Derek’s Dive Domain

Its New Years Eve, and we’ve arranged to meet up at Stoney for one last dive in 2006.  This is all Freeflow’s fault, and its pretty chilly, as I stand in the car park kitting up.  I’m waiting for Gareth to arrive, so that we can check out his weighting problems from the diver the previous week down in Brighton, and I found out when I arrived at the Cove that they are only open until 12pm today, but are still charging the full rate, the buggers.

Gareth arrives, and we rush around kitting up and get down to the water’s edge.  All we are doing on the first dip, is to get in, I will check my weighting, which I think is about right anyway, and then I will stay in the water whilst Gareth plays around with his weights.  I perform my check, and mine is about right, so I remove the extra kilo that I had put in as a precaution, and all is well. 

So Gareth starts to work on his weighting, and we have to add quite a bit, which is a surprise, as he is using the Xerotherm arctic under layer, instead of his old undersuit, which I thought might actually mean less weight, but the only thing I can think of is that there is now more airspace in the suit.  Anyway, we add some weight, and Gareth gets down to the 4 metre ledge, where we do some fin pivots and general buoyancy practice, until he is happy with his get up.  We both took about 60 bar in with us, and came out with about 30 bar, so this was a good test of buoyancy, and whilst Gareth was checking his kit, I was also able to practice a little hovering and buoyancy by “breath control”

Once finished, we get out, and head up to the car to change tanks and get straight back in for the main dive, as we do not have much time.  We get this done, and are back in the water after about 20-25 minutes, and after some faffing about on the surface, we drop down for our proper dive.  We head over to and down the drop off, pretty much landing on the Stanegarth anchor, so we follow the anchor chain over to the Stanegarth.  We have a fin around near to the bottom, whilst a group of students clear the deck level, then we rise up and go along the deck, and then into the passageway and into the wheelhouse.  I head out of the window, and indicate to Gareth that I intend to go through the hatch and down into the holds, if he is happy with it.  he indicates he is happy, so I turn, drop down and am just about to fin through the hatch into the hold, when I get a gentle bump on the head, and something drops down to my right hand side.  My first thought is how can something fall on my head, I’m under water, then I look over and see an integrated weight pouch.   Hmm, I don’t have any integrated weight, and it hit me on the head, and oh dear, Gareth was directly above me.  I look up, and he’s there, holding onto the wheelhouse window, half in and half out of the wheelhouse.  I indicate for him to stay there, as he has got the wheelhouse roof to stop him racing to the surface, and I retrieve his weigh pouch, and join him and try and put it back in place.  This proves very hard… I never realise integrated weight pouches were so hard to get in!  I am able though, to get it inside the zip pocket in the BCD, so its back in place, and near enough to the correct position, so we are able to continue the dive safely.  We go through the Stanegarth, coming out via the ladder at the stern, and then head over to the cliff wall, by the white van, where we do a nice slow controlled ascent, before having a little mooch around the six metre area.  I’m starting to feel cold now, so we head on out at the jetty, and return to the cars to dekit.  We check over Gareth’s integrated weight system, and cannot see any reason why it fell out, but it has happened a couple of times before, both times in very shallow water, so thats the final warning.  I think Gareth’s next purchase is going to be a Bowstone system

I enjoyed the dive, and my buoyancy is definitely improving.  I have put the pony cylinder back into the system, and I haven’t had to change my weighting to include it, whereas I used to add weight, so things are looking up.  I am looking forward to more dives like this one where I can practice my ascents.  Today I tried for the first time really to do a proper horizontal ascent, and it went quite well.  It definitely makes things easier, when it works.  Project for 2007, I think.

Dive 1 (weight check)  Max Depth 5.6 metres,  total dive time 13 mins

Dive 2 (119)  Max Depth 20.6 metres,  total dive time 41 mins

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

Every now and again, being a member of the Historical Diving Society throws up a chance to dive somewhere unusual.  These places have normally been rivers, docks and reservoirs, which can be quite interesting dives as they are not the sorts of places that you normally dive in scuba gear, and when you are diving in a Siebe Gorman 6 or 12 bolt hard hat it can be quite an experience.  On this particular day though, I got the chance to dive for the second time actually in the main show tank in the London Aquarium.  I did this way back in 2000, but have not managed to blag another dive there since, so I was particularly looking forward to this dive there.

