Derek’s Dive Domain

Well, as a post Christmas pudding dive, it was meant to be two dives out of Brighton Marina onto the wreck of the Pentrych.  All seemed great, the weather was clear and dry ,and the sea was an absolute millpond.  I have never seen the sea so flat, not even in summer.

So we load up onto Brighton Diver, with skipper Paul, and we head out of the marina, hard on the heels of another boat full of YDers, heading out to a further away, deeper wreck.  We spend a pleasant half an hour or so heading out to the wreck, and then kit up, and on the skippers mark, we hop off the boat and into the water.   The Pentrych is supposed to be one of the decent dives in the shallower, more inshore waters at Brighton and I am looking forward to the dive.  I’m diving with Gareth Jones (Spacehopper) again today, and there are 7 other divers on the boat, most of them YDers.

We set off down the shot, and it quickly becomes clear.  Or rather it doesn’t.  Its pea soup under the surface, the winds earlier in the week must have stirred everything up, I can barely see my hand in front of my face.  I head down the shotline, following the other pairs of divers who have gone down previous, with Gareth just behind me.  I get to 15 metres, so only 3 metres from the wreck, and I see Chris and Adrian (I think) heading back the other way.  They signal to me that they are canning the dive, and I’m thinking basically the same thing, as I have no idea of the layout of the wreck, and although I know it is a very basic wreck, I can’t stop Garf’’s warnings from his Markgraf report from coming into my head.  I look up to signal to Gareth whether he has any preference as to what he wants to do, and he’s not there.   Hmmm…. this isn’t good.   I knew he was a little underweighted, so I can only assume at this point that he has been unable to get down, as I know he was with me at about 11 metres, but all I can see if the fins of Chris and Adrian heading up the shot.  So I retrace my steps, and get up to six metres, and I can see Gareth still struggling trying to get down the shot.  I do the safety stop, albeit it not really require on a bounce of less than two minutes, but I do it to keep the computer fully happy, and the rejoin Gareth on the surface.  I’m right, he got so far down the shot, and then just couldn’t keep himself down, so has had to abandon and return to the surface.  We can the dive immediately, as its just not happenning.  We’re supposed to be enjoying this, not struggling to get down and to only see silt and our hands

So we get back on the dive boat, alongside Chris and Adrian.  Very soon another buddy pair bin the dive and return to the boat.  The non- YD pair and one other pair complete the full dive, and once we are all back on the boat we are sorted out with hot drinks, and cake.   I like this boat

After the surface interval for the guys who did the dive, we head back inshore, either to dive the Brighton Pier, or to do a drift dive on one of the ledges.  We decide to do the drift dive, and we kit up and get in, and following the skippers instructions, we drop straight down to the bottom at 11 metres, and sort ourselves out there.  This time we can actually see some stuff, with about 3 metres visibility, and we spend a pleasant 20 minutes or so bimbling along with the drift, seeing a nice sized lobster, and loads of starfish etc.  We deop off the ledge and lose the rocks, so drift along the sand for a couple of minutes, before Gareth gives me the up signal.  (We hadn’t bother to change out tanks after the aborted dive, so we had slightly less time for this dive), Gareth already has his SMB up from the drift, so we start to ascend.  We get to about 7 metres, and Gareth suddenly disappears upwards, obviously having trouble with his weighting again, and I am left in midwater, with no SMB.  I decide that not having done a midwater deployment before, and the not great viz, that I will drop back down to the bottom at 10 metres, and put up my own blob from there, which I do and ascend with no problems.  Back on the boat, Gareth confirms that it was a weighting problem which sent him up again.  This is a problem that will be resolved on our next dive at Stoney a few days later, but lesson learnt - don’t change your kit and then do boat dives!

Back to the marina, where we see the other YD guys just unloading their boat having just done the one longer deeper dive.  Then is it off the the bar for a couple of beers, before a pleasant walk around the arcade near to the marina, a quick look in the diving shop there, before returning to Gareths place for food, and then the long drive back to Leicester.

What should have been a great days diving, in flat seas, turned out to be a bit of a mess, but at least we got one dive in, and we have learnt more stuff to use in the future.

 Dive 1 (Aborted)  Max Depth 15.8 metres, total dive time 8 mins

Dive 2 (117)  Max Depth 11 metres, total dive time 30 mins