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Ohhh bollocks, Cherbourg is canned as the sea is a bit on the rough side but we opt to do an inshore wreck. With a 1pm go, this saves me a 3:30am out of bed but I leave at 6 anyway to miss the traffic. The planned 1pm dive is canned as the conditions don’t suit even that humble three hour trip so we opt for a wreck 18miles out. The Merchant Royal.
Kitted up and on the boat by 10am and I am feeling a little tired and run down but generally sound and I chill out waiting for Andyp to turn up. No body actually believed he would turn up and I wasn’t taking bets on it, but we live in hope.
Then the phone rang and Andyp said he was on rout. Incredible for the first time in four months Andyp was actually going to turn up for a dive.
I told Andrew to be there 12.00 absolute latest so he trundled up at 12:15 and started unloading kit. Still no improvement there then. The change of venue meant the go time was moved back an hour to 2:0pm but it did make me smile.
Andrew then lists all the kit he has forgotten like his undersuit, his spare 02 cylinder his spare Diluient cylinder, sofnalime and his mythical collection of pee valve catheters. Which rather like his mythical collection of nappies I have never actually seen. He just uses my ones.
Sadly he had not headed my warning that I gave my last one to Simon so today he would be diving “al fresco de la knob”.
Dive brief over we head out to the Merchant royal.
The two hour trip out was unpleasant but by far not the worst dive trip of my life, however by the time we got there I was surprised to be feeling a bit ill. Suiting up on the rocking and rolling platform was a major effort and putting the kit on was worse. By the time I was kitted up I was sweating like a pig and feeling pretty crap but I generally find the cure for this is getting in the water.
In we go and once on the shot I am feeling a little better. We drop through some pretty average gloom to the wreck in 57m. Andyp and I were tying in and I had stashed the rope under a bungee on my bailout but some how it fell out. Fortunately Andyp caught it and handed it to me at the bottom.
I tied in the shot but I noticed a strobe was firing which was odd as we hadn’t put the strobes on the line yet. It turned out to be my lost diver strobe on the unit. Some how it had got turned on during the decent. I reached back to turn it off but an icy dart of cold water went down my neck seal so I thought better of it. I signalled Andyp to do it but he was having a rough time after being out of the water so long so my signals went unheeded and I decided to ignore it.
I set off laying line and trying to get into enjoying the dive and the wreck. Sadly the strobes constant pinging in my ears was driving me mad and I made another abortive attempt to turn it off. More water in the suit. Bollocks.
I was already feeling flustered and sick and then my 50% reg got caught on the line and I had to sort that out, mean while Andyp passed me a podgier which I had drooped. Things were not going well.
The constant ping ping of the strobe was really getting to me. I stopped everything and made a concerted effort to turn it off and this time Andrew figured out what I was doing and came to my aid.
Viz was maybe 5m and the wreck was probably fine but I wasn’t enjoying my self so I called the dive after 30mins on the bottom of a planned 45min run. Andyp didn’t seem bothered so we headed to the shot to find every other bugger had had the same idea. Diver soup on the shot and all the others on Vision gradient factor deco clambered all over Andyp and I as we waited out the 39m deep stop on the VR3.
By now I was developing a monster headache and having left the bottom after 35mins we had another 75mins of deco which I was not looking forward to. We reached the transit line at 30m and I was last to unclip. Andyp had obviously forgotten we had to unclip the station and carried on moving up the line. I tried to do it on my own but with the tide running it was impossible, it’s a two man job. In the end I just cut it free.
On to the shallow deco and I am starting to feel really crap, head thumping back aching all in all a sorry state. I was on 15/60 for a planned 70m dive so my VR3 was asking for more deco than Andyp on 20/40. The Hammer head running 25/85 was clear but my VR3 still had 12mins deco showing after Andy’s had cleared. I thought Bollocks to that I am out of here and we went up.
Back on the boat and I barley had the energy to de kit. I stayed on the unit sucking 02 for a while but sadly I didn’t feel any better. A couple of hours sleep on the way back didn’t help either. We got back at 9.00pm and Andyp was canning day two so I didn’t have a buddy and I decided to can today as well. A 7am leave for a long range
deep dive felt like the last thing on earth I wanted to do.
So home by midnight and here I am typing this sad little report. The weather out side is lovely and no doubt the sea is flat. I don’t feel too bad but my head feels stuffed with cotton wool so it’s probably a good thing I am not at 65m about now.
Yesterday was a rubbish dive but I was pleased to be in the water with Andrew again. He will be the first to admit to being a little rusty on team dives but somehow despite me feeing crap it felt like the good times last year when we were regular dive buddies.
ATB
Mark Chase
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U shoulda stayed 
