TGI Friday Club - The Ashford

[Paul Oliver]

Ohhh my God it's 0430 as my alarm went off, but at least its Summer, the Sun's up and i'm off to Brighton diving.

We met up at the Brighton Marina at about 0645 for a 0730 departure for the fairly long run out to the Ashford meeting some Brighton regulars like Blanaid, Janos, Kim H and whats his name, oh yeah The Dude, also some new faces in Ahar, Mal and Gledders (who i met in Portland on the M2 dive), with Gizmo also joining us.



So out we went on a nice flat sea under a blue and sunny sky. This is a very intact and upright wreck that sits in 42m of water with the decks at about 34m. Steve as usual had the shot on the center of the deck, and after minimal faffing i was down the shot with Blanaid and Andy (Ahar) in some fantastic viz

We landed on the deck to a very good 8m of viz and with no real need for a torch a quick look around and then Blanaid started giving me some strange signals Too much Helium thinks I

Then i get it she needs a wee already, but we just got down oh no she is going to demonstrate her pee valve then i get it she has not done her crutch strap up so after we had that sorted, we dropped over the side and drifted down to the seabed as we worked along the wreck. Great viz and light levels, we passed a large gash in the side, with old fishing nets coming out of it and rounded the bow with our max depth of 42m in 13 Degrees water.

Up the side and into the wreck at about 35m. There is a very nice gap the whole length just about, below the collapsing decking and above the cargo of coal. Some huge Lobsters and Crabs as we worked back along the length, finding 2 VERY big Conga's, a huge Sea Bass and loads of other fish.

We worked our way to the stern, but did not drop down to the prop at this stage of the dive, then went back along the top of the deck to the shot line area again where after 40 min on this very enjoyable wreck we bagged off and up for the routine Deco and a total run time of 86 min.

A cracking dive was had by all

Back to Brighton then for a nice 30 min bimble under the Pier in about 2-3m of viz in water that was 18 Degrees on the surface chilling down to 17 Degrees at 6m.

A very good day out and thanks to Janos for setting this one up

[Gizmo]

Nice review Paul, was indeed a cracking day, it is especially good when others are working

Kim very kindly buddied up with me and in doing so sacrificed a bit of depth as my air top on my twinset came out a bit richer than I had wanted but it did mean we had a good rummage around the deck and top of the Ashford. This is a really decent wreck to dive, especially with it being upright with lots of places to swimthrough and around. Lots of life on it, bass, lobster, bib, pollack really quite good.
Would like to go back and do this one again sometime.

Thanks to Kim for buddying me even with the slight misunderstanding on how much deco obligation I had left... oh well, extra safety margin...

[Paul Oliver]

Could an admin merge this thread onto the one Janos has done please

Ta

[ahar]

Great dive, and even better weather on Saturday. Thanks to Paul and Blanaid for buddying me and putting up with the H's all over my kit

[divegyrl]

Originally Posted by Paul Oliver

We landed on the deck to a very good 8m of viz and with no real need for a torch a quick look around and then Blanaid started giving me some strange signals Too much Helium thinks I

Then i get it she needs a wee already, but we just got down oh no she is going to demonstrate her pee valve then i get it she has not done her crutch strap up so after we had that sorted, we dropped over the side and drifted down to the seabed as we worked along the wreck.

I had done it up once, but unclipped it again to move something around and not done it up again! I could feel something hitting my leg on the way down and realised what it was! Paul did get the message though!

Originally Posted by ahar

Thanks to Paul and Blanaid for buddying me and putting up with the H's all over my kit

There were H's? good to dive with you too, it was a fab day out!
Janos, we want more!