Scapa Flow Virgins DIR-style (Part 1, long!)

[neilh]

Scapa “Virgins” Trip, August 2006
This trip was a YD trip organised by Hazel, skipper of MV Stormdrift. Her idea was to run a trip for people who hadn’t been to Scapa before and were not technical divers – so none of the dives would be deeper than 36M and gas came in air or nitrox flavours. Scapa is somewhere I’d decided I really wanted to dive, but thought I needed to be a serious techie diver and trimix to do it – so this trip was ideal!

Saturday
Early Saturday morning and I met up with Moz, my buddy for the trip. We managed to get my kit into his car, dropped my car off at my sisters for the week and set off.

Not much to say about the journey except that it’s a long way! It gave us plenty of time to chat about how we were going to approach the week. I’ve passed the GUE DIR fundamentals course already and with Moz due to take his in October we intended to apply DIR principles to the trip. So we chatted about what each of us would do during the dives (I’d run the time and ascent, Moz would send up the SMB), what gas we’d use (32%), what tables we’d follow, what the ascents would look like and what minimum gas values we’d be comfortable with. We also agreed that we’d be sticking around the 30M mark as a maximum, staying within the MOD of our chosen gas.

Once off the ferry at Stromness and we went for a wander around the harbour to find the boat. Stormdrift is a converted fishing boat with onboard air and O2. No luxury lift to get back onboard at the moment – but then none of the other boats operating in Scapa have one either!



Helen was there to greet us and give us a tour of Stormdrift and we stashed our kit. It was then off to the pub for a quick drink before turning in for an early night.



Sunday
Up early for a slap-up breakfast and over the road to the boat (the B&B was next door to the Flattie bar and practically opposite the boat, marvellous!). It was good to finally meet Hazel and the rest of the YD trip and before long we were setting out across the flow to our first site.

Dive #1 – the Mara (18M 48min)
The Mara is (apparently) dive boat that looks pretty much like Stormdrift(!) that sank relatively recently near the infamous bottle run. Moz and I dropped in near the shot, checked we were ok and descended. Bubble checks went ok, if a little slowly, at 6M and then we carried on down. Funnily enough instead of the Mara we found the sister vessel to the tech2 guys this week, HMS Seabed II. Lesson # 1: if you don’t follow the shot down you’ll probably miss the wreck. Arse.

Never mind, quite a nice bimble around the bottom anyway checking everything was working out ok and we were comfortable. We managed to harass some crabs with the lightsabres (one Halcyon, one Salvo) and checked out various bottles and bits of crockery. We thumbed the dive after a while and Moz sent up the main SMB. We’d already agreed with Helen and Hazel that we would send a smaller SMB up the same line as the main SMB to show there were two of us under it, so I clipped off my new Deep Sea Supply 1M SMB and sent that up. I’ve put some thoughts about this SMB up on DIRx, but we definitely enjoyed it over the week!

Back on the boat we had to own up to having missed the wreck. Never mind, hopefully we’ll manage to find the others…

We stopped off at the museum in Lyness for the SI and had a look around. An interesting place with plenty of photos, artifacts and exhibits to fill up a few hours. The oil tank exhibit is pretty cool, but we were searched on our way in to make sure we didn’t have Kazoo’s, weird

Dive #2 – V83 Torpedo Boat Destroyer (14.3M 66min)
We dropped down the shot, bubble checking on the way and found the wreck on the other end! Result! It’s quite broken up, but we had a nice dive rummaging around. We came across the large wracking system for the gun with the gun itself nearby and off to one side we came across a large boiler sitting bolt upright. At the stern we had a good look around the rudder and twin prop shafts on either side. This was it, we’d broken our Scapa cherries and dived our first wreck of the fleet!

Back in Stromness we set off to the campsite to pitch Moz’s tent and then off to the pub via the chippy to finish off the day.

Monday
Caught up with some DIRx and YD posts over breakfast. Read Garf’s post. Yikes. The vis wasn’t great on our first dives, so I can imagine just how easily you could find yourself swimming into one of the larger wrecks. For me the post was a timely reminder and helped Moz and I make sure we were constantly checking our surroundings throughout all our subsequent dives. When things got a little dark we covered torches to make sure we could still see light green nearby.

