2008 has been a good year for the Team. Garf, Howard and Gareth all achieved Tech 2, James and Wilbo gained Tech 1 and Howard managed Cave 1.
James has left the cold of the UK to spend 6 months in Utila in the Caribbean working at a dive centre and we hope to see him back in the summer when the weather has warmed up a little.
Howard is undertaking Cave 2 with JJ in the New Year.
From all at Team Foxturd, have a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous 2009.
Wednesday, 24 December 2008
Monday, 17 November 2008
EuroTek 2008 - What a great Weekend!
Leigh Bishop, Carl Spence and Roz Lunn put together a great weekend in Birmingham over the period 15-16 Nov 08. This was organised following their visits to OzTek and consists of getting all the major players in the technical diving world together, Phil Short, Ric Stanton, JJ, Casey, Dr Simon Mitchell, Eduardo Pavia, Rich Stevenson and whole raft of other speakers to talk about their expeditions over the last couple of years. 130m on the Victoria, 180m+ in a cave system, 60m in Truk, and technical developments in CCR technologes, it was all there.
There were also some great physiological presentations by Dr Simon Mitchell about DCS, PFO and inner ear bends.
Well done to Leigh, Carl and Roz. I know they put some long hours in to produce the best dive show of 2008. They plan to hold a 2010 EuroTek and following this 'starter' show, that promises to be even better.
EuroTek 2008
There were also some great physiological presentations by Dr Simon Mitchell about DCS, PFO and inner ear bends.
Well done to Leigh, Carl and Roz. I know they put some long hours in to produce the best dive show of 2008. They plan to hold a 2010 EuroTek and following this 'starter' show, that promises to be even better.
EuroTek 2008
Thursday, 13 November 2008
Extreme Ironing
The Chimps, less James as he is off to sunnier climes before Christmas, will be partaking in some domestic chores on 10 January 2009. We are going to help Yorkshire Divers break the world record for the most number of divers ironing underwater at the same time. The record is currently held by some Australians at 72 but we already have 150 names pledged for the event.
Help the RNLI, the charity for which the event is supporting, by visiting this link
Help the RNLI, the charity for which the event is supporting, by visiting this link
Friday, 3 October 2008
Updated Images of Life Site
The site where I showcase my images has undergone a revamp and I now offer the opportunity to purchase images, either as stock or as prints. I have also added the fact that I can run training courses in underwater photography. The site link is still http://www.imagesoflife.co.uk
However, in this process, the links to my previous host have been severed and I am in the process of re-enabling them so that images show correctly here. Please bear with me while I update the links.
Thanks
However, in this process, the links to my previous host have been severed and I am in the process of re-enabling them so that images show correctly here. Please bear with me while I update the links.
Thanks
Tuesday, 23 September 2008
Wilbo takes Tech 1
Yep.. and about time too!
I joined up with Matt G and Rich G to take Tech 1 with Rich Walker down in Plymouth from the 6th to the 10th September.. The weather played havoc with us and this meant that we were unable to complete the course within the 5 day alloted time..
This was a real disappointment to everyone and meant we would need to meet up with Rich to do our experience dives. As the 3 of us have busy lives - it meant that it would be several months before we could all get together to do the experience dives together - so we conferred and decided that it was best for me to get my experience dives out of the way.. So I did. On the 21st September, I met up with the chimp's very own Badger (himself already Tech 1) who ably buddied me and enabled me not to cock it up. Top bloke.
At the end of the second dive Rich gets Badgers attention and made a 'T' sign followed by a '1' and points to me. Click. It sinks in.. Joy.. Oh the Joy.. :) One happy simian.
Monday, 15 September 2008
Garf turns to the dark side
Hot news off the press is that I am joining Eastbourne BSAC to dive with them, and possibly do some PADI training for their members. They seem like a great bunch, and I am looking forward to doing some of the shallower stuff with them from the club rib.
First dive was this Saturday, and between a small group of us we brought up a couple of crabs, a huge (and very tasty) Brill, and an engine maker's plate. Not a bad haul for a ten minute rib out of Eastbourne harbour and a very pleasant introduction to diving with the club.
First dive was this Saturday, and between a small group of us we brought up a couple of crabs, a huge (and very tasty) Brill, and an engine maker's plate. Not a bad haul for a ten minute rib out of Eastbourne harbour and a very pleasant introduction to diving with the club.