After an uneventful coach journey down to London, and a 35 minute walk from Victoria coach station, over to the old City Hall buildings where the aquarium is housed (next to the London Eye) I arrived, and met up with the gang from the HDS.  After taking a couple of turns pumping the air down to the divers, it was my turn to get dressed into the gear

Once suitably attired and bolted into the suit by my tenders, it was on with the 12 bolt helmet, and once the faceplate was firmly in place, I had to negotiate the ladder to get into the main tank at the aquarium.  This is quite difficult with such heavy boots on, and the whole corselet and helmet is pressing into your collarbone and shoulder bones in the meantime.  Its definitely not the easy way to dive that we are all used to these days.  Once down the ladder I spent a pleasant few minutes bimbling around the tank, taking great care not to stamp on the bottom dwellers in the tank, and marvelling close up at the skillful gliding technique of the stingrays in the tank. 

After plodding around the tank a couple of times and waving at the public watching through the huge windows of the tank, it was back to the ladder and very slowly and carefully extract myself from the water and back to the waiting bench and tenders to be dekitted.

Its a great experience diving the old gear, and one that I can’t get enough of.  Mind you, I am not going to be able to use this dive as buoyancy practice, am I ? 

Its November 15th, and its time for another night dive in Stoney Cove, and another chance to practice getting used to night diving, something that I am decidedly short of experience on.  I head over to the Cove after work, and am diving with Freeflow again, so meet up in the car park, or in my case on the road between the car parks, and kit up.  Only one dive tonight due to time constraints, so we drop in at the newly reopened bus stop and over the edge by the cockpit, dropping onto and then following the road down to 22 metres.  After a brief look around the bits on the right of the road at 22 metres, where David chucks his rubber shark in the middle of a group of divers trying to get a photograph, and meeting with a slightly frosty response, we turn left and follow the drop off down to the pit along, and end up where the new cairn is being slowly built by passing divers.  After chucking a couple of rocks onto the new pile, we turn and head over to the coach and then over to the Stanegarth.  Instead of the normal tour of the Stanegarth, David heads around the stern, and out over the sandy bottom to the mini which is a little beyond the tug, and we mooch there, before returning towards the wall over by the Wessex.  My bearings are sometimes a little skewiff, and on this occasion I did not realise we were heading back to the Wessex via the Stanegarth, and I am so busy watching a pair of divers over to my right and trying to make out what they are flashing their torches at, that when I look back, I am about 3 inches and closing from the massive metal rudder of the Stanegarth!

One very large bruise avoided, but only just, we head over to the Wessex and come up the wall on an angle, looking for Crayfish and the like on the way, before finning around the Nautilus, disturbing some sleep fish on the way, before exiting and heading for the pub, as you do.

Dive Data:  (Dive 114) Max Depth 22 metres, total dive time 38 minutes.

OK, so it is the day after Halloween, but its a halloween dive anyway, and its a night dive at Stoney Cove with David Morris.  I arrive after work, and get kitted up and we are into the water by ten to seven.  The plan for this dive is to head down the road to 27 metres, where we got to the previous night dive, and then if all is well, to gradually head down towards the hydrobox, checking to see how I am doing as we go.  I have never dived down to the box before, and this will be increasing my UK depth as well, in addition to it being another night dive.  Its a good way to up my experience, anyway!

We get in and head down the road to 27 metres as planned.  Everything is OK, so we progress downwards to 29, then 30 metres.  After another check, David heads over towards where the hydrobox is, and although I am meant to be staying just above him, I go with him as I want to keep his fins in view, thanks :)  33 metres comes and goes, and then I see the box loom into view.  We head down to the base area of the box at 35 metres, and have a look around.  I see the gnomes on the tray underneath the box, which I didn’t even know where there.  I can feel the narks at this point, which I don’t think I have experienced before, probably caused by the increased anxiety of the dive, compared to deeper dives abroad etc, I can feel my thinking being a little fuzzy.  I am just about to signal that I want to ascend a little, when David motions to do exactly that, and begin the ascent back up.  I follow David up the line between the two hydroboxes, back to 27 metres, and then from there we head up the pipe/air shaft which breaks off at about 11 metres.  From there is it a case of a regular ascent onto the ledge and carrying out the safety stop before exiting at the bus stop.

