Dorothea 77m - 14th November 2009

The weekend of the 14/15th November should of seen us diving the MV Murree yet again the English weather decided that we would not be doing this!!!! So with the weather looking bad we decided on back up plan B...... DOROTHEA.

Me and Sarge picked up all the tanks from the shop on Friday and the van felt heavy on the way home. 3 twinset, 2 ally 80's & 4 ally 7's all fully blown.

We meet early on Saturday morning and started the 2 1/2 hour drive to Dotty. We arrived after a stop for breakfast, 2 flooded roads and one land slide, considering the harsh weather there were already several cars there. Sarge and Geoff started to set there stages up while I sat in the back of the van with the kettle on. The rain started to ease up a little so we dropped all the stages down to the waters edge, followed by the twins and drinks. Now on one of the last trips to NDAC Geoff managed to put a hole in his dry gloves and I'm sure I told him to bin them things! This time instead of them being BRIGHT ORANGE they were black, I'm sure he was trying to make them look like wet gloves :)
Me and Geoff were in the water waiting for the old git to sort his stages out when Geoff very quietly announced that he had once again ripped the "not so dry, dry gloves" so he gave me the ally 80's to hold while he went back up the killer hill to get his wet gloves, several trips latter he manged to get into the back of the van and get his gloves....... So finally we started off and dropped into the black depths of Dorothea.........
The general plan was to get to the Nome garden find the lander and get to the bottom of that with a max depth of 80m and then come back up find the arch and then up through the 20m tunnel and back to the entry point. As Sarge has spent a good few years diving Dotty we decided that he would lead and me and Geoff would follow like puppy dogs..... puppy see, puppy do.......
The gimp got us lost!
We started off good, dropping down towards the white van then we should of gone right following the cable's, at this stage Gimp 2 (Sarge) decided to see what was left of the white van....... Well i can now tell you. NAFF ALL. We manged to get to the far left side of Dotty were the forest used to be. We manged to follow the wall all the way round at about 50m with a max depth of 77m reached. Now many of you will be thinking whats gimps, but we had the twins blown to 245bar with the stages blown to 220bar so we had more gas than we need and could ascend any time if we needed to. Soooo after many gestures given we decided to carry on. The viz was outstanding 30/40m its just so dark down there. At depth the cold did not really hit us, the lowest temp reading was about 9deg's. After a very short time a depth we started our ascent. Once we hit about the 45m mark the light came back and the water started to warm back up to about 11deg's we ended up with about an hours worth of deco to do which was not to bad. Normally we do most of the deep dives in the sea so there's only the other gimps to look at but this time we were in the forest and its a very nice environment to spend time in being in the middle of trees under water is a very strange feeling. The deco went well no problems, the last stop was for about 25mins which went very fast. We found the slate wall that runs the back end of the quarry and the top of that is about 4.5m so I dumped all the gas from my suit and laid there listening to music.

Once we surfaced it came to light how far round someone had led us....... But with happy faces and some good banter we started the surface swim back round to the entry point.

We have not had much time for Dorothea this year with all the sea dives but next year with the ccr units we will be spending a lot more time there.

Many thanks to Geoff and Sarge for a good day!

MV Murree - 15th November 2009

TOP NEWS

The Tec heads have been invited to dive the MV Murree!!!!!!

Lets hope the weather holds out!


Update 13/11/09 - BLOWN OUT!

NDAC DEEP AIR - 17th October 2009

Many people in the "NEW TEC" diving circles see deep air as plain stupid and you should not be allowed to dive every again...... This is complete bull and deep air can teach you a lot about yourself and what happens to you at depth.

Imagine that you are on a deep OC trimix dive and you have a free flow at max depth your mate has his head stick in the wreck digging for gold. You shut down look around and your mate "buddy" is no longer there...... you start to ascend so you can get on your first deco mix at the deepest possible depth this means you will end up having a bigger EAD jump than you planed for. As soon as you that that first breath on the reg you get hit with the gas change and you head goes all over the place... Now you have done many deep air dives so you know your narked but you feel ok with it and start going up again to the next stop point until your good. Image what it would feel like if you have never done a deep air dive and how you would react to it....

Anyway back to NDAC....... All the other nuts were busy this weekend so it was down to Me and Geoff to get wet on Saturday. I have done my far share of deep air dives and in many ways was not looking to forward to it, I love helium to much now!!!! But Geoff wanted to hit the 60m mark so that was the plan.

