Riding The Killer Prawn, And Other Adventures

This was a last-minute trip in more ways than one. The best laid plans of mice and men oft go astray, and for a while this trip looked like it might be cancelled as Nicky and Ian were moving house and were forced to drop out of the trip at the last minute. With a few days to go it was looking like nothing was going to happen because of a lack of boat-handlers, but then Paul and Jen signed up for the trip and Kathy offered to Marshall the trip for her Dive Leader DP1 lesson. Suddenly the trip was back on again. I was very relieved as I’d already obtained a ‘pink slip’ from Pippa for the weekend (she was on holiday) and so was especially keen to get some diving in.

The weather was looking good a few days before the trip, and I had some holiday to use up. So when I heard that one of my ‘internet friends’ Mark Powell had a space on a boat out of Weymouth on the Friday I was severely tempted. A quick phone call down the pub and some frantic rescheduling of meetings on Thursday morning meant that I would get some cheeky dives in on the Friday. Well it would be rude not to, as Paul Birkin would say.

Friday

Friday morning saw me getting up at stupid O’Clock, saying goodbye to Pippa and then down to Weymouth. I’m always over-cautious when estimating driving times and so arrived in Weymouth at 8ish. After quick trip to Asda to pick up chocolate biscuits and donuts I arrived outside the pontoons at 8:30. The meeting time was 9:30 and ropes off at 10:30. “Oh well,” I thought, “I have time to sit in the car and read the paper.” But no. Mark was running a tech course and all of his students were keen to prove their eagerness and were already there, ashen-faced and trembling slightly at the day ahead of them. Although quite mild mannered on the surface, Mark is quite a, shall-we-say, ‘demanding’ instructor underwater!

After a few introductions (it’s always nice to put faces to names) and some gentle ribbing (one of the guys there forgot to do up his drysuit in Stoney a while back) we had unloaded the cars and were ready to go. Mark and Paul the skipper arrived and we boarded a borrowed boat: X-Dream, as Paul’s boat KyarraToo was unavailable due to an electrical fault. Boats eh? A hole in the water you throw money into.

First dive was the Black Hawk where Ellie and I had a cracking dive last year. My buddy was a feller called Simon and we had an excellent dive. Although the bow of the Black Hawk is in 18m (the stern is in 50m odd – elsewhere!) it was a good dive. She is well broken up as you would expect, but large parts of the wreck are very recognisable. There are some nice swimthroughs and to the North of the wreck there is a nice reef with plenty of nooks and crannies for fish to hide in.

Viz on the wreck itself was excellent, a good 10 metres and there was plenty of fish around. It clearly is the year of the spider crab, as there were literally billions of the buggers around. At various points throughout the dive we saw Mark and his students complete with twinsets and stages but often air sharing and with out masks.

I was trying out a new (to me) wing, but it worked ok, although on occasion I had trouble finding the dump. I practiced going for the dump throughout the dive to rebuild the ‘muscle memory’.

Back on the surface we relaxed on board in the sunshine. I like sunshine. A day out on a boat with sunshine is often enough to keep me happy on it’s own, but it’s brilliant if there’s diving too. But where was I? Oh yes. Relaxing in the sunshine. Paul the skipper had cooked us a tasty lunch of pizza, onion rings, crispy chips and stuff in the galley (how can people cook in such a small space - beats me) and so we stuffed our faces and then he produced the donuts. Fantastic. Paul certainly knows how to keep hungry divers happy. Then it was back towards Portland to dive the dredger by the harbour wall.

While Mark was played more tricks on his students, Simon and I explored the dredger. Then we played ‘count the spider crabs’. The vast majority of them are on the harbour wall, so we scrambled (I would say pulled-and-glided but it was more of a scramble) across the rocks in our search. We came across a bit of rusty metal and had a look around then it was another mad scramble back again. Great fun.

I also managed to find a small reel by the dredger as well, which so far has been unclaimed, and it makes a perfect back up reel.

Back on board it was back to port to get the tanks filled (very quickly it only took 15 minutes for a twinset of 32%) in Weymouth before picking up our cars and packing away the kit. After a quick window shop I said my goodbyes before heading off to Swanage to meet four Hellfins (Paul and Jen, and Paul and Kathy) who I’d be diving with on Saturday and Sunday.

We were staying in caravans (which are now can be hired all summer) and I arrived a bit early, So I popped down the boatyard to sort out a few things on the rib before picking up some fish’n’chips, a bit of booze, and splicing eyes into rope. Paul and Jen arrived (and well done to Jen for remembering to bring essentials such as milk, tea bags, and washing up liquid) followed a few hours later by Kathy and Paul

Saturday

Saturday was a leisurely lie-in, before going down to the pier at 11ish. Some gits had taken the trollies and were using them to dry their kit on so there weren’t many around. I was tempted to just move their kit and take the trollies but Jen found one so we took turns with that. We met up with a few people who I knew from the internet, and were coming on our boat, including Adrian and his mates from Exeter BSAC. Then we boarded the good ship Killer Prawn for a trip out to the Aeolian Sky.