I really enjoyed this dive, and gained some valuable experience which I can use in the future.  One thing I have found in recent dives that I really want to work on is ascending in the horizontal position rather than vertical.  When I come up vertically, all the air works it way up and then starts venting from the shoulder dump, making me negatively buoyant again, and then I have to work between finning and adding more air as I go to remain buoyant and continue ascending.  This means that I keep sort of stopping as I ascend, which isn’t really good for ascent rates, offgassing etc.  I knew this was going on, but David pointed out exactly what I am doing after this dive, so it is something else to work on soon.  This is the sort of thing that I want to learn on the Stoney dives though, so its good reason to keep doing them.

After a surface interval and a coffee, we drop back into the water for a short dive on the six metre ledge to use up the remaining air in our cylinders (might as well get full money’s worth!).  We have a good look around the nautilus and the blockhouse, and attach some plastic skeletons in various places around the ledge.  It is a halloween dive after all…  Then it is out and to the pub, before heading home to sort out the kit etc.

Dive 1 (112)  Max Depth 35.4 metres, total dive time 30 minutes

Dive 2 (113)  Max Depth 7.5 metres, total dive time 19 minutes.

Well, after going a whole eleven days without diving at Stoney, I end up back there after the weather takes a turn for the worse and we have a dive down south blown out.  Chris Adams joins me and we queue nice and early in order to get a decent space down at the cove.  We are planning a three dive day, so get started early, and as soon as the cylinders are full, we’re kitted up and get in at the jetty.  The first dive was a simple case of following the road down to 27 metres, before popping up over the wall to the upper hydrobox and around that area.  After having a look around there, we come back up the road to the ledge by the cockpit and have a bit of a wander around there.  Nice and simple.  Chris had taken his home made torch into the water to test it out, but it leaked, so it is back to the drawing board on that one. 
After a 90 minute interval spent drinking coffee and putting the world to rights, it was back in and down to 20 metres,  exploring the Stanegarth hold, and that side of the cove.  Chris always surprises me with how comfortable he is in the water, especially as he hasn’t done hundreds of dives, like many people who look that comfortable.  I always feel like I am floundering

The final dive of the day was s nice simple mooch around the ledge, looking for fish, crayfish and wildlife to observe.  I always find it very relaxing to just settle around the bottom, disturb a bit of the ebris on the bottom and watch the fish coming in to feed.  It is always quite good for this in the blockhouse under the pub.  It is one of those moments when you feel at one with the environment, and the wildlife isn’t frightened of humans, like most animals on land are these days.  I always enjoy these little dives.

So, diving over, it was time to get dekitted, put everything away, and adjourn to the pub for a quick half, before heading home.  Thanks to Chris for taking the trouble to drive up north when the diving down there was blown out.  Some diving is always better than none!

Dive 1 (109)  Max Depth 27.4 metres, total dive time 37 minutes

Dive 2 (110)  Max Depth 20.9 metres, total dive time 36 minutes

Dive 3 (111)  Max Depth 8.9 metres, total dive time 33 minutes

I’m home from the lovely warmth of Tenerife, and it is time to try and get back into the normal diving that is the UK.  So, I’ve arranged a dive with David Morris (Freeflow) at Stoney on a Wednesday evening, as I don’t really do many night dives, and I want to build up a little bit more experience in this area.

