Swashbuckling at Abbs

[Helen F H]

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek
I had forgotten I had said Keith and Laz could stay over. Ooops. Looks like this swashbuckling 1500 mile road trip for MND research is going to cost many pink passes for all involved – you have been warned!

So I had Keith and Laz over to stay, arriving late following a dive in Stoney, they planned a day shore diving (as no skippers would take just two out to the Farnes) and then up to abbs and then off to Crappers…….

All good plans. Pity it didn’t quite happen like that!

Both of the boys arrived safe and well, and we were quickly off to the pub for a swift half. Shore diving was explained (and despite this I got a text the next day asking where I had told them to go!) and off I went to Shrewsbury.

I tried to kick them out of bed at 7.30, but grunts and farts were the only replies I got. Turned out they were still snoring at 11am! Lazy gits!

No shore diving due to southerly winds whipping up a swell, so extreme rockpooling was born. Oh dear. A text to say they were eating crisps and beer for tea, made me tell the other half to feed them. Keith then emptied a huge amount of chilli sauce into his, which he regretted most of today hehe.

Got back at midnight to find them both unconscious in the living room in their sleeping bags. Some kind of recurring theme here….

Anyhow. Up bright and early to find the sea flat and the sky blue. Up to abbs, late as usual. We had the boat to ourselves, and I had decided not to dive as my arm is still very sore from where I had needles stuck in it. So I was official photographer and deck bitch.

Them getting ready.


Loads of room!


Leaving the harbour


First dive was on the Anemone Gullies, and a shout from Laz to say he was leaking was followed by Keith declaring he needed more lead. Oh good start boys!

Faffing

Anyhow, 45 minutes later and two happy campers emerged from the sea. Laz was slightly worse for wear, with the huge tear in his neckseal showing that the “I’m leaking” comment was no exaggeration!

The knackered neckseal


Seagull Rock


You sure you didn’t pee in there Laz?

[Helen F H]

Back to the harbour and get Laz out of his suit. Alison tumble dried his clothes and he spent the surface interval in a towel, my T-shirt and a jacket! All ok till you walk up the hill to the shop and the wind picks up and suddenly we find that if Laz was Scottish, he would be a true one! Hehehehe.

Mmmm tea!


Back in dry clothes again!


The neck seal was bodged back together with tape, and the second dive was the West Hurkar.

Sperloooooooosh



An hour later and two smiling heads emerge – the cry of “I’m dry” never sounded so good!

The hi-tech repair


The harbour


Tea and a mars bar and back into the harbour to load the kit back into the car and drop the drybag into Amanda for the overnight repair of the seal.

Harbour again


The boys dropped me home, collected the remainder of their kit having got accommodation at St Abbs in Billy’s bunk house for tonight and diving there again tomorrow having decided that the 10m+ vis and underwater playground is a tad better than the delights of Capernwray. Jammie barstewards!

And that concludes this instalment from the swashbucklers. Stay tuned for further news!

The West Hurkar

[Paul Oliver]

Wow, there is far too much Blue sky and flat calm sea in those pictures, looks just like it was when me and Jon Bramley dived there for the day on our way back from the September Sound of Mull gig

[keith_henson]

right

back home now - but dover and brighton to go. Will post update tomorrow - but a bit one to aquanauts who donated all our boat fees and are doing a whip round the dive club

God im knackered! Thank the lord for white man voodoo!


Chilled to the core man - touch me!


Keith

[Tricky]

Chilled to the core man - touch me!

PMSL, although I read that as 'Chillied to the core...'

[fatlaz]

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek

You sure you didn’t pee in there Laz?

Fairly, was cold enough after being in there for that time for me to definitely have considered it though!!!! The dive did prove one thing though, there is a non too fine a line between bravery and stupidity, I think I waved goodbye to it at the harbour! was a good dive and worth it however.

[keith_henson]

YD dive trip report

After leaving Wye (Kent) 3am on the 01/05/06, the swashbucklers arrived at stoney (185 miles) only to realise that due to it being a bank holiday they didn’t open till 8:30am – by this time the twins were hungry and last nights curry was repeating.

After getting a cheeky fill in the twins, Bacon butty and brew later, a shallow dip followed to the box via the BOP, then a bimble to the bus, stanegarth and Wessex then out. Saw a cracking freshwater sponge on the bus (for non-freshwater biologists, freshwater sponge = very slow growing). I have not paid for a fill of air for over two years and now I know why at £4.50. Laz felt cheated as he had twin tens and still paid the same as me getting my twin 12s filled.

Dive two was relatively pale in comparison with a 30min jaunt around, in and under the stanegarth. There must have been a wreck course going on as there was at least 12 people crammed on the back deck. Was like a lovely Jacuzzi but only in 9C water when descending down the buoy line.

