested the Kronprinz I jumped at the chance to see more of the Battleship (some of the other divers dived the nearby Markgraf, a sister ship, but it lies in water beyond my 30M and the shotline leads to the bottom, so I'll have to return to the other two battleships when I have completed my BSAC Sport Diver training or my PADI Deep Speciality).

We had an early start (8AM), as Andy proposed we stop for lunch at the Museum at the Naval base in Lyness.

We descended the shotline and swam into a swimthrough, past the huge turbines and along to the bow.

We then swam up to the hull side and back along towards the stern and then surfaced on a DSMB, which was a gentle affair compared to the one from the Tabarka as there was no current of note here!

We moved to Lyness, but by now it was pouring with rain and we hurried the not inconsiderable distance to the museum, but still got soaked.

The museum is in the old fuel pumping station for the Naval Yard, abandoned after WW2.

There's plenty to see in the museum (entrance is free, like most Museums up here), covering life at the Naval Station, life for civilians living with the Fleet, the Scuttling of the German Fleet in 1919, the Hampshire and Royal Oak disasters and the role Scapa Flow played in both world wars. Well worth a visit if you're here (I believe there's a ferry to Orkney Mainland too, if you're not diving).

Outside there are salvaged guns from the Karlsruhe and (I think) Dresden and a massive propellor and prop shaft from HMS Hampshire, which was illegally salvaged and seized.

We grabbed a bowl of hot, homemade soup in the cafe and then, thankfully in only light drizzle, made our way back to the Jean Elaine.

Karlsruhe - 13/09/2012

The wreck on the excellent Scapa Flow Wrecks site

The final dive of my first trip to Scapa Flow was also my 50th logged dive, whilst my guide Adele had completed her 500th the previous day, so quite an eventful couple of days for us both!

I'd set out to get to 50 dives by the end of this season as a personal target to encourage me to dive more and it was coincidence that it happened here, rather than carefully planned, but it was still rather good as I'll never forget my 50th dive, small landmark to most divers that it is.

The Karlsruhe is another cruiser, but of a different class to the Dresden and Coln and the Brummer, so there were different things to see.

It's only in 24M of water too, so vis is pretty good with better light.

We descended the shotline and landed pretty much on the starboard side 5.9" gun on the deck, just ahead of the bridge and conning tower. The gun's very intact, with the shielding around it and breech, still intact and not so encrusted as to be indistinct.

We then viewed the armoured control tower. We were able to look inside this one as the door was torn off during salvaging in the 30s and it gives an idea of how claustrophobic it must have been and how little you can actually see through the tiny vision slits.

We followed a swim through over the turbines to the stern, and swam off a little to take in the view, which was clear and very impressive. The teak decking planking is clearly visible on the stern.

We then swam back along the hull over the wreckage of the bridge and back to the shotline by the gun.

It was pouring with rain again, the first really bad weather we'd had, on return to Stromness and I got soaked through walking to Scapa Scuba's base at the old lifeboat station. I met Sara who I'd spoken to to arrange the trip and said goodbye to Adele, who had the next day off, so I was unlikely to see again.

I was glad to get back to my hotel, have a hot shower and change into some dry clothes, but a little sad to know I wouldn't be diving the next day. However with 60 MPH winds forecast it was questionable if the boats would be able to get out anyway, a rare occurence at Scapa Flow.

The rain eased off about 6, so I nipped back to the boat to collect my drysuit and undersuit and got them back without them getting soaking wet.

I ate in the Stromness Hotel's upstairs restaurant. It's not grand by some standards, but it is the grandest place in Stromness and I had a really excellent steak there for about £20. I was too full to manage a dessert

Orkney - 14/09/2012

When I awoke on Friday morning my first thought was "Damn, I left my boots on the boat!". My drysuit has socks rather than built in boots, so I wear boots over them and I'd left them under the benches in the 'warm room' on the boat.

I wandered down to the harbour after breakfast, but the Jean Elaine was out, so the good news was my fellow divers were getting to dive, the bad news, I had to wait to get my boots back.

