Weymouth - 12th-13th July 2014

by Pat

Weymouth has been a regular fixture on the club calendar for many years and we had our first of this year’s two trips on 12^th-13^th July 2014, diving from the RW TWO ( www.rw-two.co.uk ), a large cat with plenty of room for twelve divers.

Woody the skipper was in good form as always and after finding out we wanted to do some different sites came up with a good programme for the weekend.

The weather was calm and sunny on both days, with a nice breeze on Sunday morning.

On Saturday we dived the Frogner in 36m, a large freighter that was a victim of WW1, broken up a bit but with plenty to explore and packed with life. We followed this up in the afternoon with the Gertrude in 18m off Chesil Cove which the club has not dived for many years. The Gertrude is a small wreck often thought of as a novice dive but the bonus is you can drift across several small wrecks in the cove in one dive scattered amongst the boulders. There is plenty of life including cuttlefish. 

On Sunday we did the Binnendijk at 27m in the morning with another boatful of divers on it. However, once you got out of the debris visibility wasn’t bad.  It is largely broken up but with some odd blocks of structures including the entire bow section and 2 large boilers.  In the afternoon it was a drift on Lulworth Banks to pick up a few scallops to go with the lobsters and crabs for those lucky enough catch them.

Overall a great weekend. Joe was lucky enough to find a torch in working order, unfortunately it was not one of the two lost by Chris but it was still nice! Next year we might need to check schedules though, as with the seafood festival on the quayside was packed with people - loading the cars was interesting.

Eastbourne – 28th June 2014

Diving from Eastbourne on the boat Our W, crewed by Dave and Sylvia, is something of a doddle. Parking is free, there’s easy access to the pontoon, and Our W has plenty of space and a compressor. Today’s very civilised load-in time of 9.45am, and good weather, made the day even more pleasant.

With 11 of us diving, we did what Dave referred to as “The Rio” (NB – see the internet for discussion about this large wreck’s identity) at about 12.30pm, reaching depths of around 27 metres. Lots of crabs and fish, including dozens of tompot blennies. Poor visibility (around 2 metres), but still plenty to see. Water temperature was 16 degrees C at its lowest. The second dive was the SS Roecliffe (previously identified as the SS Umba, again according to the internet).

We were all packed up and back on shore by 5pm. Some stopped for a post-dive drink at the Waterfront at Sovereign Harbour, others sped off to Brighton for further revelling.

Shoreham – 21st June 2014

2 dives today, from the boat Buccaneer. The second dive was "Little Trawler", a small upright wreck in 18 or 20m, which seemed like an ideal dive for Ocean Diver trainees.

Ken: “It was pleasant and lovely”.

Lee: “Very pleasant”.

Pat re: Little Trawler: “Thoroughly enjoyable dive, large enough to get out of the current, and shallow so plenty of time even for a novice”.

Bermondsey BSAC 42 committee meeting – 11th June 2014

Present: Pat, Ross, Ken, Victor

Matters agreed:

• To accept Maggie's kind offer of hosting the summer barbecue at her house.
• To send out the Chair's bulletin.

Lymington – 1st June 2014

After 2 dives in Swanage the day before, and a slow drive eastwards to Lymington, us divers were ready for the pub, and the Thomas Tripp PH proved perfect. Good grub, quiet room for diners, good beer etc.

The following morning 11 divers met at 10.30am in the Royal Lymington Yacht Club car park (£8 all-day parking, or free on the nearby streets to the west). Once the throng of sailing tykes had hauled their optimists into the water, we loaded Wight Spirit (skipper: Dave) and set off for the SS Mendi. Dave warned us about the visibility at that site, but we’d organised this trip around a visit to this particular wreck, and so wanted to stick to the plan. Some of us had read up on the tragic story of this wreck beforehand (see: http://www.wessexarch.co.uk/projects/marine/eh/ssmendi/index.php ). As this was a deeper dive (40m to the sea floor) than the club normally organises, we’d all logged detailed dive plans with today’s Dive Manager (Brett).

And yes, the viz was pretty awful at less than 1 metre. Going down the shot line, at 21 metres it was already stygian enough for Victor to can the dive. Others at least made it to the wreck for a respectful look around this war grave. Elaine and Brett saw congers, lobster and crab during a decent 29 minute dive. Frank and Alan unintentionally entered the wreck (easy to do in such bad viz) and after a sobering few minutes found their way out by following their bubbles. Ken and Ian went techy and did 57 minutes. Elaine brought up an edible crab which proved to be a little soft and had to be put back.