So I arrive at Stoney just after six o clock and get my cylinder filled.  So we kit up and drop in just before 7pm.  We go in from the main quayside and fin over to the road, and slowly make our way down there to 20 metres, having a quick passing look at the BOP on the way past.  David only gets lost once, and we stop briefly at 20 metres, before descending down to 25 metres so that I can have a look at some of the bits there.  Then it is back up the road and onto the ledge for a bit of a bimble around there, before exiting for a short break.  I’m usig my new computer on this dive, its the RGBM version of the Mares M1 that I had before, and I am using them both to compare them.  Reading wise they are identical, but the offgassing times are completely different, which shows how the new calculations work.  After an hour on the surface, its back in for a short 20 minute dive to use up the remainig gas in our tanks, and we drop straight over the edge and down the wall to the Wessex.  We scoot around the helicopter and over to the white van, and then we come up the wall there, looking for crayfish and sleeping fish etc.  We then have a quick look around the ledge before leaving the water. 
As usual its pack away the kit and into the bar time, before heading for home.

Dive 1 (107)  Max Depth 24.6m, dive time 31 mins

Dive 2 (108)  Max Depth 19.8m, dive time 20 mins

Well, the final days diving dawns, and we only have one dive planned for today, as we need to allow time after this before the flights the following afternoon.  We get down to the Orlando and collect the kit, and then head up the TF1 all the way around to Punta Prieta.  I remember this dive from the first trip to Tenerife, as it was my first ever proper deep dive, and I also remember almost measureing my length on the pebbly beach

We kit up and enter the water in the bay, over the pebbles, and it is quite lump on the surface, so we quickly drop down to the bottom in 3 metres.  We head out over what is to start with a very slow incline down, around some pots that have been laid out, and out into the sea.  We head around a headland and then descend a little more quickly down to 23-24 metres, then we drop over a wall, down into an area outside a cave at 30 metres.  From this area, the seabed slowly shelves away along the rocky wall, but we stop at around 33 metres, to look around some rocks and kelp type stuff, and we see two moray eels hanging around there, protecting their domain.  This is the best view I have had of morays, in their own habitat and made a nice picture if anyone was able to get one.  We had a look around the cave which had some nice plant life at the rear, and hovered and watched a very large shoal of fish moving around outside the cave.  It is a lovely little sheltered area around the cave, and I like diving there, now that I am more comfortable with the dives.  We then make our way back up the wall onto the gentle incline back to the beach, and slowly make our way back, stopping to take photos on the way, and to look at wildlife  hiding in the cracks in the rocks.  We carry out an extended safety stop at 5 metres, as the deco has pretty much disappeared from the computer (although Gareth’s come up with about 15 minutes at 5-3 metres, so I hang about with him at 3 metres while he clears it, before we both exit.  Thats it.  Thats my diving done for the week now, and as usual I’m sorry its all over, but we have another day to be social yet, so we head back to the Orlando for beer, and wash all out kit, and set it out in the 30′C sun to dry, so that we can pack it the following morning.  I do the paperwork for the Deep Specialty card, ready to send off, and then we go back to the hotel and start to pack the dive gear away.

Dive 12 (106) - Max Depth 33.1m, dive time 53 mins.

Finally it is down to the Blue Bossa for a final nights fun and beers and a really top social to end another fantastic week in Abades and Tenerife.  We (myself, Paul and Kirstie) flew back the following early afternoon, and by late evening I was home in Leicester, wondering if it really happenned..

I really can recommend Tenerife as a diving location, and with someone like Michael leading the dives you are guaranteed to see something, and even if you don’t the craic is great around the pool and the diving is nice and warm, we had 24′C water in early October, which is a little different to the UK, thats for sure.  Here’s to the next trip out there!

Another day, another dive.  Or two.   Todays diving was at Mar Azul and El Puertito.   Hurrah, more turtles!  We started the morning at Mar Azul, dropping in at the usual entry point, and slowly winding our way down over the rocks and over the drop off down to 29 metres, looking for Rays and other stuff, found pretty much everything except rays again..  Came back up the gradual slope, and under a beautiful rock archway, before turning and heading back up for a mooch around the little cove whilst doing safety stops etc.  Another nice dive in a lovely location.  The water is so clear and blue when the weather is nice here, and today it was like that again and the viz was superb as a result, 20 metres plus I would imagine.