I spent the morning buying some little gifts for the family and visited the Stromness Museum (unusually you pay for this one, but it wasn't a lot and you can return for a week, for that). It's not a huge museum, but, as well as covering the scuttling of the Fleet, it also features displays relating to Stromness' history as a base for the Hudson Bay Company (which I knew nothing about), some notable Stromness residents and ship building and whaling.

Upstairs is a rather Victorian collection of stuffed animals. It seems a bit sad these days, but is quite an impressive collection of, mostly, seabirds.

After that I wandered back to Scapa Scuba, with a view to buying myself a T-Shirt or Hoodie to commerate my visit, but, unusually, it was shut, so I wandered back to town and had a pot of tea in the cafe next to the Ferry pub.

As I came out, I noticed there were two green boats in the mooring our boat had used (the other boat was there earlier), so I wandered over and collected my boots. It seems, that, although they'd got one dive in, it was very rough out on the Flow and they'd abandoned plans to dive in the afternoon.

I checked in the Tourist Information on how I could get to the Neolithic village of Scara Brae and discovered there was regular bus, starting in Kirkwall that dropped you there and then returned 90 minutes later to take you onto the Ring of Brogdar and, briefly, the Standing Stones of Stenness.

I picked up the bus and toured Scara Brae, which is impressively intact for something 5000 years old. The houses clearly looked like a prototype Teletubbie land, but they were revealed in a storm in the late 19th century and later excavated and donated to Historic Scotland, who now have an impressive visitors centre, complete with a reconstruction of one of the houses which you can explore and a history of the site and information on what they know (and suspect) about the village and the people who lived there.

You follow a path from the visitor's centre to the site, a few hundred yards away, passing milestones marking events in history and it's quite eye-opening as you pass the construction of the pyramids and Stonehenge some way before you enter the Scara Brae site.

It was a very cold and windy day when I was there, but it wasn't raining, so I was able to explore the site to a fair degree. The guide book explaining quite well what all the buildings were and pointing out things of interest within each house.

After a look around and marvelling at the mountainous seas (and failing to get a photo that really did them justice), I made my way up to Skail House, in the grounds of which Scara Brae sits.

It's an interesting small stately home and well worth taking in, if you have time, on a visit to Scara Brae. My visit had to be fairly brief, but was enjoyable nonetheless.

After guzzling, quickly, a cup of coffee in the cafe, I reboarded the bus (with only two tours a day, the option was an expensive taxi ride back to Stromness) and we made our way to the Ring Of Brogdar.

This is an ancient stone circle. Impressive in its way, and in its setting above Loch of Harray, but it doesn't take long to see a ring of stones and a ditch, especially in a cold, damp, biting wind, so we were all soon back on the bus.

We stopped briefly too at the smaller Standing Stones of Steness. There are only a few stones here (most having been destroyed or removed over the centuries), but the remaining ones are a good 20 feet high and very impressive, especially as they're sited bewteen the two lochs.

The bus driver kindly dropped me just outside Kirkwall, which enabled me to catch the bus straight back to Stromness, rather than waiting a couple of hours in Kirkwall and, after a warming shower and some packing, I decided to give the Royal a second chance for dinner.

I had a great Beef and Dark Island Ale pie, which almost made up for the uncooked chicken burger on my first night.

Return - 15/09/2012

There was a very early start (6:30 taxi) back to Kirkwall and then a 3 hour wait at Aberdeen (I slept for an hour on the terminal benches and then watched a couple of videos I'd downloaded from iPlayer).

I go home about 3:30PM after uneventful and easy flight, courtesy of FlyBe.

Overall

Scapa Flow was a rather epheremal diving ambition for me, but I came away totally enthralled.

I think wreck diving in future is going to have a lot to live up to. The visibility was good on most dives and the sheer scale and variety of stuff to see and explore on the wrecks (even with a 30m limit) was overwhelming. I could have dived all week just on the Kronprinz Wilhelm and still have only seem a little of it.

Scapa Scuba provided a great guiding service, ensuring that I got the most out of each dive. It wasn't cheap, but it was good value.

One thing's for certain - I'll be back in Scapa Flow sometime.

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