The second dive – the SS War Knight – was closer to the Isle of Wight shore. Visibility was very bad here, too, such that although all 10 of us reached the wreck, most returned to the surface with unloggable dive times of 6, 9, 12 and 14 minutes. Alan and Frank managed 38 minutes down there, and Brett – diving solo for most of his dive – did 46 minutes.

Opinions on this trip varied. The bad viz generated disappointment, with Ed saying it was the worst day dive he’d ever done (Ed’s been diving 28 years). There were, however, positives. The weather was OK. The trip gave newer divers a chance to do some proper gas planning and depth progression. Others said they would return to dive this wreck again in better viz. And thanks to thorough dive planning, nobody got bendy on the Mendi.

Swanage – 31st May 2014

To make a weekend of the 1-day Lymington trip, the club organised an optional Swanage add-on. 4 of us (Andy, Chris, Brett and Victor) signed up, doing the Valentine Tanks dive at midday and the Old Harry drift at 3pm. Both dives were from the boat Skua.

Arriving just before 10am meant there was no space for our vehicles on the pier, so we parked in the middle car park up the hill (paying £8 for the day), and carried our kit down.

Visibility was poor on both dives, but we saw a very large berried lobster on the Valentine Tanks, and 2 thornback rays on the incredibly fast drift dive.

Plymouth – 24th-26th May 2014

For the late May bank holiday weekend the club went to Plymouth for 3 days of diving with Mountbatten Dive Charter. Our skippers were Steve and Tony, with whom the club had dived back in 2011, and the boat was Explorer. As part of the all-in package, we stayed at the Mountbatten B&B (clean, good showers, good breakfasts), overflowing into the Lakeview B&B down the road. Fills were done at In Deep (very close to the Mountbatten Watersports Centre pontoon), where Brett had set up an account on Friday afternoon. Victor was Dive Manager.

Saturday

The 8.30am start suddenly became a tad rushed when we were informed that the ebbing tide meant the boat had to move off the pontoon pronto. All aboard (except Lee who was coming down that day, and Teresa who had got to Plymouth very late the night before), we set off, only to find Clive’s blue box was still ashore. Once this was retrieved, we were off to dive the Scylla, a frigate deliberately sunk for divers and scientists in 2004. 10 years on, it has a good coverage of plumose anemone and other life, and made a good first dive of this trip. Visibility wasn’t too bad at 6 metres. Depths of around 24 metres were reached, and the water was 13 degrees C. The second dive of the day was the wreck of the SS James Eagan Layne, a massive liberty ship where we found and photographed critters including a beautiful purple nudibranch (flabellina somethingsomething) and had similarly decent visibility. Some of the group had dived both these sites before, some hadn’t.

That evening we ate at the Glassblowing House, having pre-booked. Good grub. Most of us got there and back via the Mountbatten-Barbican ferry. 

 Sunday

A brisk wind limited the sites we could visit today, so – with Clive’s blue box definitely on board – we set off, and went with the skipper’s suggestion of doing Pier Cellars on the lee side of the Rame peninsula, close to the villages of Kingsand and Cawsand. This was a scenic dive with a fair amount of wildlife (very large jellyfish at the start, dogfish etc) and an interesting underwater landscape to depths of around 13 metres. No second dive today, due to a battery problem with the boat’s lift, which was fixed that evening. That afternoon most of us went to the National Marine Aquarium (some catching the dive show at 2pm, which was quite entertaining), eating on the way at Cap’n Jaspers. Later on, 10 of us went for a rather decent feed at the Boringdon Arms, where Clidive also happened to be meeting.

Monday

So we could finish reasonably early and avoid the worst of the bank holiday traffic, we chose to dive 2 sites not far out of Plymouth on the last day of this trip. Mewstone Ledges, another scenic dive, was our first destination, where a large cuckoo wrasse had an experimental nibble (or a brief suck, more like) on a diver’s wiggly finger. The second dive was the Glen Strathallen, a trawler whose engine is now on display at the Science Museum. We were informed that winter storms had exposed a lot more metal, and some of the group confirmed it was now a very different dive to the one they’d done a few years ago.

The journey home to London, although somewhat wet, was easy enough. Suggested car game for divers travelling back from the southwest: go through the A to Z of types of boats (we got stuck on Q, X and Z).