Back gas was Air, 1st Deco was 32% and 2nd Deco was 100%. Max depth was set at 65m with a max run time of 1hr.

The plan was made with a 10min bottom time. Several trips down to the deep end of the pontoon with the twins and stages (bring on the CCR's). When doing this sort of diving i like to take my time kiting up I dropped in and the water was cold it said 14deg on the computers but felt like 6deg. Geoff jumped in and soon found a good size leak on his dry gloves we decided that he would be best getting his wet gloves from the car so i stayed in the water while he went off to get them.....

On his return we dropped down the 45m pontoon line to the edge of the shelf. At around 40m i noticed the narks kicking in and the normal metal tast in my mouth... Geoff looked good and we carried on down 62.5m was our end depth to ensure we had hit the 60m mark, we had 4 computers between us all reading from 61 to 62.5m. We ended up with about a 10min bottom time and just the right amount of deco for how cold it was.... The deco came and went with out any issues and we both had a good dive......

Rebreather Parts and Inspo Bits

Some links for members so i don't have to keep email you them

HUD for Inspo Classic
Narked @ 90
Back mounted counter lungs for Inspo
Smallest BOV in the world
CCR UK Shop
Every Bit of info you need
Hammerhead Electronics

Dive Mole

Deep Pursuit - Inspo Head Replacement

TitanBox

MR Diving

Privateer Divers

More To Come

Rebreather Try Dive - 7th November 2009

We have booked some inspo rebreather try dives with Matt from M R Diving

The dives will take place at NDAC and will cost £60 + your entrance fee for the day.
Once we are finshed playing around on the CCR's we will be OC diving after.

HMS L24 - 19th September 2009

The HMS L24 is a British L class submarine sunk in 1924 by a collision with HMS Resolution. She is 72m long 7m tall and a width of 4m weighing in at 1,080 tones.

HMS L24


HMS Resolution

We dive of Scimitar (cutlass) for this one, the wreck is sitting in 54m of water. Smudge was skippering for this one and had never manage to get out to her before. A 2 hour stem out of Portland on arrival he found the wreck straight away dropped a shot on her and watched it slightly drift off. There was a very strong current running so Smudge decided to re-shot and this time it held.
We had decided to be last off the boat for this one as the current would be a little on the strong side on the way down. As we dropped down the shot you could still feel the current running and at one point we must have been 90 deg's to the wreck. The shot was perfect it had landed just off from the conning tower we had a 2min breather to figure out which way she had settled on the sea bed. We started to swim down to the bow of the sub looking for the mine hatched and forward hatch. The mine hatches are larger than you would think with twins and 2 stages i could of fitted down one of these. The forward hatch was open and from the records we found they believe that some of the crew tried to make it to the surface when she went down.
Between the coning tower and hatches there was a lot of heavy fishing nets in one Geoff noticed a trapped fish and decided it need rescuing. 5 mins latter with a huge grin on his face Geoff waved the fish off into the darkness of the English Chanel. The L24 is at the state of perfect for a dive, there is just enough marine life that you are still able to make out the details of the sub without it being all about the wreck. We got to the bow and then turned to head back to the stern we could see the dive planes set to hard dive, on seeing this it brings to mind what must have been going on we she was hit. Next to the dive planes there was a HUGE anchor (i did not think sub's had anchor's.....) I'm looking into this after this blog.
We got back to the coning tower and the current dropped right off then picked up again just behind the tower there is a large pulley/arm system which you are still able to make out all the rigging flying past this with the current you then drop straight onto the prop at this point the sea bed rises all most to the top of the wreck, at this we called the dive with a nice bit of deco to do. SMB's sent up and all the deco went as planed. At the 6m stop for 25mins i got out my new toy a waterproof mp3 player and spent the whole time singing my hart out!!!!

HMS L24 is THE best sub dive ever, she has every think you could want and i would go back again.

Merchant Royal - 23rd August 2009

The Merchant Royal sits at a depth of 56m she is standing 15m off the sea bed as is still very recognisable. Her bows have been blown off but her mid section and stern are still quite intact. The hold area is sitting below the sea bed and it possible to get 60m in places. There are also a few large copper ingots around that the salvage teams missed.


The Merchant Royal is a huge 5008 ton British cargo ship which sank in 1946 after a collision with another vessel. She is located south off Portland with a heavy list to the starboard side.

