UKRS Weymouth Dive Trip - August 2001

This is a report on the UKRS trip to Weymouth on 25th to 27th August 2001. Details about other trips being run can be found here.

I'd been on a bunch of UKRS trips and thought it was about time I organised one of my own. Also, I'd been berated by Jason to organise something so...

I'd managed to secure Divetime out of Weymouth for the August Bank Holiday weekend. Foolishly, I'd also managed to volunteer to organise accommodation for 12 divers. This was a mistake of the first magnitude have you ever tried to find 12 B&B places for the August BH weekend in Weymouth?. However, I managed to get 12 divers to turn up on a Bank Holiday Saturday in August and some of them even had somewhere to sleep and breakfast for those who could stomach it.

This trip had been planned all along to be a UKRS Deep Weekend; which meant 40m plus and those of you who know me will realise that metal was the order of the day!

Saturday had us heading out to dive the Iolanthe. This is a wreck I had dived with great success (along with quite a few of the current participants) on a previous trip. The weather had been poor in the days leading up to this trip so I wasn't expecting miracles. The vis could be appaling but at least we had reasonable conditions topside. In fact, it turned out OK.

The Iolanthe

I was diving with Jason and we'd spent a couple of days e-mailing dive profiles and mix suggestions back and forth. In the end, I dived a 21/35 mix with 50% deco - and Jason had something else so that didn't work out too well. Anyway, down the shot we went and it got darker and darker. As we approached the sea bed in about 45m, I began to see clusters of lights (we were the last ones in). We landed on a railway truck - there's a number of them scattered about the wreck. I'd seen one near the stern last time I dived this wreck and initially thought we were there which was strange as we'd asked the skipper to put us on the bows. It turned out that everyone was milling around this truck as there was no other wreckage to be found. Even though it was very dark, the vis was quite good with a decent torch. After a few minutes we swam off to search for the wreck which we found 8mins into the dive. We were, in fact on the bow section. I'm glad I'd done this wreck before as the darkness made it quite difficult to figure out what was what. Despite this, I think we all had a good dive checking out the structure of the wreck and finally finding the bow itself. There's a large anchor which appears to be secured to a piece of decking and another one is in place hanging from the hawser pipe on the upright and intact bow section. The anchor winch is pretty impressive too. There is a deep scour at the bows (as there is at the stern) and this appears to be the deepest point on the wreck. The Iolanthe was carry hay so there's no sign of the cargo but the railway trucks used to carry that hay are intact and make interesting objects to examine.

Jason bagged off from the bows and I followed him which was quite hard in the darkness. I couldn't see any gauges so just followed Jason's winding. I had a 5min stop at 21m so threw a bag from there. We got split up due to our differing deco schedules so the next time I saw Jason was on the boat. A very good dive although a bit more light would have been appreciated.

The skipper provided the usual soup and rolls which seemed to be quite popular throughout the weekend.

Black Hawk Bows

I had planned that we try and find the "Sea bed Caves" documented in the Dive Dorset book but Paul informed me that the current was all wrong for that. So, given that we were planning to dive the stern of the Black Hawk on Sunday, we thought it would be rude not to dive the bow section. So that's what we did.

I've done this dive a few times but it's always enjoyable. There's loads of life and quite a few interesting holes to poke in. The Black Hawk was torpedoed off the Bill and the stern fell off pretty much immediately (Sunday's dive). The rest of the ship was towed into the bay where she sank. Subsequent blasting to make way for a pipeline reduced the structure to a collection of rubble. There's still quite a bit to see though and she makes an interesting dive. Encountered quite a few of the others on this dive but ended up doing most of it on my own having become saparated from Jason. I quite like pottering around on my own on shallow dives.

Saturday evening saw us in the Old Rooms where I'd booked a table for 10 much to Gordon's dismay - they don't do curry! We met up with Ioan (sp?) and Andy Cookson in the bar.

Black Hawk Stern

Sunday saw another early start (8am) to go and dive the stern section of this wreck. I'm not quite sure why Paul insisted we left so early as we seemed to do about 3 knots out to the dive site! Still, it was calm and flat so no on ended up revisiting their breakfast which is good. I was pleased to see good weather as I'd just lobbed 30 odd quid in the direction of Old Harbour Divers for a fill of 21/35!

