4:30 am on Saturday found me heading via Bristol where I picked up Daz and then on my way to Plymouth to try out my new drysuit (report on that one in a bit).
E-aquanauts were doing an OHE course with Zak (EBT) ably assisted by Justin, visiting pain on three student, Daz, Neil and Sam. Al and I decided to go along to watch.
We were diving with Aquanauts - Brian A of this board - with Dougie acting as skipper.
Dive 1 and 2 were to be the Scylla. The Scylla is a wreck which was sunk on purpose to become an artificial reef. It is very barren still with not much life to be seen but is almost fully intact (apart from the handy holes in the sides) and makes for a good OHE environment.
Dive 1 - The Scylla
We took the Gavins in for their first outing in the sea.
The weighting was wrong, both were too light and not balanced, although I faired a little better with mine than Al did with his. Zipping up and down the wreck from bow to stern was cool though - we passed prharris (Paul) and his girlfriend (Kirstie) on the way We were using 80s as bottom stages so we would have full backgas to start a penetration dive later on.
I was using 5 mm gloves for the first time and hated them… couldn’t;t feel anything. After about 15 minutes, I reached back to dump some air from my wing and the string came off in my hand (Jonas - you know you asked when it would be OK to use the front dump - I think this was a good time )
The look on my face must have been classic. Bugger!
My first thought was to thumb the dive but then remembered that I did have another dump valve I could use and we carried on for a bit longer. Scootering past lots of likely looking holes I did wish that we had left the Gavins on the boat as we couldn’t dare tie them off outside with EBT and Daz around
Just in case I’d damaged the wing in any way, we found the shot line and came up with it in sight, but no problems.
Dive 2 - The Scylla again
After a quick repair on the boat (and a lot of tugging to try to ensure that I wouldn’t face the same issues again) we jumped back in without the scooters for a real explore of the wreck.
I know that the Scylla is not a “real” wreck and it does feel very sterile but it is so intact that even I recognised bits and bobs. I led us on a real tour of the inside of the wreck, swimming through the crew accommodation (over and around the bunks, through the engine room (the gear section) and round the corridors, lining off where necessary and taking a great deal of pleasure that wherever we went remained clear and silt free after we had passed by.
We had trouble avoiding the OHE course students - it felt like every time we tied off on the outside we went in and there they were - but the course had to take priority so we gave way happily. It was a long dive and when we finally thumbed it and switched to O2 at 6 I thought that I was shaking so much from the cold that Al would think I was toxing.
Dive 3 - the JEL
The skipper had split the boat as some wanted to do two Scylla dives and others wanted to do the JEL. Al and I couldn’t decide so did both!
Dropping down on the JEL after only 10 minutes or so on the boat I felt warmer than I had felt on the surface. Went poking about for congers but not many about.
We saw Bardo and his buddy swimming past and I saw that he had a new illuminated clear head on his cannister torch - it looked like the led’s on boy racer cars…. and then I realised his back up light was on. I asked him to hold whilst I turned it off…. Apparently he spent the next ten minutes of his dive wondering what nasty trick I had played on him…
There was not much life but we did some drills and mooched for 30 minutes until we got so cold we thumbed it. Hot sausage rolls on the boat
Good days diving!
Sunday
We were diving today with Venture, Skipper Pete, again organised by Aquanauts.
Dive 4
Dive 4 was to be the Maine which is a long trip out from Plymouth but by all accounts a good dive. Unfortunately when we got there Brian and the skipper decided that the vis looked pants and pulled the shot. (Interestingly their version of pants was two to three metres which Al and I have come to see as acceptable - they are clearly soft in Plymouth )
So we set off to the Persier - a very broken up wreck in 30 metres (How did I cry diving that on the 21/35 we had for the Maine dive - but then Brian saw us OK on that - good man)
Vis here was stunning - had to be in the region of 10 metres which just may account for the fact that this time I didn’t miss the boilers (they are the largest thing there!) Lots of congers, some crabs and loads of fish, particularly on the swim throughs, with a particularly friendly cuckoo wrasse which clearly took a shine to its reflection in my mask and would not bugger off!
It was amazing to dive in such good viz in the UK in February - the sun was out on the surface and ambient light was clearly evident at 30 metres. We saw Sam and Justin, and Brian and Graham on the dive. W didn’t see Daz who was diving with Zak but even taking water magnification into account this is understandable I suppose
When we called it after about 45 minutes we ascended to 21 and switched. Al then bagged up…. literally. He sent the bag up - without any line attached…. LOL! Cold fingers had meant that he had run the spool through the wrong loop which then came apart as the bag moved.
We started giggling and he started miming that he was ‘a bit below par’ in the universal sign language that we all seem to know and I got my bag out to send up. Feeling smug as I dive with my smaller bag preattached to a spool, I undid the bungy and dropped the spool
Bugger!
I sent the bag up anyway as we were in to deco and drifting. With 21 metres of line now above us and 10 metres below we had to sort it somehow (when we stopped laughing) I saw that we had two or three options, ascend and then pull up the spool at the surface; ascend and then cut the line at the surface or try to gather up the line in water.
I got a bit of a reputation in my training that I hate slack line and like to tidy it away but gathering it up without a spool seemed daft. So I got out my wetnotes and put a turn round the middle. As we ascended I wrapped the line round the right hand side of the notes. Whenever we leveled off I wrapped it round the other side until, when we hit 3 metres, the spool came up to join us once more
There was enough piss taking potential in that we lost the first bag so it seemed politic to avoid any more… All that was left was to untie the spool from the bag at the surface, shove the bound up wetnotes and spool into my pocket to hide the evidence and attach a spare spool to the bag so that we could hand up a nice tidy bag to the boat - so that was rule 6 satisfied then
What fun… only tempered by the fact that I lost my phone somewhere on the day
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