[neilh]

Wednesday
Bubble checks have been proving unwieldy on the shot and I figure there must be a better way to do it, so I put a call in to Rich Walker to see if he can give us some tips. Instead of one person holding the shot for reference and the other moving off and rotating he suggests both being on the shot, one above the other, with the top person checking the one below. The top person can then drop down the shot to change position and be checked. We gave this ago for the rest of the week and it worked a treat!

Dive #8 – the SMS Dresden (30.2M 48min)
Our deepest dive so far (and I think Moz’s deepest full stop) was on the light cruiser SMS Dresden. I’m not sure of the correct terminology here, but as she had the same name as her class of ships she had a large shield with an eagle painted on her bow. On our tour of the wreck we could make out a now rusting shield shape on the bow where this would have been. We swam around the bow area peering into holes and holds and saw the large capstans and anchor chains. The mast now lies on the seabed and we didn’t really make out much of the bridge area. We swam towards the aft section over part of the wreck that is very broken up, but our bottom time was over all too quickly and we had to send up the SMB before we got there. Definitely one I’d like to go back and explore again sometime.

Dive #9 – the SMS Karlsruhe (25.3M 61min)
This was another nice wreck to dive. It’s still relatively intact, lying on its starboard side, with plenty of holes and structure to peer into. We also found the two guns at the bow and spent some time looking around them and mentally comparing what we were looking at to the ones we’d seen at the museum in Lyness. We then swam aft exploring the deck area before sending up the SMBs after another nice dive.



Dive #10 – the F2 (16.8M 57min)
The F2 was a German WW2 escort vessel. Today the bow section is in reasonable condition lying on its port side, but beyond the bridge is pretty broken up. I’d had a look at the write up and picture in Rod McDonalds book the day before, so when we got to the bottom of the shot I took us off around the bow towards the deck. As we swam along the centre line of the deck I could see the gun materialise, pointing straight at me. I just had to stop and hover there, moving the torch around to take it all in. Cracking stuff!

In the meantime Moz dropped down towards the seabed and checked out underneath the gun. As he was doing that a conger stuck its head out from out of the gun and just stared at me. I flashed Moz and signalled for him to look at the gun and as he came up to see, the conger moved back inside the gun. I then realised that Moz was ascending right next to the end of the gun and would soon be eyeball-to-eyeball with the conger Fortunately he’d backed off a bit to have a look whilst I was trying to think what the signal for “you’re about to lose your nose mate” would be!

Back on the surface after an excellent dive and we discover that you can clip the small SMB off to the crotch D-ring on our harnesses and float about hands-free. It’s the little things that amuse us

As we arrived back into Stromness the YD Invincible rabble decided to congratulate the “virgins” on their trip so far. For now we’ll leave this as a “what happened next” photo!



In the pub later it’s good to meet up with the Invincible trip and put names to, ahem, faces!

We also spotted the Fourcault in the harbour as we arrived. We knew there were a couple of DIRx folk onboard (Hi Roel!), but sadly didn’t manage to meet up with them. It’s one hell of a liveaboard though!



Thursday
Dive #11 - Gobernador Bories (16.8M 64min)
The Gobernador Bories (or “Go Bananas”!) is one of the block ships in the Burra Sound. The rocky bottom around the wreck made for good vis for the whole dive, but that wasn’t a huge help because the ship is well broken up. Having said that it was a fun dive with lots of holes to peer into and explore and some areas to swim into and have a look around. There were plenty of sociable (or stupid according to Moz!) wrasse on this dive and more than a few decent sized lobsters using their claws to protect their eyes from the Salvo and Halcyon lightsabres

At one stage we came across a large upright structure with what looked like two pistons. Doing a bit of research since it looks like this was the connecting rods and engine. We didn’t see the boilers or stern, so we’ll have to revisit this one another day as well!

To while away the surface interval Helen broke out the rods for us to try to catch our own lunch. Jason was quickly off the mark, although he seemed to think he’d caught a Babel fish…



Catch of the day was definitely by Jo’s brother – not bad for his first attempt at fishing!



Helen soon had the oven fired up and we tucked into some of the finest and freshest fish and chips (See, it’s not all spidge!)

Dive #12 – SMS Koln (30.2M 50min)
This was probably one of my favourite wrecks from the week and again we only covered part of it. The SMS Koln lies on its starboard side and is remarkably intact. The size alone was pretty impressive, but the decent vis on this dive meant that as we swam along the centre line of the wreck from just aft of the bridge the torches could pick out plenty of the surrounding wreck. The structure, capstans and chains at the bow were impressive and we hung off the bow a little looking back to take in the sight. Following the port side of the bow we swam slightly below deck level looking for the large hole in the hull that Hazel had explained was the start of a really nice swim-thru. We came across a likely looking large hole, so I signalled Moz to hold and swam a short way in to check we could see an exit. Sure enough, like Hazel had promised, there was a series of large openings through the deck further back. I swam back to Moz to see if he fancied it and he did. The swim-thru is along the port side, I guess slightly below deck level and is fascinating. There is always a way out to the green either to the side of you or above you, but you get to see plenty of the internals of the wreck. As we came out of the swim-thru we had the lifeboat derricks arched overhead and just down below we could see one of the deck AA guns. Just below the gun is a torpedo tube, but we decided to carry on aft to see if we could get to the rudder instead. Sadly we didn’t make it that far before we had to send up the SMB. Damn, another one to put on the list to revisit!

