Jason's Scuba Blog

2011 trips

jasonp

Yep, already booked them, they will be:

16/17th April, Weymouth, 35m max
4/5th June, Plymouth, 45m max
July 9/10th, Weymouth, 60m max
27-29th August, Weymouth, up to 45m but might throw in some 35m ones as we haven't done them in a while.

Weymouth trips are with Woody on RW Two. Plymouth trip is with Wrighty on Seeker.

2010 trips

jasonp

I've already booked my trips for 2010. Contact me if you're interested:

They trips are:
24/25 April Weymouth, RJRW, 35m
8/9 May, Plymouth, Seeker, 45m
5/6 June, Eastbourne, Our W, 50m
3/4 July, Weymouth, RJRW, 60m
28/29/30 Weymouth, RJRW, August, 45m

Not sure of the costs yet.

The Gripfast, July 4th

jasonp

Every year, I organise a deeper diving weekend in July ouy of Weymouth with Woody, and it's blown out practically every year. This morning, however, it was flat as a pancake as we sailed out of Weymouth harbour at 7.30am.

The plan was to do the Gripfast which isw in 50m due south of Portland Bill. We were onsite about 8.45 and after a few attempts at getting the shot in, in the water about 30 mins later.

The viz was great, around the 10m mark and I descended on a wreck that sits upright, about 5m proud in places, in about 50m on the LW slack.

There's a big boiler in the centre and what was obviously the spare prop right in front of it. Towards the bow, there's what's left of the other prop, though all but one blade appears to have sheared off. The rudder is no longer there, though you can clearly make out where it used to hang from.

A lot of the midships is quite collapsed and there are a few places you can stick your head in, but no real holes to get inside. The bows are intact and there's a big anchor hanging off the starboard side.

There were several lobsters on the wreck, but not huge amounts of fish, but that might be because the congers have eaten them all. I've never seen so many on one wreck. There must have been at least 25 and some of them were huge which heads almost as big as a human.

After 28 mins, I left the bottom and hit the surface at 70 mins. Deco was uneventful and the water ha finally warmed out. My computer was reading 15C when it only read 11C 4 weeks ago.

So I'm now looking forward to the Romsdalen tomorrow.

Plymouth 9/10th May

jasonp

I booked Wrighty for the third year in a row to do some diving out of Plymouth in the sub-45m region. I'd only managed to get an air fill as I'd turned up at the dive shop 15 mins before they closed, but I had carefully charged my torch only to leave it in the spare bedroom. Ooops. Still the drive down there was surprisingly quick and I had time for a couple of pints in the Boringdon Arms before closing time.

The original plan had been to do the Maine but the weather wasn't good and a slight cock up with twice compensating for BST meant that the Persier was a better bet. It's far less tidal and lies in about 30m and is pretty broken up. The boilers are still intact and there was an nice little swim through bit about 5 metres long. I was stuck by how rubbish air is as a diving gas. I've only been down there about 30 mins and I had 15 minutes of stops to do. Fortunately, I had a stage of 80% nitrox under my arm, so got to 9m, switched gas, pressed a button on my computer and it halved the deco. It was a nice dive and the viz was a respectable 8m or so.

For a second dive we did the Elk, which is really small. The viz was good but after 15 mins, I'd been round it twice so headed off in the vague hope I might find Elk Reef, though this seemed unlikely given I had no compass and didn't know what direction it was in. In the event, I found a dogfish, a welly and a lobster pot, which was all pretty exciting.

Saturday night was spent visiting the flesh pots of Turnchapel. Oh, OK, we went down the Boringdon Arms for dinner, which was nice and about as exciting as it gets there. The rebreather divers all told fascinating stories about how they'd almost died when some expensive bit of their kit failed. Us Open Circuit divers struggled to join in with stories of how we'd switched our kit on and it just worked.

Sunday morning, the wind had dropped and we were off on an 18 mile trip to the Orcis, just off Fowey in Cornwall. This was a new wreck for all of us, so we didn't know what to expect. The viz was nice, 12m, but there were big lumps of plankton in the shallows, about 4 inches long.

The wreck lies on sand, but just off a reef, so probably a nightmare to find without good numbers. The boiler was intact as was some rusty lump of metal that I was reliably informed was a Triple Expansion Engine afterwards. The bow stood up, the rest was kind of flat, especially the stern. I went round it once, then head off to the reef for a bit before bagging up. I got 43.8m on the wreck, the seabed was probably another metre or so.