Saturday, 6 September 2008
Tech 2 Course Report: Day 6: The Final Day
Tech 2 thoughts
So, here we are on the last day of the course. The final dive as to 70 metres, and was planned and executed perfectly, or at least good enough for all of us to be deemed suitably skilled to qualify as Tech 2 divers. We were told we had passed the copurse during the 6 metre stop, so there were some leaky masks from all the smiles for the rest of the stop!. Tech 2 has been my most fascinating experience with GUE to date. The previous course, Tech1, was more endured than enjoyed. I learnt a great deal from Andy Kerslake, and still rate him very highly as an instructor, but realise that I was incredibly stressed throughout the entirety of the course, something I had expected to be magnified at the Tech2 level, but something I was suprised to find is not true.
Tech1 represents a significant change in skills. A fundamentals diver is limited to 30 metres, with no decompression, and may never have carried a stage. A Tech1 diver has 50 metres within their grasp, potentially carrying one of two available decompression gases, and a runtime of 90 minutes in the water. This is an enourmous change in diving, and so the course has to raise the bar of the student's skillsets to meet these challenges. Tech2 is different. The failures that you are given on Tech2 are no more complex than those on Tech1. In fact, they are, by and large, the same things, as there is only so much that can be failed. Yes, there is more equipment to be carried and managed in the form of additional decompression gases and bottom stages. And yes, this does give the instructor more scope for generating failures. However, whereas Tech1 represents a significant change in skill, it is presumed at Tech2 that those skills are now firmly embedded, and it is an attitude, or indeed awareness change that has to happen at Tech2. No longer can you rush in and just fix something and move on. The Now it takes a moment after everyone can breathe to think your way through the dive and determine how the failure, and any fix you have put in place, will manifest themselves as bottles are changed and regs are switched. In addition, communication throughout the team becomes critical so that everyone knows what is working, and indeed what is not, on every diver's rig. So, what is built on a Tech2 course is not buoyancy skills, but awareness, capacity, and finesse through the ascent. the buoyancy skills must be in place, unconsious, or you simply cannot get through the course. If you have to think about buoyancy when task loaded then you're not going to get through Tech2.
Being around people like Rich Walker and Rich Lundgren is also a fascinating experience. They are both highly competent divers, and both highly competent educators. Both are passionate about GUE without being exclusionist. Forget your image of the GUE instructor unwilling to listen to new ideas or concepts. These guys are researching and reading everything that comes out to see how it might affect their diving, and you're going to struggle to find many people who know more about decompression. Rich Walker has spent 20 years in academics creating models of what happens to the human body in certain situations. As you can imagine, this gives him an interesting perspective on decompression models. We've picked up plenty of the most recent thoughts in decompression, diving practices, safety, exploration and research, which has made for conversations late into the evening. They are also, it has to be said, just phenomenal in the water.
finally, the course is a good laugh. Tech1 will make or break a team. By Tech2, the team must be in place, so from this perspecitve everyone just relaxes and has a good laugh. Howard and Gareth have become good friends of mine, and as we begin the process of planning the dive today, I know that I've had a bloody good laugh with some good mates.
So, here we are on the last day of the course. The final dive as to 70 metres, and was planned and executed perfectly, or at least good enough for all of us to be deemed suitably skilled to qualify as Tech 2 divers. We were told we had passed the copurse during the 6 metre stop, so there were some leaky masks from all the smiles for the rest of the stop!. Tech 2 has been my most fascinating experience with GUE to date. The previous course, Tech1, was more endured than enjoyed. I learnt a great deal from Andy Kerslake, and still rate him very highly as an instructor, but realise that I was incredibly stressed throughout the entirety of the course, something I had expected to be magnified at the Tech2 level, but something I was suprised to find is not true.
Tech1 represents a significant change in skills. A fundamentals diver is limited to 30 metres, with no decompression, and may never have carried a stage. A Tech1 diver has 50 metres within their grasp, potentially carrying one of two available decompression gases, and a runtime of 90 minutes in the water. This is an enourmous change in diving, and so the course has to raise the bar of the student's skillsets to meet these challenges. Tech2 is different. The failures that you are given on Tech2 are no more complex than those on Tech1. In fact, they are, by and large, the same things, as there is only so much that can be failed. Yes, there is more equipment to be carried and managed in the form of additional decompression gases and bottom stages. And yes, this does give the instructor more scope for generating failures. However, whereas Tech1 represents a significant change in skill, it is presumed at Tech2 that those skills are now firmly embedded, and it is an attitude, or indeed awareness change that has to happen at Tech2. No longer can you rush in and just fix something and move on. The Now it takes a moment after everyone can breathe to think your way through the dive and determine how the failure, and any fix you have put in place, will manifest themselves as bottles are changed and regs are switched. In addition, communication throughout the team becomes critical so that everyone knows what is working, and indeed what is not, on every diver's rig. So, what is built on a Tech2 course is not buoyancy skills, but awareness, capacity, and finesse through the ascent. the buoyancy skills must be in place, unconsious, or you simply cannot get through the course. If you have to think about buoyancy when task loaded then you're not going to get through Tech2.
