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.