Dive #3 – the SMS Karlsruhe (6M 2min)
We dropped down the shot to 6M for our bubble check and I noticed Moz’s SPG streaming bubbles. A check of the gauge showed a fair drop since we’d left the surface so quite an easy decision – thumbs. Back on the surface we gave the boat the “binned dive” signal as requested by the skipper and waited for collection. Back on the boat we were struggling a bit for spares. Moz’s spare guage and HP hose we’d used to cobble a pony rig together for someone else and I knew the gauge and hose on my singles rig needed new o-rings, but I’d brought the rig for the spare MP and inflator hoses and regs! Helen kindly offered Moz the one from her rig which, funnily enough, was about the right size with the right length hose and a boltsnap attached!

The rest arrive back on the boat enthusing about the dive. We have to confess to missing the wreck. Again.

Dive #4 – the SMS Seydlitz (23.2M 50min)
Apparently there’s not much left of the Seydlitz, so the shot is in a large debris field and the dive would consist of rummaging amongst the wreckage. By the time Moz and I had dropped in there was no sign of the shot as someone had managed to get it caught on their cylinders and take it with them. Not to worry, we’re over a large debris field - so we drop down anyway. At the bottom it turns out we must have drifted back over to HMS Seabed II. The debris field we managed to find and explore consisted of a long length of submarine netting, a length of pipe and an electric kettle (did they have those on the German fleet?).

By now we’re starting to think that someone has been pulling our leg about wrecks in Scapa. Confession time back on the boat, but everyone was very understanding and sympathetic. It was hardly mentioned all week. Lesson #2: if someone has buggered off with the shot, wait for it to reappear!

The surface interval was spent watching John and Jason having fun with one of the DPVs Hazel has onboard whilst Helen jumped in for a bit of freediving. Sadly we couldn’t work out how to rig a tow cord to it so we had to politely decline a turn. (Either DIR or not at all ).



Jason had a for submerging with the scooter, but wasn’t exactly successful…

Dive #5 – the Admiralty Coal barge (12.2M 45min)
There were some strange sights on this dive. I’m not sure where the shot “embellishment” ended up, but at the bottom there seemed to be some bottles and a garden gnome called Gordon.



The wreck itself was pretty much intact, but Hazel’s description of it as “basically a skip” was pretty accurate. If it wasn’t for the lobster under one side of the stern and the conger under the other it could easily have been a dive in Stoney or the Cape!



Tuesday
Dive #6 – the Radiation (23.8M 64min)
This morning’s dive was on the Radiation, a trawler that’s sitting upright on the seabed. This was a nice dive, the wreck still looks pretty much like a trawler so it was easy to find your way around it. We spent quite a bit of time peering into deck hatches, holes in the hull, the wheelhouse, etc. The torches were working really nicely – signalling was working well between us and everyone else knew when we were getting close to them



As we swam along the deck I cheekily suggested to Moz we dropped through the, roughly, diver-sized hatch to have a look in the hold. He responded with the universal “I don’t think so” signal, so we carried on to the bow where, after a look around, we sent up the SMB.

Dive #7 – the Roedean (16.5M 53min)
The Roedean is a British minesweeper that now lies at the bottom of the flow having hit a British mine in British waters. Ooops. It’s very broken up as a result of blasting, but was interesting poking around looking into the wreckage at the variety of life.

[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!

[jorawley]

Great report Neil and lovely to meet you.
Wishing you more happy trips to scapa

[GLOC]

Nice report Neil. Proof that you can go to Scapa without having to dive 40m wrecks!

Good to meet you, next time I'm bring some scissors though

[gazzabish]

Great Report,

I've yet to make it to Scapa so it's nice to read a report detailing suitable wrecks for first timers.

Cheers

Gazza

[neilh]

Originally Posted by GLOC

Good to meet you, next time I'm bring some scissors though

And you mate - but I find trauma shears are safer in the pockets, less likely to puncture your suit

[Woz]

Originally Posted by neilh

Dive #5 – the Admiralty Coal barge (12.2M 45min)
There were some strange sights on this dive. I’m not sure where the shot “embellishment” ended up...

Can we have our club dildo back?

[Fiona]

Helen looks like she is enjoying herself. Although if I were Hazel I wouldn't let her anywhere near the wheelhouse, I heard about her driving Still not many lamp posts in the flow

[KeyLimePie]

Cracking report, Neil. I have to get there next year. C u soon.

[Gordon Mackie]

Glad to see my gnome is still OK... will check on him when I am back up there on 2nd and 9th September weeks .

Still places left (plug) :-)