Our second dive was the James Egan Layne which is a bit of an area classic. It's collapsed a lot since I first dived it, but there are still plenty of places to swim around it and the 6m viz was enough to find the broken off section at the stern, which is so covered in plumose anemones, it's probably the prettiest part of the wreck.

So a good weekend was had by all I think. Wrighty had installed new benches in the cabin with storage space underneath which no-one noticed. The stainless steel had more than a hint of LIDL shopping trolley about it. His new microwave was good though, as I was able to zap my Morrison chicken and mushroom slices. It was about the healthiest snack I could find in there, which might explain why so many of the customers were the size of a bus.

We'll be back next year. Needless to say, the person who booked, didn't pay and didn't turn up, will not be welcome.

Brighton, 4/5/09

jasonp

I'd booked to do the Pentrych 22m with Brighton Diver. Originally the plan had been to introduce someone to UK sea diving, but they'd pulled out, so I was on my own. I'd stayed overnight in Bognor and the sea looked quite calm first thing that morning. Driving to Brighton was a nightmare on Bank Holiday Monday. The roads were full of people who seemed to have all the time in the world.

Eventually, I got to Brighton Marina, avoiding the town centre and the demonstrations, and got my kit onboard. As we went out of the harbour, it was obvious the wind was picking up and the direction of the wreck meant we were smacking into it head on. So the skipper took the decision to do the Fortuna instead.

The Fortuna was built in 1913 in Amsterdam. After hitting a mine she sank in October 1916 while sailing from Rotterdam to Cardiff with a cargo of cement.

I was first down the shot and the viz wasn't great. It was 2-3m and there was a lot on plankton in the water. Still, it wasn't that dark down there. You didn't need a torch to read your instruments. I had naturally forgotten to charge mine, though had a my trusty LED backup to fall back on.

There were loads of bib on the wreck, a few wrasse and lots of blennies. The bags of cement are clearly visible in the middle. The bows are quite impressive with big plumose anemones hanging out in the currents.

My maximum depth was 28.9m. I'd got an air top on what was left from the previous weekend, so was more or less diving tyre gas. After 30 mins I left the bottom, did 6 mins compulsory stops on the way up, plus a few more voluntary ones.

Back on the surface and the second dive was canned as it was now blowing a force 5. I wasn't exactly upset. I probably wouldn't have got in for the second dive anyway, and it meant a few quid knocked off the price.

The water had warmed up slightly. It's now a balmy 11C. I'd bought some new 5mm Waterproof gloves which I was quite impressed with.

Weymouth 18/19th April

jasonp

I decided to book Woody and his boat RW Two for an early in the year trip. It was the first time he'd been out diving in 2009. The forecast looked good and so I headed down to Weymouth on the Friday night through the pouring rain. Ropes off was a slightly unsociable 8.15, but sadly I can't do anything about the tides.

It was a grey morning with a distinctly chilly wind as we set off around Portland Bill, but the sea was relatively calm. I'd chosen to dive the Landrail in Lyme Bay. There was plankton in the water at shallow depths, but on the bottom, in 35m, I was pleased to see that we had 5m viz and that I could read my gauges without the aid of a torch. Conditions had improved in the last two weeks. Sadly the water hadn't got much warmer. The computers said it was 9C.

It's a pretty wreck with lots of dead man's fingers and sponge life on it. There were some big pollack diving through the wreckage, a couple of lobster, tompot blennies everywere, shrimps, no less than four conger eels, a dogfish and a plaice.

5 minutes deco was quite enough for me as my head was getting cold as were my hands, so my total dive time was 39 minutes,

During the surface interval, the sea got a bit calmer, the sun came out and we headed back towards the Bill and the wreck of the James Fennel. It's pretty broken up, so the dive is more of a drift with some lumps of wreckage here and there. It was OK, but 30 mins was quite enough. Maximum depth was 14.5m and the viz wasn't quite so good, especially where a slight surge was disturbing the bottom sand.

The wind started to pick up in the evening and by midnight, it was quite strong and cold. I was particularly worried that some of the women in the pubs might succumb to hyperthermia.

Sunday morning and it was still a bit lumpy though the wind was dropping off all the time. By the time we got in just after 11, it wasn't too bad at all and when we were getting out at midday, the sea was slight and the sun had come out. It was a lovely day to be out on the water. Well, unless you were the one person who was chucking up over the side.

