Archive for July, 2007

DIR-UK July 2007

Wednesday, July 25th, 2007

The July trip started off somewhat unfortunately with the team getting to the harbour to find we were missing a boat! This meant no diving on saturday so instead everyone mucked in to sort out the van of kit that had just arrived from France. John, Simon and Clare had spent some time cave diving and had more gear then you can shake a stick at. We helped them sort it out and then went over to breakwater dive centre.

Breakwater managed to sort out a boat for us and a smaller group of us ended up on a mixed boat going to dive the Salsette. I ended up diving with Clare and Andy Kerslake and had a fantastic dive doing lots of swim throughs.

The Grane – Weymouth

Saturday, July 14th, 2007

Dived the wreck of the Grane today using Dive Dorset. The Grane was a 1122 ton Norwegian collier, torpedoed by UB80 on 9 March 1918 and more broken up. It is sometimes referred to incorrectly as the Crane. It’s not often dived as it’s in the same place as the Salsette. We dropped down the shot line to find the shot in securely on one of the sides of the wreck at about 42m. I was diving with Joe Hesketh as a two as Fraser had dropped out at the last minute due to hayfever. We turned left and quickly came to the end of the wreck so turned around and made our way back the other direction. The wreck is pretty broken up in the middle and we were down at the seabed at 45m as we picked our way forward. We can across lots of pipework and the remains of an engine. As we reached the stern there was more upright pieces of wreck with the odd bit of monofilament line. We came across the most enormous lobster just out for a stroll and have a very funny helium “wow look at the size of that” conversation where we both sounded like chipmunks! We ended up doing another circuit round and having reached the both ends of the wreck twice I thumbed the dive. The ascent went to plan and we surfaced 68 minutes in the water.

Really good dive even if the vis was only 3m. Not the biggest wreck in the world but it gave us the time to have a good tour around it. It was absolutely covered in life – bass, bib, lobsters, conger and for me was an excellent Tech-1 level dive.

Swanage blown out – Vobster instead

Sunday, July 1st, 2007

My day out in Swanage was cancelled today due to the weather so I ended up going to Vobster with Clare, Fraser, Joe and Fiona. Dive 1 was with Fiona so we went for a tour round a few of the features followed by a couple of drills. Fiona then bagged up twice and we both reeled in to the surface.

Dive 2 was with Clare and Fraser and we went for a scooter around the quarry. I took two stages and have to say it was the most comfortable dive I’ve ever had on the scooter. Totally effortless. We skimmed over an amazing tanic layer that looked like we were flying above clouds. I had a try of the standard body and actually quite liked it! Once we were back at the start Frase got out due to a lack of  gas and I then strapped on 7 stages and the standard and gave it a go. Found it very hard work – no idea how Clare managed it for 30 mins, guess more practise is in order.