Friday
Dive #13 – the SMS Kronprinz Wilhelm (32M 48min)
The Kronprinz Wilhelm is one of the three battleships in the flow and at 26,000 tons they are huge! All three turned turtle as they sank, so you have to descend to the bottom of the hull and then carry on descending “up” to the deck before you get to see anything other than the steel plate of the hull! You then have to head under the wreck with the deck above you to explore further, so these are not easy wrecks to dive.

The other two battleships, the SMS Konig and SMS Markgraf, are outside the range of recreational divers really, but the deck of the Kronprinz starts around 28M with the seabed at about 38M. As a result of the gas we were diving (32%) and our maximum working ppO2 of 1.4 we had a maximum depth of 34M, so we would not be able to fully explore the wreck but at least we could get beyond the deck rail!

It’s hard to describe what we saw and swam around on this dive simply because of the scale. This ship is big! We did see a number of hatches, mooring bollards, rails and decking and also a pretty large “small” gun! I’ve no idea which part of the wreck we were on (apart from being near the stern!), the size and the vis made it very difficult to picture what was in front of you. It was a great dive though, but I can see how you can easily get drawn into wanting to explore that little bit further, that little bit deeper. I’d love to go back and have a few dives on this – preferably on more suitable mix instead of 32%!

Back on Stormdrift and everyone was pretty animated about the dive. It’s now easy to appreciate the lure of the flow and why folk sign up for the “same” trip time after time! A nice long surface interval back in Lyness gave another opportunity to look at the exhibits and photos and to try to relate them to what we’d been diving all week.

Dive #14 – the F2 + YC21 Barge (16.5M 66min)
Back on Stormdrift after our first dive on the F2 Moz and I learnt that there were a couple of ropes attached to the F2, one of which leads to the barge nearby (the YC21) which sank whilst salvaging bits from the F2. It turned out that it would be feasible to cover both the barge and the F2 in one dive and, with the aid of the rope, would not be that hard to navigate between them. Happily our last dive of the trip was to be back to the F2, so we would get a chance to go and check out the barge.

We dropped down the shot to the F2 and set off aft following the hull until we reached the broken up area. We found the rope (which actually floats several metres above the seabed) and set off towards the barge. After a short swim we reached the barge and started to have a good look around. Dropping down into the “hold” we could see a couple of guns (presumably from the F2), one with two barrels pointing towards the surface. Exploring the hold further we came across a workbench with vice, an engine and various lockers. It also looked like it would be possible to swim a fair way through towards the bow – but it was looking a little tighter than I was comfortable with so I decided against trying it!

We dropped down to look at the bow of the barge and saw a large gun sticking out through the hull complete with resident crab. No surprise to find Jane’s strobe going off as she got some good shots! We headed round the bow back to the rope and back to the F2.

Once again we had a good tour around the F2 taking in the sights. It was getting quite crowded around the gun with a veritable gathering of virgins making the most of their last dive (some making more of it than others, eh Dave?!). Spotting Jason going past gave an opportunity to add a little friend to his BC to keep him company on his 100th dive. It wasn’t easy dropping down from above trying to add his new friend whilst avoiding giving the game away with the Salvo!

Back on the boat it seemed everyone’s dive had been a good one – particularly Dave squeezing 75 minutes out of his 15L, significantly longer than he’d managed for the rest of the week

Jason disappeared briefly only to appear in naught but a grass skirt and then throw himself from the bow of Stormdrift to celebrate dive #100. I’m not sure any of us will truly recover from that image. On the way back into Stromness he managed to find a garland or two and entertained the passing boats and Ferry with some traditional Hawaiian dances!



Saturday
Saturday was the long journey back. And it was still a long way in the other direction. Somehow we did manage to have an impromptu YD mini-gig at Perth services when we bumped into most of the Invincible guys again!

Final Thoughts
So, very well done if you’ve made it this far – I hope you’ve enjoyed at least some of it! Thinking back about the trip gives me a lot of fond memories. For me the DIR approach worked well for us and Moz was a great team member, buddy and friend! Our awareness improved greatly over the week and our ascents were relaxed, controlled and practically enjoyable (especially with a p-valve)!

Stormdrift, Hazel and Helen combined to make a cracking boat and made the trip hassle-free and great fun. Helen’s soup is great and Hazel is a top skipper! The only minor grumble I’d have about the boat is that the compressor could do with being a little faster as sometimes it took a while to sort out the fills – but that’s being really picky!

Hazel organised a fantastic trip in my opinion. The wrecks were all appropriate for the level of diving we were doing and were (almost) all excellent. (I wasn’t a huge fan of the coal barge!). I’m glad I went on the trip, glad I’ve been to Scapa and determined that I’ll be back!

There are a few photos included here, but although the vis improved through the week my limited photography skills meant I wasn’t getting many decent shots! I’ve added the ones I have to the gallery on YD.

…now time for a cup of tea!