I needed to get in shape for the CAIVNEDFest, (can you imagine the
embarrasment of being rusty in front of a boatful of NED's!), so this was
my inaugural effort at organising a dive weekend, for 12 members of the
uk.rec.scuba (UKRS) newsgroup ranging from AOW to trimix certified, day
boat diving out of Portland in Dorset.

Dive 1:  Chesil Beach.
12.8m for 19 mins, Nitrox 32.  Viz 1m.

Friday afternoon, Neil, Jeff and Janet are all here early for a shore dive
warmup.  The Portland Bill end of Chesil Beach seems to promise the easiest
entry and exit, but a sign in the carpark reads - paraphrased - 'Divers, we
don't like looking at your spotty bums here, so sod off somewhere else'.  A
little further down is a sign-free pub carpark, which at least means only
having to negotiate the seaward side of the steep bank of pebbles.

My config for the weekend is drysuit, Hog-rigged regs and wing on steel
backplate, 15l steel single of backgas and a brand new 7l aluminium stage
of bottom gas for redundancy (basically a damn big pony).  Neil is wearing
his new doubles for a weighting check, so between us, we must be a sight
for sore eyes as we stumble down to the shore.  Reasonable waves are
crunching in with some force, so we opt for a dignified 'put all your gear
on and kind of scrabble into the surf' entry.  Viz is soup onshore, but a
bit further out it improves to, oh a metre or so.

There is no way of keeping a four together in these conditions, so Neil and
I peel off and head offshore.  There is bugger all to see where we end up,
not even a single fish, but there is a small spider crab running about.
Hard to shake the impression that all the other life is flitting about two
metres away hidden in the milk, and laughing at us.  Jeff and Janet see two
fish, so maybe it was all hanging round them instead.

If we made a comedy act getting into the water, getting out really would
have had 'em rolling in the aisles.  Let us draw a delicate veil over the
inelegant beached whale exit techniques and language used struggling back
up the bank to the car park, and just say - "never again!"

This was Janet's first sea dive, all I can say is it really isn't always
like this...

Dive 2:  Aeolian Sky.
28.3m for 38 mins, Nitrox 32.  Viz 2m.

For the first dive of the weekend proper, we are on the hardboat 'Top
Gun'.  I billed this as a non-technical weekend, but onboard we have the
grand total of eight twinsets, one Inspiration CCR and just three divers on
singles (...and even then I have my stage...).  Offshore, when the shot is
dropped, there is clearly still a fair bit of current running, and it is a
bit of a fight to the buoy.

The viz is really not great, and it gets damn dark going down the
shotline.  When we hit the wreck at 25m, it is so dark I can barely even
see my computer, let alone read it - and stupidly I've left my little torch
on the boat thinking it wouldn't be any use.  I have to use the light from
Rich's canister torch.  On Nitrox over a hard bottom of 30m, I have no
immediate worries about no-stop time, but it is an extra little bit of
stress I can do without...  The 7l of bailout slung on my left is very
reassuring.

Eyes adjusting to the darkness a bit, we have landed in a vast splintered
heap of iron shards, an awful and terrifying 3D gothic labyrinth rising 10
metres off the sea bed.  To the sides and below is nothing but darkness,
above just a faint green glow.  Aeolian Sky was a huge boat - a container
ship, her wreck has bow and stern 'more or less' intact, but the shot has
landed in the very broken central hold section.  The murky viz means at no
point do I have the faintest idea what I am looking at, but it forces a
very intimate relationship with the old girl - threading through heavy iron
petals as they emerge from the dark.

Rich leads most of the dive, at one point I happen to glance up, and see a
black mass starting to cut off the faint light of the surface.  I stop - I
don't do overhead, and certainly not without a light, and try to tug Rich's
fins, but he is too far in and swims on into the darkness, obviously not
realising he is now inside the wreck without a guideline...  So now what do
I do???  All I can do is hang at the exit, and watch the glow of his torch
grow fainter, turn a corner and disappear.  If I had a light, at least I
could mark the way out (mental note - stupid, stupid, stupid!).  To my vast
relief, at this point, Rich hits his twins on the roof, realises where he
is and goes into reverse, reappearing out of the dark.