Zak kindly agreed to go in first and secure the shot as there isn't a huge amount of wreck to hook on to here. As it turned out, descending the line put us immediately in 48m with the shot on a small ladder lying in the gravel. The wreck was towering over us. We hadn't seen it on the way down due to the darkness [again]. So, we swam along the port side of the hull right at the sea bed. There's a very interesting hole here which leads inside the hull. The prop-shaft can clearly be seen coming from the stern along the bottom of the hull. It then disappears into a very large prop-shaft tunnel as it travels forward. It would be very easy to swim along inside here although I didn't as I wasn't sure what the state of the other end was and I didn't want to have to come out backwards! Further back along the port side and a little higher is another large hole in the hull. This leads up inside the wreck to a hatch in the deck. From the underside and in the darkness it looked like this square hole just led deeper into the wreck but as I swam through it, I saw the torches of the others illumiunating the deck fitments. At this point I went back down and out the way I'd come in to find Jason inspecting the hole. On the way back I disturbed a large conger which decided to swim out of the hole and right through Jason's legs. My how we laughed!

Then on towards the stern where the prop-shaft emerges - there's no prop here as you would expect - and round the stern on to the sloping decks. The wreck lies heeled over to starboard so the decking slopes at about 60 degrees. At this point in becomes apparant that this was a large ship - certainly not clear from yesterday's dive. The usual winches etc are on the decks and apparently there's a gun on the sea bed although we didn't see it. We travelled forwards along the decking to the point where it broke off. There's loads of opportunity to penetrate here. We found boxes and boxes of shells neatly stacked in a hold - which shows that this wreck is not dived a lot! This wreck stands quite high so we managed to bag off in about 38m. It is a shame the shot was not actually on the wreck as descending directly to 48m in the dark took it's toll on our two air divers who I think found it a bit hairy at first.

I thought this was a fantastic dive. Again it was dark but with good vis. I'll definitely be coming back here. We managed to stay together on the deco too.

James Fennel

I'd suggested diving the James Fennel in the afternoon and spent some time describing the dive to others on the boat as I'd done it recently and been quite impressed with it. However, once in the water, it became very clear that this was not the wreck I'd dived last time. I'd seen an intact stern section with the prop in place, a long prop-shaft in its tunnel and an intact engine. None of this was to be seen on this largely splattered wreckage. Only the engine and a boiler were recognisable.

Upon querying Paul, he was adamant that this was the James Fennel and that we had dived the Gertrude last time (based on my description). Closer examination of the book makes this even more ambiguous. The marks must be wrong and the descriptions seem to be mixed up. Not quite sure what's going on here.

Saturday night, Zak booked us into an obscure curry house in the middle of nowhere which turned out to be spot on. It even calmed Gordon down who seemed to be on a curry frenzy that weekend. I reckon his sofnolime works overtime!

Minerva

Monday saw an 8:30 start and we headed off to the Minerva - another first for me which is why I picked it. Not a lot to say about this one. She lies upright in about 45m and reminded me of the Elk out of Plymouth. Others said she was like the Countess of Ern which I guess is true. The hull is intact and you can swim pretty much the length of the wreck under the decking. The engine room is still intact and the boiler is visible. Just aft of the engine room and inside a hold, a spare prop is secured to one wall. Swiming back to the stern and at the deepest point of the dive, the prop lies in the sand broken. Back up at the bows, there is a lot of netting and some trawling gear. Winches are still in place and the whole area is pretty intact. There's not actually a lot to see on this dive and, considering the depth, I don't think it warrants a return visit.

We had planned to dive the Hood in the afternoon but I think everyone was tired by this stage and daunted by an impending Bank Holiday Monday drive home so we called this one and headed back into port. I had to dash as I needed to get gas from Old Harbour Divers and then drive to Dover to meet up with Keith's trip on Taurus. I was not looking forward to this cross-country trek but it only took 3 hours in the end.

Deco Procedures

On all the deep morning dives I was running the same deco profile as an experiment. The bottom times were;

I didn't bother carrying 100% as well as it would only cut about 5 mins off the total time and didn't seem worth the hassle. Also, I'd left the 7L stage of 100% on the boat rigged and attached to a rope marked at 6m. Nigel had kindly agreed to provide surface cover and he could have clipped the stage to a DSMB line and lowered it to anyone in need of it. In the end we didn't need to use it which is obviously a good thing.

Running this schedule meant I surfaced after about 65mins on all morning dives. This profile seems to work for me and is pretty easy to remember so I think I'll be sticking with it for a while. Its quite conservative on the 6m stop - I think 15min would be fine here. However, I've been checking out Ross Hemingway's new V-Planner and a similar schedule using VPM would have you out of the water after 55min including the 1m/min ascent. We'll have to see about that one. Of course, these schedules are for me, you should work out your own deco schedules - don't use mine!

Many thanks to Paul Pike and Jan on Divetime and to all the UKRS crowd for making this another successful and enjoyable trip.

For more UKRS trips, check out the trips page.

Steve Chaplin (10.09.2001)