My favourite!

And my favourite

Vobster did us proud putting up a new tent complete with a patio heater to keep everyone warm!

Silent Planet also brought a good stock of Halcyon gear for demo’s and try dives.

On the saturday night we had a talk from Phil Short about his cave diving which was absolutely superb. Had me crying with laughter and left me incredibly impressed with what he gets up to. It’s not DIR diving but it was fascinating.

We were due to dive 2 days but due to the weather this became just 1 day and we couldn’t get on the site that was planned. We ended up diving the wreck of the Alaska. One of the differences to our normal trips was the use of a deco station. This meant that on the way down we had to drop a pair of cookies on the line to the station. As we neared the bottom we then clipped on two strobes, one 5m off the bottom and one at the bottom. The Delta guys were running lines and we basically used their lines. With the 6m vis and the strobes we were happy we’d easily be able to find the bottom of the shot, that said it was pitch black at 63m.

The wreck itself was very broken up that is now heavily concreted into the seabed.  We had a good swim about and using the RB80 gave Clare and I plenty of bottom time. The wreck wasn’t the best of dives but as a second choice it was better than not diving.

We were the last to leave the bottom as we saw the guys cut the waster that secured the shotline to the wreck, we decided that was a clue to leave. Deco on the station was un-eventful, I can see the advantage of having everyone in the same place for the deco. However the extra hassle of setting up the station pre-dive and having to get back to the shot is a bit of a pain. It’s a trade off of course.

Overall worth doing – a good group of guys and I was seriously impressed by the amount of effort they put into the research and effort they put into the diving they do.

Diving day 1 was planned to be a run up the mainline, turning right at the deep T and heading on to hopefully find and mark the deep re-join. We got all the kit built and hauled down to the side of the water. I suited up and hauled it all into the river and positioned it so we could easily kit up in the water once wearing the RB’s. Unforunately it was then that issues started to crop up. First a stage reg was found to be leaking and had to be pulled out, taken apart and wound back. Next up we had a faulty HP hose, Clare again got out of the water and sorted it. At this point I am sweating like crazy, the DUI 450 undersuit, xerotherm base layers and dry gloves are cooking me even when in the river water. The air temperature is something like 35 degrees and the river water just wasn’t cool enough.

Thankfully we get it all sorted and then clip off 5 stages and a scooter each. We hit the trigger in the river and I’m looking forward to getting into the cooler cave water when Clare’s scooter packs in. We have to head back and in the end both have to dekit. Out comes the toolkit and the trigger lever had snapped. We fix it and are confident its resolved but then have to go through the labourous process of kitting up again. 2 hours from when we thought we were ready to kit up we get to the cave.

The water is wonderfully cool and the cave is as I remembered it. Vis is very good around 15m but we take it steady not quite trusting Clare’s scooter repair. We drop stages as we go – 100% at the entrance, 50% at 21m and 35/25 at 36m. By the time we are down to two AL80’s and a RB80 I’m almost feeling streamlined.

By the time we reach the deep T we are making slow progress and it’s taken longer than normal. Clare dials up the pitch on her scooter and we start motoring on the shallow path to the right. We head through the switchback and soon we reach, for me, a new part of the cave. The line deteriorates and I find a second line begins. Then a third! Then the line I had been on becomes monofilament fishing line. I’d heard the lines are bad but this wad quite something. The cave itself is great to see – lots of big passage with plenty of features in the limestone. We keep going and I keep an eye on the distance markers. We reach 1400m and I know we’ve overshot the deep re-join especially given the 60m depth we reached. I drop a cookie and we thumb the dive and begin exiting. On the way out I note a section where the cave looks like it continues but I’m not sure. Clare had a couple of issues with her scooter sticking on – not an issue in such a big cave but probably due to the repair just before the dive.

We’re back at the 36m bottle without any dramas and begin the long deco. We discount the entry into the cave but we are still in the water for 4 hours by the time we’ve finished the deco and ascended. We then had the hard slog of getting all the kit back to the car. I have to say I found my physical limit that day. By the time we’d got the 10 stages, 2 rebreathers and scooters up to the car and packed I was exhausted. I honestly don’t think I can manage more gear with just two of us in that heat with that length of dive.

We had a couple of days off diving to relax a bit and decide to have another go. We did decide to make some changes!

First – we would set off for the cave at 7am when it was nice and cool. We had stripped all the gear down and fixed it – Clare’s scooter’s relay had got slightly too sensitive and it took us a while to replicate the failure in the cave (it seemed fine on first inspection) and we can only presume that fixing the trigger shortened the cable by an infinitesimal amount which was on occasion then too short to power off. It was failing one in every twenty or so uses – but clearly that was too many so it needed attention and fine tuning.

Second – we would take the left hand fork for the deeper route in the cave and treat it as a thirds dive (well the RB80 equivalent). This means that we would simply press on until we hit gas – or hit the deep rejoin from the other direction. We were content that we could comfortably ID the route we had taken the day before should we reach that section – it was clear that my marker was much further down the line and we would not be seeing it again this trip.

Finally, we would limit bottom time. The almost four hour dive had been very punishing on us after a difficult set up and we were not up for that again in 10 degree water – not on this trip anyway. It needed to be fun.