More twists and turns, bobs and weaves, another short episode of Rich
hareing off into a dark hole, and having a sequence of minor annoying
problems - mask flooding, fin straps coming undone.  After half an hour,
air no stop time has arrived - Rich bags up, and we climb slowly back into
the light.

Andy and Rob were first in, but somehow manage to be last out,
having 'accidentally' done 22 mins of deco.  Did I mention this was a non
technical trip?  Naughty naughty.  ;-)

Dive 3 - Countess of Erne.
14.3m for 48 mins, viz 1m.  Nitrox 36.

Ah, the good old Countess.  Viz isn't so bad when we first drop in, but two
other boatloads arrive while we are down there (obviously not the fault of
anyone from UKRS!) and I spend the last 20 mins able to see nothing more
than a tiny chunk of metal and the glow of Rich's fins.  That explains why
they make fins in yellow...  A courting couple of large Cuckoo Wrasse dance
round us for a while, and a Sea Scorpion lies in a hole in the rudder.

Every now and again we pass other UKRS buddy pairs, like buffalo moving
through a blizzard - Ken, recognisable by his Inspiration, once swam round
an entire Maldivian island in two and a half hours underwater.

Dive 4 - A shotline near the M2.
33.8m for 15 mins, Viz 4m.  Nitrox 32.

A very civilised 2.30 start on a calm and sunny day.  While we wait, Chris
and Sharon have a tinker with their new twinsets.  Their purchase of rubber
replacement knobs starts a bit of a snowball effect - this is now
officially the UKRS rubber knobs trip!

Rich and I are second in to the - almost blue - waters of Lyme Bay.  Under
the surface, conditions are a jump better than yesterday and light reaches
the very bottom of the shotline.  Which is lying on mud at 34 metres, no
submarine to see here, move along please.  It may have been possible to
search and find the sub, but this is my first UK dive below 30 metres, and
by we get to the bottom, 10 metres deeper than the 25 I have been promised,
exceeding the MOD of my mix in current, and with unfamiliar kit (a hired
canister light), stress starts to kick in.  I give Rich the 'up' signal,
and we head back up the line.  Halfway up, my head clears, and I feel like
a muppet.  We expect to see other people coming down the line to nowhere,
but Andy and Rob bagged up as soon as they got to the bottom, saving anyone
else the trip.

The shot is hauled in, Budgie gives it a second try - and misses.  A
grapple goes in, and this time seems to have hit something.  Take two...

Dive 5 - A shotline near the M2.
31.8m for 16 mins, viz 4m.  Nitrox 32.

We jump in intending to bounce the wreck, just to say we did.  By 25m, the
line is starting to level off, and by 30m is completely horizontal, moving
in a way that suggests it is quite a distance before it touches anything
solid.  I have a feeling of 'here we go again', and the willies come back.
I try to stop Rich, but he has the bit between his teeth and pulls off into
the distance.  With a full tank, or 5 metres shallower, or, or...  I might
have gone for it, but today it just don't feel right.  I start creeping
back up, looking back, and a couple of minutes later Rich's light
reappears, signals OK, followed by Rich.  Again my head quickly clears on
the way back up.  At least he got to touch the sub - it was a good distance
further down the line, apparently - and is very patient with getting to
spend approx. one minute on the wreck in two attempts.

Chris and Sharon are back on board quickly as well, after Chris sprang a
leak.  It's not just me having a bad day.

So I may have twice failed to get to the M2, but on reflection, it's been a
useful lesson on how narcosis gets me.  In perfect conditions below about
30m, I feel clearheaded but faintly anxious - prone to repetitively check
gauges and the like.  From experience here, as soon as real stress creeps
in this amplifies to become full blown heebie jeebies.  A good season of
diving less-than-30m stuff will give me the experience to come back.

Dive 6 - HMS Hood
15.5m for 42 min, viz 2m.  Nitrox 25 + 32.

