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Last Friday night it was blowing a gale in not so sunny Bexhill and I had a dive booked for Sat morning - oh ‘ollocks. A 7 pm call to the skipper - surprise surprise “he thinks it is OK for Sat morning”. I wasn’t sure if I was disappointed or not as it means missing the Friday night demonstration of the sin of beer gluttony and the customary Sat morning hangover + all the kit to get ready + the vis will be crap. Oh well.
5 am Sat I am awoken by the alarm (having only got to sleep about 2 am) and anxiously squint out of the window “well it certainly looks calmer”. Leave Bexhill at 6am and head for Brighton and get loaded on the boat in time for a 7:30 leave. Despite the fact that the wind is still quite strong there only looks to be a 9 mtr swell – ‘kin ‘ell. A quick blink and my contact lenses settle back into place and so does the swell - to 1 to 2 mtrs.
I booked as a lone diver as everyone else from my part of the world was either ill, going to Birmingham or too into talking about diving. Fortunately I know the Skipper (of Nauticat – Steve Johnson) so I won’t be lonely and, as it turns out, one other person by name. As usual it doesn’t take long to get chatting to everyone.
The sea is a bit lumpy to say the least and despite not having gone out the night before and never normally suffering from sea sickness I felt a bit “iffy”. I started kitting up early so I could do it in stages and relax in between and let my stomach settle.
8:25 “get ready” is shouted from the wheelhouse – 08:30 I am fully ready and eager to get off the boat and into the water. A last double check that everything is connected and pressurised, lumber to the back and “OK Bryan, off you go”. Splash , “brilliant – right on the shot” – down I go.
Hit the sea bed at 32 mtrs and all I can see is a tiny piece of metal sticking out of the sand but I appear to be in a scour hole so I pick a direction and start heading upwards and abt a minute later there is the wreck. I stay at sea bed level and follow the wreck round and pick up some scallops (for a friend) then at the pointy end I head upwards and back along the over the wreck. Vis is a pleasantly surprising 3+ mtrs AND there is a tiny bit of ambient light.
I pass a number of “edible crabs” before finding a nice juicy looking spider crab (once again for my friend who swears they are better eating than the “edibles”). Ooh look, a nice big conger, ooh look a conger tail “ I wonder if they are connected”. A quick stroke of the tail produces movement at one end but not the other – I guess it must two different congers.
There are loads of pollack, pouting, wrasse and some bass (I think – had fins, a mouth, a tail and was shiny
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) but I don’t see any lobsters – not that it would make any difference to the contents of my goody bag as I am not hard enough to take on a lobster.
Then I just mooch around peering in, up, down and under – all the while cursing the goody bag which keeps getting snagged. This problem is made worse when I add several lead weights found on the wreck and I am now bouncing along. “Sod this, why did I have to pick up the lead” A check of my computer shows I have moved into deco so I tie off and send the bag up attached to my SMB. I then stay within sight of my big yellow reel and discover I appear to have found the toilets to spend my last minutes on the wreck.
I eventually start upwards when I am showing 20 minutes of deco. On the surface I can’t see the boat and am just reaching for my collapsible flag when the boat appears over the swell. Back on board the tea is ready but no doughnuts and I have just had a marvellous dive - life is nearly perfect (no doughnuts = nearly).
As I was the first one down the shot I got told off for not having tied the shot to the bit of wreck that I could see (last time I got told off for not pulling it out of the wreck!!) – it appears to have been dragging and two of the 9 divers aboard were doing an unplanned drift over the sandy bottom. They later admit the wreck was in sight but they lost it after concentrating on some scallops (I think).
I and one other (Howard) are the only ones who express an interest in trying an inshore drift. We try to do this as a buddy pair but I lose sight of him immediately, at 3 mtrs it is pitch black and at 3 inches from the bottom I can just see it in my torch light. Oh well I tried.
When back home I call Rob (Evans the YBOD) to see how he got on with his dive on the Moldavia – only to find he was ill and didn’t go. As I describe my dive everything doubles in value – the vis, the quantity of fish – just to p him off. He knows me too well and halves everything. I find out from him that I have been diving with a fellow YD’er (Diving Dude) and didn’t even know it. Small world isn’t it – or are YD’ers taking over?