And fun it was. No issues, everything working fine, we zipped round the deep circuit in around 45 minutes – about 20 minutes quicker than when Clare did it on OC a couple of years ago.

I was interested to see that the rejoin line was a piece of monofillament fishing line which was running up the side of the main tunnel on the opposite side of the tunnel to the two parallel mainlines (at that point in the cave). I was unsurprised that we had missed from the other way but both of us recognised exactly where we were – and were happy to press on and exit.

We got back to first deco cylinder and as the dive was much shorter we were out of the water 3 hours after we descended. We got all the gear back to the car and then chilled out for the rest of our time. Having some days off and not trying to max out your time is actually very sensible when the dives get very long.

As we left France we were already talking about heated vests and whether we could go a bit further….

Sunday was much better and we managed to get a dive on the wreck of the SS Athen. It’s a steampship which collided with the SS Thor in 1907 and subsequently sunk. It now rests in 56m and we had quite a nice dive. John Grogan shot the following video.

Sunday and first diving day beckoned. We were off to dive the wreck of what was believed to be the Leonatus. The Leonatus was torpedoed by UC 40 whilst on route from Loch Ewe to Lerwick with a cargo of coal on 12/12/1917. She now lies in two halves in 60m of water (52m to the deck) with a considerable amount of wreck left to explore. Clare and I were on our RB80’s and we were joined by Joe Hesketh who was OC. We worked out some suitable gas reserves and went diving. The wreck came into view at around 40m, the visbibility was stunning. We set off and found ourselves heading towards the stern. Reaching the enormous rudder and prop was a superb sight and we counted four blades -- answering a question which Hazel had wanted to know. The prop was big enough for us to swim through the blades. We start moving up the wreck with the aim of getting to the bow.

Clare is leading the way at the moment -- we knew the bell hadn’t been recovered from the wreck and Hazel had explained that there would have been two bells on a wreck of this size and one would have been by the anchor winch. As we get to that area I hearing Clare yelling in excitement (rather squeaking due to the helium we were breathing) and Joe and I move rapidly next to her. Clouds of silt are billowing up from the wreck as Clare pulls out a bell. Immediately both Clare and I turn to Joe and ask him if he has gas -- being on RB’s we knew we didn’t really have a time-limit but our OC buddy definitely did! He checks gas and gives us an ok. At this point we crack on -- I ask Joe to help retrieve my lift bag from my storage pak, which he does. Clare is busy freeing the bell and looking for attachment points. It’s clear that there isn’t an attachment point on the bell so I swim over the top of Clare and pull the mesh bag I know she’s carrying out of her pocket. We manage to get the bell into the bag and begin securing it with bolt snaps and the lift bag. I fill the lift bag but as my argon bottle starts to run out I ask Joe to step in. Clare secures a 4.5′ SMB as well and fills that as well. As that fills we see the bell lift off and begin it’s ride to the surface.

The three of us are all visibly really excited. We check gas, swim a metre or two away from the cloud of silt caused by extracting the bell and then thumb the dive. Back on the boat the whole group is buzzing with excitement. What a start to the week!

Day two was to be the Glen Isla. The 1263 ton steam ship Glen Isla foundered and sank following a collision with SS Glenelg. She was an iron cargo vessel built by W.B. Thompson, Dundee in 1878. We jumped in and found a quite well together wreck in excellent viz. Clare led and took the team under two of the decks towards the bow. Unfortunately I had a deep mix in the RB from the day before so was breathing a bottom stage through the RB. I also wanted both O2 and 50% on deco so I ended up with a 3 stage dive. Clare took just a 50% stage and it made us quite different in size!

A really nice dive -- we were able to cover it twice over. John and Andy were busy filming so we have some good footage of the wreck as well:

Day Three -- Gwladmena. his wreck was quite shallow -- no more than 40m but not quite as intact as the Glen Isla the day before. Photo opportunites abounded though as it was the one wreck this week that my camera would travel in on due to depth.

Again John and Andy did a great bit of video work:

Next up we tried to find a new wreck! Hazel had info that the Dovre was in a bay up to the north so complete with lots of scooters we set off with a mission to find a new wreck. It was a very shallow dive and my team never found it. Luckily John and Andy did.

Next big dive was my second favourite of the week -- Anglo Dane. This wreck had been hit amidships and had been blown in 1/2. We were diving on what remains of the stern. We went hunting around inside the wreck and found some fascinating parts of the engine room. The real difference to the south coast diving was the wrecks hadn’t been stripped so are much better to look at underwater.

Final dive of the week was on a fishing vessel called the Valkyrie. Hazel was very keen for us to find the bell of this wreck -- as of course the diveboat shares the same name. The wreck had some interesting history -- it had sunk in good weather very near a lighthouse in shallow water -- possibly not an accident? It was shallow enough to salvage but unfortunately as it was towed into deeper water it sank again and was this time was un-salvageable. We dropped down into fantastic vis. You really could make out the stern from the bow. Huge nets are draped over the wreck at the stern and bridge and it was quite hard work in places to wriggle past it and look for the bell. We searched the entire wreck and concluded no bell. That said it was a lovely dive and the spectacular vis made for a lovely dive.