Although not the swiftest of boats, she is great for trips out to the Sky. I’d much rather spend a couple of hours on the Prawn then an hour bouncing around on a rib. There is a lift and cake, and also (according to both Jen and Kathy) one of the nicest toilets of any UK boat. Now I know this isn’t that important to us fellers who can go over the side (or at least I can when I don’t have an audience) but I know quite a few girls who think that a decent loo is more important than a decent lift on a boat.

So off to the Sky we ambled. I had a journey out, chatting with Adrian and his mates and finding out a bit more about how other clubs go about it whilst being marshalled by Kathy for DP1. Then shot in, a bit of a wait for slack while we saw a re-electrified KyarraToo with Mark Powell and his students aboard, and then it was down the shot. I was with Adrian, and we were both diving twin 12s of 32% and stages.

When we got down the shot we had a good 10m of viz. Excellent. We came off the shot a little too early and were the wrong side of the wreck (she lies on her side and all we could see at first was the bottom of the hull) but we sorted that out soon enough. There were some nice easy penetrations - lots of space inside - perfect for my level of diving and we exited the wreck to see a land rover chassis. The four wheels were perfectly in position as was the engine. The gearbox was missing though - I later found out that there are at least two that have been recovered and are driving round Poole!

Then there was a flurry of activity and all I can see of Adrian is his yellow fins sticking out of the wreck. Thinking that he’s been eaten by a giant Conga I’m about to surface and raise the alarm when he emerges triumphantly with a lobster. I get out my goody bag and we bag the crustacean successfully. A bit further on I spot a huge (and I mean huge) lobby under a pipe. After a little while I manage to tease him out, but my faffing has meant that Adrian came over to see what I was doing and the lobby escapes into a pipe. Ah well. He didn’t get to be that big without being clever so I guess his genes will live on and be passed on to breed other smarter lobsters.

Satisfied with my contribution to improving the lobster gene pool we swim on through another part of the wreck. We find some nice little glass bottles and also a large conger. Adrian manages to grab another lobster using the unconventional method of persuading it to grab onto the umbilical cord of his rather expensive Halcyon HID torch. Ah. I can see the terror in Adrian’s eyes as this looks light it might be a particularly expensive lobster so I take "Dinner" as the lobster is called and help him bag it. Then it was more exploring before shooting a bag and doing our stops. We left the bottom after 43 minutes and hit the surface after 63. As I my computer was a Vytec and Adrian had a VR3 so we ended doing both deep and shallow stops but that was fine with me. I’m always happy to stay down for a few extra minutes as it makes my profile that much safer.

The viz, the wreck, and the lobsters made this dive one of my top 10 dives. It was an absolute classic.

Back on board there was much amusement as "Dinner" nipped Adrian whilst we banded them up. All back aboard the Prawn steamed back towards land where we were going to do our second dive.

This was a drift over the Scallop beds. Adrian and I were clearly in someone elses trail else as although Adrian collected a respectable 24 scallops I only managed 5 adults (and a few which I though were a bit small) and an artillery shell. Ian (a Scottish chap from Eltham BSAC, and former bomb disposal expert) reckoned that this was probably safe, but after watching the gas bubbling out the tip for a bit I thought it best to return it to the sea.). For me the highlight of the dive was the tiny (2 inch) juvenile scallops fluttering up before us as we swam along.

At this point I was very pleased with the attitude of Mike, the skipper of the Killer Prawn. Although it was getting late in the day (we ended up back at the pier at around 1900) we never felt under any pressure to cut short the second dive. With some skippers I have been out with, I’ve felt rushed and ended up cutting the dive short, but Mike would have been happy to stay out all night.

Back we went to Swanage, and on the way Mike gave me a few marks and talked me through how to find some of the more tricky wrecks such as the Firth Fisher. He also came in close to show us where a Peregrine Falcon was nesting. Also credit is due to Pat at Divers Down who stayed late so that we could get our cylinders filled before the Sunday. Things like that which make life sooo much easier. She told me about the plans that they had for Divers Down: they’re going to get another compressor and they’re also looking at getting a membrane Nitrox system. Nothing definite yet but I told her it would be A Good Thing to have.

Then back to the caravan to cook my lobster and barbeque the scallops. Richard arrived just as food was being cooked. A co-incidence? I don’t think so. But Lobby and the scallops tasted lovely. Then it was time for a few drinks and then time to sleep the sleep of the righteous as you do when diving.

Sunday

Sunday was a disappointing day. We were up early in the morning to try and dive the tanks, but we couldn’t find them on the sounder (although we didn’t really expect to) so Kathy, Richard, Paul, Jen and Paul dived Old Harry instead. A quick turnaround at Swanage pier (we had cached second cylinders there) and then it was back out to the Betsy Anna. When we got there we decided that it was looking a bit lumpy and that discretion was the better part of valour, and so we pulled up the shot and headed inshore and dived Poole rocks, which were decidedly, er, sandy. Hey ho. I did see a dogfish though.

However, even though Sunday was a bit of a downer, Friday and Saturday were glorious and more than made up for it. That’s the thing about UK diving: it can be decidedly so-so, or it can be excellent and you never know until you get there.