Nice to have met you DD.
Last Friday night it was blowing a gale in not so sunny Bexhill and I had a dive booked for Sat morning - oh ‘ollocks. A 7 pm call to the skipper - surprise surprise “he thinks it is OK for Sat morning”. I wasn’t sure if I was disappointed or not as it means missing the Friday night demonstration of the sin of beer gluttony and the customary Sat morning hangover + all the kit to get ready + the vis will be crap. Oh well.
5 am Sat I am awoken by the alarm (having only got to sleep about 2 am) and anxiously squint out of the window “well it certainly looks calmer”. Leave Bexhill at 6am and head for Brighton and get loaded on the boat in time for a 7:30 leave. Despite the fact that the wind is still quite strong there only looks to be a 9 mtr swell – ‘kin ‘ell. A quick blink and my contact lenses settle back into place and so does the swell - to 1 to 2 mtrs.
I booked as a lone diver as everyone else from my part of the world was either ill, going to Birmingham or too into talking about diving. Fortunately I know the Skipper (of Nauticat – Steve Johnson) so I won’t be lonely and, as it turns out, one other person by name. As usual it doesn’t take long to get chatting to everyone.
The sea is a bit lumpy to say the least and despite not having gone out the night before and never normally suffering from sea sickness I felt a bit “iffy”. I started kitting up early so I could do it in stages and relax in between and let my stomach settle.
8:25 “get ready” is shouted from the wheelhouse – 08:30 I am fully ready and eager to get off the boat and into the water. A last double check that everything is connected and pressurised, lumber to the back and “OK Bryan, off you go”. Splash , “brilliant – right on the shot” – down I go.
Hit the sea bed at 32 mtrs and all I can see is a tiny piece of metal sticking out of the sand but I appear to be in a scour hole so I pick a direction and start heading upwards and abt a minute later there is the wreck. I stay at sea bed level and follow the wreck round and pick up some scallops (for a friend) then at the pointy end I head upwards and back along the over the wreck. Vis is a pleasantly surprising 3+ mtrs AND there is a tiny bit of ambient light.
I pass a number of “edible crabs” before finding a nice juicy looking spider crab (once again for my friend who swears they are better eating than the “edibles”). Ooh look, a nice big conger, ooh look a conger tail “ I wonder if they are connected”. A quick stroke of the tail produces movement at one end but not the other – I guess it must two different congers.
There are loads of pollack, pouting, wrasse and some bass (I think – had fins, a mouth, a tail and was shiny
Then I just mooch around peering in, up, down and under – all the while cursing the goody bag which keeps getting snagged. This problem is made worse when I add several lead weights found on the wreck and I am now bouncing along. “Sod this, why did I have to pick up the lead” A check of my computer shows I have moved into deco so I tie off and send the bag up attached to my SMB. I then stay within sight of my big yellow reel and discover I appear to have found the toilets to spend my last minutes on the wreck.
I eventually start upwards when I am showing 20 minutes of deco. On the surface I can’t see the boat and am just reaching for my collapsible flag when the boat appears over the swell. Back on board the tea is ready but no doughnuts and I have just had a marvellous dive - life is nearly perfect (no doughnuts = nearly).
As I was the first one down the shot I got told off for not having tied the shot to the bit of wreck that I could see (last time I got told off for not pulling it out of the wreck!!) – it appears to have been dragging and two of the 9 divers aboard were doing an unplanned drift over the sandy bottom. They later admit the wreck was in sight but they lost it after concentrating on some scallops (I think).
I and one other (Howard) are the only ones who express an interest in trying an inshore drift. We try to do this as a buddy pair but I lose sight of him immediately, at 3 mtrs it is pitch black and at 3 inches from the bottom I can just see it in my torch light. Oh well I tried.
When back home I call Rob (Evans the YBOD) to see how he got on with his dive on the Moldavia – only to find he was ill and didn’t go. As I describe my dive everything doubles in value – the vis, the quantity of fish – just to p him off. He knows me too well and halves everything. I find out from him that I have been diving with a fellow YD’er (Diving Dude) and didn’t even know it. Small world isn’t it – or are YD’ers taking over?
Nice to have met you DD.
