DIR Diving Blog

July’s DIR-UK trip was a longer one than normal with 4 days of diving planned. The team list altered a fair bit over the course of the weekend. Those in for the lot – Clare, Andy K, Bob, Greg, John Kendall and me. Guests for various days included Brian, Fraser, Rich Walker.

Day 1 and we were off to dive the Merchant Royal. She was a 5000 ton British cargo steamer 400ft long and was built in 1920. On the 3rd July 1946 she collided with another vessel and sank. She settled in 54m of water and original was as shallow as 18m. Demolitions in the 1960’s reduced the height of the wreck. I was diving with Clare and we used 18/45 with stages of 50% and 100% along with scooters. Vis was pretty good at around 5m with some ambient light. We did a tour round spending quite a bit of time scootering around the holds and the remains of the superstructure. I found the scooter a bit of pain as it meant I had to concentrate a lot more on keeping track of Clare and navigating which meant less time spent looking at the wreck. All too soon we hit minimum gas and started our ascent which went to plan with no issues.

Day 2 and we were diving the Mystery sailing ship http://www.weymouthdiving.com/weychieftain/mysteryshipwreck.htm. Grahame told us about the wreck and how it’s identity had still yet to be discovered. He explained about the cargo found on it and how we should be looking for anything that would help identify the wreck. Filled with the thoughts of the sea uncovering something previously hidden myself, Clare and Fraser descended down the shot. The lights went out at about 40m and we descended into the blackness with the shotline guiding us down. We reach the wreck and find the shot just next to the coils of wire exactly as Grahame said it would be. The coils were about 4 foot in diameter at the base and narrower at the top. We moved off across the deck finding items scattered everywhere ranging from bottles, bands from barrels, grape shot/musketballs, copper tubing and pottery. We regularly paused to move the silt off objects and look for identifying marks. I found a half-burried plate and carefully moved the silt away. I could make out the Ashworth Ironstone Hanley hallmark. I couldn’t move enough of the gravel and silt away to pull the plate out so I left it in place. With the vis being easily 8m we often spotted the other teams also working there way across the wreck. We also found the aerial torpedo that we’d been warned about and steered clear! Towards the end of the dive we spotted a bell shaped object but on closer inspection it clearly wasn’t metal so we left it in place on the bottom. With 33 minutes of runtime we left the bottom and began our ascent. Back on the boat everyone was buzzing from the dive and quite a few had brought up some artefacts ranging from grape shot, bottles, buckles and a fork. Definitely one of the best dives I’ve ever done.

Day 3 and we were off to dive the Warrior II, weather was a bit grotty today but once again Grahame got us out to a good dive. The Warrior II was an expensive steam yacht which had been fitted out with no expense faired. It was sunk in World War 2 by German Aircraft and now lies in 56m of water. As we reached the wreck I did think it was fairly sparse until I realised I was actually on the deck! We moved off passed large pieces of wreck and fairly quickly found the two boilers. We moved past the boilers and kept going towards the rear, there started to be less to see so I turned to Fraser and asked him which way to which he replied he didn’t know despite having dived the wreck before. I turned us round and we set off to the bow. Everywhere we went we saw Congers, edible crabs and Lobsters. We reached the bow and I moved out in front of it to admire the view. With the vis it was possible to really see the size of the wreck. We turned round and spent some time over the anchor chains and gears at the front before making our way back along the wreck on the other side of the deck. We left for deco and had some amusement with the deep smb launch with a dropped but hastily recovered spool.

Day 4 and it was bad news – the weather was such that Grahame called it off. We separated out cylinders for Tech-2 and had an impromtu planning meeting in a cafe. Once sorted we set-off home after an excellent weekend.

Three dives today with Fraser at Vobster with three stages. We even did a bit of line laying on dive three. Definitely getting better at bottle handling for Tech-2.

Three days diving to break up going to work! I dived with Clare on Friday, Joe on saturday and both Clare and Fraser on sunday. Basically a lot of 3 stage dives with plenty of gas switching and bottle juggling. Joe had lots of tales of his two trips to Mexico and it was really great to chat to him about them all. Highlight though was his description of his cave class with Martyn Farr. It sounded very funny.

Overall a really good weekend.