After waving goodbye to stoney, tom-tom calculated the new destination – Curly Road, Lensbury, with Helens house being the 5* hotel. Stay tuned…

Dive 1 – 36m, 43mins, 7C
Dive 2 – 20.4m, 25 mins, 12C

Tues 2nd May
Slept in, followed by getting screwed over for a fill at an undisclosed diving centre. This was the first nitrox fill that I have paid for in 2years. I forgot how much white man voodoo is, but Laz was royally pissed as he only got a 110bar fill (from 60bar!) and paid a fiver. Lesson 1 – check fill pressure before leaving the shop.

Current weather was blowing a SE 5-6, was looking at diving an ideal site which was at a view point after craster where the rock strata changes. The other option was a WW2 sub that was at howick. However the weather had other ideas – i.e. any other direction and a shore dive would have been all good, but 1-1.5m swells canned this idea. Lesson 2 – Improvise: Queue extreme rock pooling in dry suit, mask and gloves. Lesson 2.1 – Laz found that purging air from suit is not a good idea. This followed a rapid trip to the local boozing establishment where luncheon/tea was served in silver packets of crispy goodness and black sheep in a glass.

Wed 3rd May (angry Wednesday)
Early rise, brew in hand and well in time to travel to St Abbs, but the A1 had other ideas – well caravans+road works = angry Wednesday part 1. We arrived 30mins late, but the sun was shining (minus sun tan cream) and we had a deck bitch (literally). After the formals with the skipper Billy, we dropped the kit onto the dive boat to discover we were the only two divers on the boat! The alikai is a huge cat, loads of deck space and a diver loving lift! Feel the lurve!

Now at this point after thinking about capernwray, Billy and Helen managed to convince us (not very hard) to stay the night in the bunk house and dive a second day in St Abbs. A damn good idea.
So off to the first dive site, in we go and the first problem – I can’t bloody sink! Worked in Dover with the amount of weight, but not here !?!?! Add two extra kilos and jobs a goodun (bit of a pattern emerging here). Laz on the other hand couldn’t stop sinking. At first when we went under I thought that he had a leak from his manifold so I was ready to can the dive, but then it stopped. He said that he was ok to carry on. So we did. 40 mins later Laz signals he is a little cold and we ascend. Upon getting on the dive boat (Helen has photographic evidence), we discover that water was coming out of laz`s cuff dump. And not a little bit either!

During the surface interval back on land, a bit of gaffa tape, a tumble dryer and a Laz walking round like the beckham of the dive world just a towel and his over coat. And it was just his towel – we managed to get a second dive in.

Now his new neck seal came from the post office. Now if Carlsberg ran post offices, then this one would be the best one in the world. How many do you know that have more dive kit than stationary?

Dive number 2 – hello canyons, crabs and cave. Cracking dive, cracking viz, loads of wildlife especially the razorbills diving in the water past me. Absolutly amazing! Laz was dry, new neck seal replacement over night – thanks Amanda, laz owes you beer a plenty next time we are up.

Thus 4th May - Glanmire (?)
After falling asleep in the most comfortable bed in ages (better than my one at home), we dragged ourselves out for the final dive in the NE. The Glanmire. Billy shotted the wreck right on the boilers as he said. Now don’t get me wrong but after diving dover I seem to prefer going down a shot ?!?! Any ideas why – answer on a PM or a post card J and I sank properly.

A skirt round the wreck at 30m, loads of wildlife, plenty of spidging to be had but thought best to leave alone. 10 mins of deco racked up time to ascend. SMB deployed and up we go, playing paper scissors stone – which degenerated into gay disco lasso dancing – i.e. Inferno - from paris to berlin (target audience).

Pack up kit, off to Lancaster we go for a day of off gassing (and onloading a few fine ales) before the south coast exodus. Bring it on…..

Saturday 6th May – Chepstow
Chepstow – a place that we thought was going to be rather good, on a different day it may have been – but we think that it was spoilt by st abbs before hand. Don’t get me wrong but it has a very good setup, still in its infancy with planning permission for new buildings etc. It was nice though not to carry your kit to the water! Was an OK dive, with a couple of swim throughs which was fun to play around with.

Downside was when laz entered the APC, I found my reel line had come loose so I was re-wrapping it and got dry humped from behind by laz. Just about rounded off the day! To Bristol it was for a few beers and an unexpected stop over on a huge river boat where we slept right in the middle of the clubbing district.


Sunday 7th May – Plymouth
Back to the briney!!! Managed to get a place booked with aquanauts a week previous on an afternoon boat for two dives. After arriving at 2pm and a bloke in a neighbouring restaurant, that by us was crowned the rudest man in the country telling us that things did not look good as we was unloading the dive gear rather than just asking us to move the car. Now this was a public right of way to a public marina, yet he was not having anything of it. Shame about the rat we saw running past the front of the place!