We did the Moidart. The shot was on the stern which is a little off the bow section but everyone managed to find both bits. Jumping in, the viz looked fantastic, something of the order of 20m, but at about 20m, there was this horrible brown layer. Viz on the wreck was still about 5m though, so not too bad. The Moidart is a nice wreck. There's a particularly lovely bit of the bow section you can swim through with dead man's fingers absolutely everywhere. The sea bed was just over 36m but it stands 8m proud in parts, particularly around the bow. Sadly, it's still really cold, so I only did 5 mins deco.

Back on board, everyone had got into the swing of the weekend and asked Woody for hot chocolate, soup, pasties etc and was met with the expected torrent of abuse.

The second dive was a scallop dive. We went back round the Bill and over to the Lulworth Banks. There were scallops everywhere. It was like shopping in Sainsburys and encouragingly there were loads of juvenile scallops about, which bodes well for future years.

So all in all, a cracking weekend's diving. I had some nice dives and as always on RW Two, a good laugh.

2009 trip dates announced

jasonp

I've already booked my dive trips for next year. I'm a glutton for punishment, so there's 4 in 2009, 3 in Weymouth, 1 in Plymouth. Depths range from 35m-60m.

Details are here.

A 5 dive weekend

jasonp

I'd planned to dive Saturday and Sunday out of Portland, and then heard of a dive going out of Poole on Friday night too. It seemed rude not to, so I headed down there for a 6pm ropes off at the quayside. It has to be said that driving into any town at 5.30 on a Friday evening is not the best idea, but I made it in time.

The boat was Beowulf. It's a very large aluminium catamaran with no less than 4 kitting up benches on it. And there were only 3 of us diving. The rest had paid and then not turned up for various reasons.

At 7.50, we jumped into the water on the Everleigh. It's a bit wreck lying in about 42m of water. I've dived it once before but this time the viz was much better at around 8m, though there wasn't that much light down there because the sun was quite low in the sky.

I found 3 big boilers and a large prop, which I'm not convinced was actually the main prop unless a lot of wreckage has collapsed backwards behind the stern, because it seemed too close to midships to me. The wreck was too large to get around in one visit, so the bows will have to wait until next time, possibly August.

I'd managed to rack up a fair amount of deco, so hanging around at 6m in 14C water for a while was a bit cold and boring. I later found out I had a bit of a leak in my suit which strangely didn't occur for the rest of the weekend. As I surfaced, after an hour's dive time, the sun was setting and the Brittany ferry was heading back into Poole.

Then it was back into Poole after what had been a good dive, probably the best one of the weekend. I then continued down to Portland and arrived at 11.30, just as everyone else was going to bed.

The next morning, we were up bright and early for ropes off at 9.30 on Scimitar. The first dive was a drift on the end of the Bill that's sometimes called Aerials. Smudge made some comment about how I would probably only be down 5 mins of a drift dive, so I did the complete hour, just to prove him wrong. It is one of the better drifts in the area. Or one of the few worth doing at all really.

2nd dive was the St Dunstan which I've done about a million times before, but is still an old favourite in 30m. It was a bucket dredger turned mine sweeper than managed to hit a mine. You can swim in around the boilers and the buckets, winches and various cogs make for an interesting dive. The viz was a bit rubbish. Probably about 4m.

Saturday night in Castletown is now like a morgue. I remember when the place was jumping, but it would seem no longer. This was probably a good thing as I had to be up, bright and early at 6.30 on Sunday.

The first dive was the Aeolian Skye, Germany's most recent contribution to the Weymouth diving scene. It's opened up a bit in the accommodation block area since I last dived it. Some bits have collapsed and you can now easily swim into more of it with light shining through from various sides in parts of the wreck that used to be dark and a lot tighter.

It was just about 30m in the scour and I bagged up on 42 mins and was out of the water on the hour. Then it was a 1:45 surface interval before jumping in for 25 mins at 20m, which was ample time to collect a bag of scallops. Yum.

So a good weekend, and the Met Office got the weather all wrong again, which was nice because they'd forecast it was going to be rubbish.

div

Belize Trip Report

jasonp

It's a bit on the short side, but then so was that trip, but I've done a trip report on my stay on Caye Caulker, Belize.

It can be found here.

Grenada trip report

jasonp

I've completed my Grenada trip report. I went there in September 2007 and dived wrecks including the Bianca C and some reefs.

Trip report available here.