After all the farce with the shot we are running late, Top Gun blasts back
to Portland at engine thrashing speeds, and we jump the fill queue to get
out to the Hood before dark.  Rich is keen to go inside this one, so I
buddy with Neil again.  It is hard to see the wreck at times with all the
life down there - the soft light of dusk must be hunting time, all the fish
are out, and the sea bed is crawling with hundreds of spider crabs.  Every
time we find a big one, there is a bigger one just round the corner.

I practice deploying my stage at the beginning of the ascent (does a gas
switch from 25 to 32 percent officially make this a technical dive? :-)),
we drift off the shotline and I fire a blob in midwater for the first time,
leading to some appalling buoyancy.  More practice needed there.  However I
feel a little better about managing to miss the M2 twice when I hear Al
failed to find the Hood...

Dive 7 - James Fennell.
15.5m for 45 mins, viz 3m.  Nitrox 32.

The last morning, dire weather warnings haven't materialised, but we are on
JBC, a perfectly pleasant but rather slow boat.  There was some talk of
getting out to the Sidon, but it will be a long trip in a slow boat, and
personally I fancy something a little shallower.  (It is a weakness of the
Portland area that there seems to be a bit of a gap between the beginner
sites and the 30-35m stuff).  In the end we opt for the James Fennell for
first dive, staying out for the second and getting back to shore for an
early end to the weekend.

In the lee of the bill, conditions are ideal, the JF has a small selection
of reasonably sized pieces of metal, including an intact boiler and one
rather nice teepee shaped chunk.  Jeff has come down with a headache, so
Janet comes in with Rich and me.  Plenty of good-sized Cuckoo Wrasse are
about, and I spot three lobsters.  Keith - obviously having lost Al - is
near us with a goodie bag, but none of the lobster are keen enough to jump
in the pot today, they are well dug in and damn those claws look sharp...

Out of nowhere, a tiny fish starts attacking my mask and I have a
brief "wha' the hellll..." moment, thinking I'm being savaged by a rogue
sardine.  Then the penny drops, followed by the (dead) fish, and I look
round at Rich who is sniggering quietly to himself.

I fire a blob, have another brief adventure in buoyancy, and we drift off
the Fennell looking for another, larger wreck downcurrent.  It wouldn't be
UKRS if I didn't have a leaky drysuit, I'm sopping wet and I can officially
add my name to the 'Weezles are fab' list after the job it did keeping me
tolerably comfortable in 11 degrees this weekend - but when Janet also
signals cold we give up and ascend.

Dive 8 - A cove on Portland Bill.
11.5m for 20 mins, viz 3m.  Nitrox 32.

I go in with Janet for the last dive of the weekend.  Going in for a
shallow reef dive with a stage attracts some wry comment, but it is all
good practice, innit!  The ali stage has worked perfectly underwater - it
is effectively invisible for buoyancy and trim, I just get on with the dive.

There is supposed to be a small wreck down here somewhere, but nobody finds
any metal, instead, large boulders throwing wreck-like shapes.  Winding
through the Kelp and weeds in surprisingly clear, bright water, it somehow
seems far too pretty for a UK dive.

And finally, to round off the weekend, on our way back the Portland dolphin
comes and plays in our wake.  We have done 49 descents and 49 ascents
between us over the weekend, the wind stayed down and viz could have been a
lot worse - I only hope everyone else has enjoyed it as much as I have. :-)

Dive profiles, and some pictures are at:
http://www.huwporter.com/scuba/ukrs0502.html
more pictures to come...

Bare directory indexes of other peoples pics from the weekend are at:
http://www.bubbling-under.com/images/ukrs_portmay02/
http://www.timewave.co.uk/scuba/
http://www.babilim.demon.co.uk/jpg/reports/may_2002/

And at the extreme other end of the diving scale, it is less than a month
to the Caymans... :-)

Cheers,
Huw
--
http://www.huwporter.com
"A wise diver will refrain from written descriptions of his experiences"
- William Beebe