Warilda on Sunday, 11 July

[Alex]

This season’s weather changed all plans. We were blown out two weeks ago in Plymouth and have not completed the trimix course, which I’ve been doing with Rich Stevenson and Deep Blue Diving. We managed to do just 1 trimix dive instead of 4 (the Medoc, 55m). We planned to do another one on Wednesday the 7th, and it was called again for obvious reasons. So I was pretty happy to find free spaces on board of Defiant, advertised on Divernet. The boat was booked by a club who could not fill all spaces. The plan was to dive the Moldavia on Saturday and the Warilda on Sunday. I could not do Saturday but decided to come down on Sunday (long way from Nottingham for just one dive, but Nottingham is far from everywhere except of Stoney Cove, and it was also an opportunity to visit a friend in Southampton). The weather was not very promising, but a big improvement in comparison with Wednesday - Thursday anyway. Excellent tides this week, so it was late start- 9.30. It took us almost 3 hours to get to the site (Warilda is exactly in the middle of the Channel, 36 miles out of Littlehampton). I was impressed by the boat- the best boat I’ve ever seen, very stable and spacious. The people were very welcoming. There was one Inspiration diver, all others on OC. Frank (the organizer) buddied me up with a couple who appeared to be Juz and Blanaid from YD. I was very pleased to meet them, as we are on the next year YD Donegal trip organized by Dave Burke. We were on twin 12’s, I with two deco gases (50 and 80%) and on a V-plan schedule, Juz and Blanaid on a single deco gas and VR3’s. We ended up with the same deco time eventually. We planned for 25 min BT and 50 m max depth, which gave us about 65 min dive time. The descent was slow (about 5 min). I know that I need this rate or slower to avoid dizziness (I was on air). It was very dark, impossible to read gages without a torch, and the viz about 5-6 m I think. The Inspiration guy who has dived this wreck several times before said that this was the worst visibility he had ever experienced there. The shot was near the stern on the hull side; we swam to the left from the shot along the hull and soon came to the prop, then round the stern and back along the deck. We did not see much of the wreck, but I enjoyed the dive very much- lots of fish, many intriguing openings (which we did not attempt to enter though). The whole scene was somewhat surreal, the impression magnified by a bit of narcosis. My max depth was 49m (I could probably find 52 but did not want to go deeper than 50 really), with average depth about 45. We bagged off from the top of the wreck (42 m). The ascend and decompression went well and nice, relaxing with water temperature 15 degrees. Back on board, we waited about 40 min for the Inspiration guy who did 50 min BT and 2 hours dive time. This was not so pleasant because of choppy seas, and we all were happy when the boat headed back. I enjoyed being in the middle of the Channel, watching ships and listening to their multilingual chat and had a nice sleep on the way back. Great dive and a great day indeed, many thanks to Frank and to Juz and Blaniad. I would love to dive Warilda again, when the viz would be better, it might be the whole different impression then.

Alex

[tom]

I think I saw you guys leaving - we were on Voyager, the boat moored behind Defiant - we were still loading up when you were on your way.

We did something considerably shallower but also had a good day (about 8m vis on the Shirala).

[Juz]

Hi Alex,


Good write up and I agree it was a good day and a pleasure to meet another Yd'er and especially one that's on the Ireland gig next year.

Juz

[divegyrl]

I seem to have doubled up on the trip report! :omg
Good to meet & dive with you Alex, roll on next year!

Blanaid