Derek’s Dive Domain

OK, so that isn’t quite strictly true, but it is new to me…

I’m going back to the 29th June for these two dives, as I have been lax in writing them up.  I met up with a group of YDers at Stoney Cove, about 8 or 9 of us all told, to get a couple of daytime dives in.  We broke into two or three groups, and the first dive was in a loose group of 5 divers, namely myself, Chris (Prometheus), Jim Shaw, Dawn (Barnsley Crab), and Nick (Neeko).  I ended up as “leader” for the dives today, as I know the Stoney layout the best of the group, so after deciding on a rough plan of action, it was down to the ledge and then over and down the wall after checking everything was OK.  Landed on the Stanegarth anchor and followed the chain out to her, where we had a good few minutes pootling around the wreck, before heading over to the Wessex and the Commer van.  Its hard trying to keep an eye on 4 other divers, none of whom I had ever dived with before, but we managed OK as everyone was looking out for everyone else.  After looking at and swimming through the white van, we slowly ascended up the rock face there, and sat at the top doing our safety stop.   Well, everyone else sort of sat on the bottom, but I had to try and hold 4.9 metres to get the M1 doing its stop.  Thats the only annoying thing about that computer, every one that I dive with, their computers do the stops at 6m, and mine is 5m.  Anyway, stop duly completed, we decided to surface there, and surface swim back to the slipway.  Not quite sure why we didn’t go back to the slipway underwater, I think it was a case of no one was really that sure where they were, and were signalling up before I could point the way

Had a great surface interval with Chris digging out his guitar from his camper wagon, and much merriment and pratting about.  It was good to see Phil (Recurve) at the Cove, as he had come down to say hi.  Next time bring your gear with you!

We decided for the second dive to attempt to locate the Cessna on the far side of the Cove, after hearing how Harlequin had missed it earlier in the day.  We were now diving as a group of (I think) 8, so although diving together, we split into buddy pairs for this dive.  We dropped in and went down the road to 21 metres, and then swam in midwater to get to the far side of the pit area, where the bottom comes back up to about 22-23 metres.  Followed the edge of the cove around, until we came to a car/van which was looing decidedly worse for wear.  I was wondering why we hadn’t seen the Cessna at this point, until I realised that the Cove turns back on itself in that corner slightly, and I also remembered vaugely someone saying before the dive that there was “something” directly off the nose of the Cessna, only a few yards away.  Using this as a plan, I did a bit of Zen Navigation, and we swam straight up to the Cessna (Hurrah!)  One Hi5 with Neeko and a handshake with Jim later, we’re all having a good old nose around the light aircraft.

I was acutely aware that some of us would be getting a little low on gas, as it is a long old swim over to the Cessna, so signalled that we should set off, and gradually worked up the wall to about 12 metres on the way back.  We got about halfway back when a couple of the gang decided they needed to move up further, so we ascended up to roughly 5 or 6 metres for the remainder of the journey back (Note to self:  SLOW DOWN!  -  when I’m not sure on a dive, or when I’m aware of air particularly, I speed up badly, for me it doesn’t seem to increase my air consumption too much, and with Jetfins its fairly easy to do, but I need to remember that not everyone wants to dive that way.  Buddies - kick me!)

Came out at the bus stop, and after stowing all the kit away, we had a pleasant hour in the bar, before heading our separate ways.

Plenty of good came out of this impromptu dive meet at Stoney, as I got to dive with about half a dozen new people, and got to know about ten people that I had only spoken to online before, and Chris has since sorted out some diving which a few of us are going to do down at Swanage in August.

Thanks to everyone for the dives, a great day.

Dive Data:

Dive 1 (76) Max Depth 20.4 metres, Total dive time 36 minutes

Dive 2 (77) Max Depth 24.3 metres, Total dive time 41 minutes