After getting up at 4 am for the drive down to Portland we arrived with sun high in the sky and the temperature rising. We unloaded the van and filled the boat. We would be diving off Cutlass with Simitar for this dive. Some how we manage to get out to the site within an hour and half from leaving port so we had to sit around for half hour waiting for the current to drop off. We would be going in last on this one after the devils of a dive on the MV Ice Prince. Dropping down the line the "day light" stayed with us most of the decent, the viz dropped to about 7m on the wreck which made it difficult to figure out our location on the wreck form the amount of twisted iron around us its lead us to believe we were at the bow section. It was amazing looking at I beams that have been twisted as if there were made of plastic. There was not a lot of life on the small part of wreck we managed to see, this is one of those wrecks were you need to dive it several times just to be able to understand the basic layout. We left the wreck with a strong current picking up which meant we would travel some distance on deco. Back on the boat with a 97min runtime and smiles on our faces.

Would we go back?? Yes but its not at the top of the list

SS Unity - 8th August 2009

SS Unity Built in 1902 the 1,091 Ton she was torpedoed off of Dungeness by UB57 on 2 May 1918 whilst sailing from Newhaven to Calais with Military Ordinance Stores. 12 of the crew were killed, the Captain was amongst the survivors. Upright and intact in a max depth of 40m and a general depth to the decks of 32-35m.




This was the first time for us diving out of Dover we were diving of Neptune skippered by DaveBatchelor. This is the sort of boat we all like diving off, a catermaran powered by twin Caterpillar diesel engines giving over 700 hp so it quick and very stable.

Dave told us there should be the odd plate and shiny things around the wreck so a goody bag was required. Due to the location of the wreck the shot would be tied and we would come back up the shot. Dropping down the viz was good and we had all decided to line off from the shot, this makes it a lot easier when trying to find your way back again. The shot had landed about mid ship and we proceed to make our way to the bow. All around the bow was handfuls of solid silver spoons all in a lovely shade of green due to the amount of time in the water. Several spoons were picked out and the good back was filled. the rest of the time we spent drifts back towards the shot taking in the shear size of the wreck. In places there was some large sections of decay. and you could question the amount of time she has left in the water before she turns into a pile of timber and steel.

Back up the shot and some of us had run into deco. Most of the group was on air for back gas and some had stages of 50%. At the 15m mark the current really picked up and was running fast the shot was never cut due to a miss understanding before jumping in so "jon lines" on and a nice 20min or so deco in full current, at one point it felt like you were flying.

Back on the boat you could see the happy faces when everyone released that the mank old greenspoons were solid silver.

Just some of the spoons recovered

MV Ice Prince - 29th June 2009

Phil the skipper of the slight red boat called Tango (LINK) had set up the trip and asked if we wanted to tag along for the dive, we jumped at the chance of diving a wreck only a handful had already dived. The MV Ice Price went down on the 15th January 2008 with all of its cargo and fuel, she is 328ft (100m) long Greek owned cargo ship.

We got to the site with a 3 1/2hr steam from Weymouth. Phil made sure the kettle was always on and the tea kept coming. A lazy shoot was being used on this dive so a full briefing was given to the 10 divers that turned up.

Some how me and Sarge got voted to tie the shot in…. thanks Phil……..
We got to the site around 3:20 and located the wreck first time, but there was a slight tide running on her so we would be in the water for 4 ish. We kitted up twin 12’s on the back and two ally 7’s for deco. We started to drop down and the current got stronger and stronger the deeper we dropped.
The descent was getting harder and harder, finally she came into view and she is huge the shot had dropped right were we wanted just in front of the bridge area and I was able to tie in on the old guard rails. From what we could see she is sitting on the port side the deck is almost 90deg to the sea bed. The top the wreck sits around 45m and its 60m to the sea bed. There is evidence were they have salvage the diesel and oil off her as there are round brass hose connecting nozzles going from the hull into were the engine bay would be.
The marine life has started to developed, there are several large beds of scallops also large beds of small crabs were all over the vast flat surfaces. The main windows into the bridge area have not completely greened over and your still able to see inside. With a 25min bottom time reached due to the demon current on the way down we headed back knackered and ready for the cups of teas promised by Phil on our return.

Would we do this dive again??? Yes this time with bottom stages and to give us a bit more time. We recon we only got to see 5% of what she has to offer and can’t wait to see the rest.