On to the boat and dive number one. Now originally we should have dived the Scylla and the Egan Lane, but really poor viz and huge swell the sites were changed. The first being a sort of gully dive, loads of wildlife – especially the huge scorpion fish we found! Now after surfacing this had to be the best diver lift that I have been on. From being in the water to being at deck level took all of 2 seconds! I think I felt gravity underwater!

The second dive was a wreck that was sunk by fort bovi but was in the wrong place or something of the sort. Good dive, loads of fish and sponges. A big one to brian at aquanauts as they donated all of our dive costs and then some to the chris hall memorial fund

Monday 8th May – Swanage Pier
Slightly dubious weather lead us to refuge in a fantastic greasy spoon. 1 hour later the rain abated, and off to get wetter we went. I think we spent 50mins underwater and both of us only used 15bar from our twin sets – can that be right? Loads of huge spider crabs, squat lobbies, pipe fish and the list goes on.

Watch this space – brighton and dover to follow!!!!!

YD Swashbucklers!

Brighton 11th May
Got up at 5:30am thinking that would be enough time to circumnavigate the m20/m25/m23 to brighton - made it to the dive boat with about 10 mins to spare before ropes off! Met Jay (scubajay) and a couple of other blokes diving with us that morning. First dive was to the Braughton. She lays in about 35m of water to the floor and 30 on the deck. Huge wreck and loads of shells, but all cast iron

Over we go, at this point i was ready to drop like a rat down a drainpipe as I was having difficulties sinking before hand. Not a chance this time. 2 mins to the bottom and my vyper was already getting to beat me with a stick and clock up the deco (found its very conservative after a lot of diving) After waiting for Laz and Jay behind me we started skirting the wreck. Did my usual style and pulled myself along the deck on the anchor chain that lays the whole length of the vessel. I think my SAC over the last week of dives was just under 10l a min.

Plenty of places to have a dig in for crabs and lobbies, but only found berried ones. Laz at this point dropped his torch on the deck. Now the deck panels are like slates, layered on top of one another and a 6" gap between the layers. Laz`s torch started rolling down the deck as its lanyard broke and i have never seen him move so fast!

Vyper started racking up the deco time to go home. Jay goes to deploy his SMB, but had a bit of a narked moment and thought he oly had 20m of line on his spool when we were at 30m. Cue laz erection his blob and up we go. Cracking dive, highly recommend for penetration as there are some nice open parts of the hull to have a look in.

Dive two was under brighton pier. A treasure trove of tokens, pound coins and loads of other chav tat. Total amout found between 4 of us was over 20quid with loads of tokens that the skipper collects to take his son on the pier Had a shufty pint with the skipper and a bowl of mussels that another dive crew brought back in with them. Scoffed them, laz didnt have any and off we go home. 1am it was run to the toilet as fast as i could and remain there until sun up. Diving was not looking good the next day.

Dive 1 - 35.1m, 13C, 38mins
Dive 2 - 8.2m, 11C, 57mins

Dover 12th May.

Not feeling good was an understatement. Left my house at 6:10am and arrived in dover at 6:30am to meet andy the commie (not a pretty face first thing in the morning) to fill our tanks. At this point i decided (after drinking 8 pints of water and not going for a waz) that diving was off the books for me and i would be deck bitch (also to keep andy company on the boat whilst dave the skipper dived) . Rest of the gang start arriving - Jay, Stu (bloke i met when viewing his house in tenterden), ChrisP, Angus, Roy, Richard. Fills sorted, me taking muchos stick over not being able to control my bowels and boat loaded off we go for the first dive.

Dont get me wrong, the weather was scorching, sea was flat calm, but i was freezing so was in tracky bottoms and huge fleece. Didnt feel right. First dive was the Unity. Viz from the surface was excellent - we could see the divers on deco stops at 9m easily. Cant really say what happened down there as was deck bitch (the one god damn day i wanted to dive)

Surface interval - to the greek, which has changed hands yet again! and andy giving us a number of laughs over some of the crazy stuff that he has seen/done/participated in over the last 20 some odd years of diving. Penguins anyone - Andy said that after 15000 logged HSE dives he was giving it up (in style - and i want to see this from the surface when it happens!) - I dont believe that for one moment

Dive two was.... (cant remember the wreck) but it was filled with ornate china and other gubbings. Laz brought up the biggest crab that i have seen in ages (that went to my local boozer and free beer is waiting).

All in all a cracking day to end the road trip - shame that i was feeling so crap. Ill be back for more

Keith

[keith_henson]

*bump*

updated -laz/jay can you remember the second wrecks name?

Keith

[Captain Deco]

Hello matey.....

The wreck was called the "W.A. Sholten"

[royplumber]

Hi there good to meet you all diving out of doverfriday. I will see if i can add picture. thanks keith for putting it together .