After lunch, we moved on to El Puertito for another dive in the bay there with the turtles.  We slowly made out way out through the surge, out to the nature area, and we were greeted by one of the turtles almost immediately.  Unlike the two previous dives though, where the turtles swim around each of us in turn and then head off, this time the turtle decided to swim around us, and then just go and sit on the bottom looking at us.  Then it went over to Helen for some attention before heading over to me and pretty much sitting on my shouler like a parrot.  So i tickled its tummy - lol.  After this the turtle spent a few minutes sat on the bottom making mental contact with Paul and Conor whom it seemed most intrigued with.  It think its all the black kit :)  The turtle hung around for well over ten minutes in this spot, with us all just hanging there watching it, before it gracefully drifted off towards the surface for air.  A truly magical ten minutes, where I really felt that somehow I had “bonded” with nature for a few moments. 
As we made our way back, we saw a couple of other groups of divers heading out.  One group was clearly a tourist group like ourselves, so I hope they had a similar experience.  The other group was a group of trainees, being guided along a line.  I remember those days well!  I wasn’t too enamoured by the large leak from the instructors first stage though…

After another fantastic turtle dive it was back to the Orlando, for a drink or two, and some relaxation before heading over to the bowling alley for a few frames of bowling, and then to the Chinese all you can eat buffet for dinner.   Mmmm, I love it there!   Only one more day’s diving to detail now… I wish there were more

Dive 10 (104) - Max Depth 29.1m, dive time 54 mins

Dive 11 (105) - Max Depth 11.1m, dive time 62 mins

Oh it is such torture, writing about these dives and the holiday after the event, but not as much torture as having to endure them in the first place.  OK, so if you believe that, you will believe anything.  Today’s dives were pulling in the diving required for my Deep Dive specialty, so we spent the pre-dive social time learning some knots that we would need to tie underwater, down at 40 metres, as part of the narcosis demonstation etc.

We got the kit sorted out and piled into the minibus and travelled north up the island to Rad Azul.  After kitting up we stepped in at the beach, and descended down to 5 metres, and swam out past the harbour/marina entrance, and then down the long steep slope to 41 metres, where we did the drills.  We kneeled on the sand whilst we did the drills, tying the knots, and doing the egg in the water, and sending a bottle to the surface bits and pieces, and then we turned to head up the slope.  I don’t remember it being that steep, it seemed like about 45 degrees :)    Anyway, we head up and have a quick pause at the memorial at 38 metres.  I was glad of another chance to look at this properly as the last time I was here, I was nervous to say the least.  This time I am far more composed and had a look, and read the inscription on it, and then headed up.  We came up around some rock walls on the way back up, and with the current this morning, it was quite hard going.   Deco consisted of 7 minutes at 3 metres, which had reduced to 2@3 and a safety stop by the time we got up to that level.  Then out, and a break before moving about a quarter of a mile up the coast (which requires a drive of about 4 miles!) to do our second dive of the day, and the second Deep classification dive on the wreck at Tabaiba, which we had dived earlier in the week.

We did this dive without Michael as he had been struggling with a cold all week, and needed some time away from us (I am sure it was nothing to do with just needing some time away from us generally ).  We did basically the same dive as the first time, swimming out along the pipeline to the wreck and finnind around it before carrying out our planned trip through a passageway which starts at 24 metres and rises across the wreck, coming out at 18 metres.  Then we popped into the bridge, entering through one of the doors and exiting by a window.  Being inside the bridge, I had a moment of “giddiness” as I was swimming level, yet the boat was at a 45 degree angle, which caused me a little concern, but I just refocused, and the moment passed.  I decided to get outside the boat at that point though, just to be on the safe side!  Then it was back along the pipeline and up the harbour wall, before exiting back at the new entry point via the very handy steps.

Then it was the usual back to the hotel, and plenty of social gathering and mucking about.  Beers in the evening were at a fish restaurant in the net village along from Abades, where a friend of Michael and Rebecca’s had started up his own restaurant.  Much beer was consumed before heading back to Abades and bed.

Dive 8 (102)  Max Depth 41.6m, dive time 50 mins

Dive 9 (103)  Max Depth 30.2m, dive time 42 mins