P555 - 27th June 2010

On the 27th June we are diving the P555 out of Portland


An ex American submarine which was supplied to the British navy under the wartime lease lend scheme. At the end of the second war we must have had the best out of her as they didn’t want her back and in 1947 she was scuttled as a Sonar target.

P555 remains in remarkable condition and sits proudly upright as if waiting for action. She is quite a sight and well worth a look. Max depth 44M

Aeolian SKy 30m - 20th June 2010

After spending all the winter in cold dark quarry's getting used to the new toys (eccr's) we had our first sea dive of the year.....

Geoff picked the Aeolian Sky as a easy dive, so we booked onto Scimitar with a dive date of the 20th June.

As the date got close we got the call from sarge saying he had to work...... ("work" as in "under the thumb") So it was down to me and Geoff to have a good time. And with clear sky's the weekend looked good!



Sunday morning came round and we made our way down to the dock and began to load the boat up one inpso classic and a sentinal, talking with Rob the skipper for the day he said we should get a good 30mins of slack and his face was a picture when i said we would be looking at a runtime of 2hr's :O


We dropped in first and the viz was not looking as good as the reports said! We were told 15m+ but is was a lovely 4m MAX, the current was still kicking on the way down and for the first 8 minuets of the dive we managed to find the several glass pots and bottles which looked ok, there were also several lobsters kicking around but but a bit on the small side so they live to fight another day...

We managed a runtime of 88 minuets with 20 of this being deco.
It was a good dive and nice to get back in the sea.

See you next Saturday Waymouth for more sea dives

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!