Being around people like Rich Walker and Rich Lundgren is also a fascinating experience. They are both highly competent divers, and both highly competent educators. Both are passionate about GUE without being exclusionist. Forget your image of the GUE instructor unwilling to listen to new ideas or concepts. These guys are researching and reading everything that comes out to see how it might affect their diving, and you're going to struggle to find many people who know more about decompression. Rich Walker has spent 20 years in academics creating models of what happens to the human body in certain situations. As you can imagine, this gives him an interesting perspective on decompression models. We've picked up plenty of the most recent thoughts in decompression, diving practices, safety, exploration and research, which has made for conversations late into the evening. They are also, it has to be said, just phenomenal in the water.
finally, the course is a good laugh. Tech1 will make or break a team. By Tech2, the team must be in place, so from this perspecitve everyone just relaxes and has a good laugh. Howard and Gareth have become good friends of mine, and as we begin the process of planning the dive today, I know that I've had a bloody good laugh with some good mates.
Tech 2 Course Report: Day 5
Day 5
Imagine my suprise when we woke with a fully grown Hippopotamus amphibius in the room. As the room swam into focus I realised that although there was indeed an enormous mammal in the room, it was merely howard snoring. I checked to make sure my fillings were all in place, and staggered down to the breakfast room in self defence, with GLOC just a moment behind me.
The plan today was to do three 40 metre dives, each once requiring changes in ascent rate, bottle rotations, and multiple gas switches. At any point, Rich was of course free to mess with us and induce failures for us to manage. "Manage" is the appropriate word now. Problems requiring thinking through rather than just a fast response, as a hasty action that seems to work now might cause you further problems later on down the line. With the training dives only giving us ten minutes on the bottom and ascent times of approximately 15 minutes, our aim was to ensure the ascents were as smooth as possible.
To goal for the day was to ensure that we stayed together as a team, as in elbows touching in a triangle of three if possible, at exactly the same depth, and breathing the right gases at all times, whilst obviously ensuring the ascents kept to time.
The three dives were all pretty similar. Ten minutes or thereabouts at the depth of 40 metres, with failures going on. There were failed isolators, failed bottom stages, failed right posts, failed left posts. Some were fixable, some were not. We had to remember who had what failed so we knew who could donate gas and who couldn't and who was the potential weak point in the team, re-ordering the team accordingly. Without going through every dive, I'll do the last one, as it was challenging one.
Descend to 6 metres on a mix we were simulating to be almost hypoxic, so fast down to 6 metres. There switch to bottom stage, and perform a bubble check. All good. down we go. 20 metres per minute. At the bottom - 40 metres, swim along the wall, GLOCS left post fails. Howard's torch fails. Re-order the team. Howard goes into fix GLOC whilst I provide a visual reference for buoyancy control. Very, very dark. GLOC sorted, swim on. GLOC's bottom stage runs out. He tell us and the team switches to backgas. Howard's suit inflation bottle runs dry. My iolator fails. Howard's in there to check whilst GLOC provides reference. As it's the isolator I know what's coming. I go out of gas. GLOC donates. I thumb the dive. Up fast in a triangle to 30 metres. Slow the ascent from 9 metres per minute to 6 metres per minute. up to 21 metres. Me back onto my own bottle of 50%. GLOC and howard switch to 50%. I bag up. Still at 21 metres. GLOC and Howard rotate bottles. I pass bag to Howard. I start rotation, but it's now time to move. I rotate the bottles on the move between 21 metres and 18 metres. GLOCs 50% bottle runs out. He switches to backgas and tells the team to extend the deco stops. Howard's 50% bottle runs out. He does the same. My 50% bottle runs out. We're now at 9 metres. Switch the team to backgas ready for the O2 switch. 6 metres. GLOC switches to Oxygen. howard passes him Bag. Howard switches to O2. I switch to O2. 3 minute stop. 2 minutes to surface at 3 metres per minute. Break surface and swim back to pontoon for debriefing.
Now, back in the B&B having watched the video self assessed, we're going down the pub for a pint.
We must be doing something right, the two Richards are letting us go to 70 metres tomorrow. Either that or they just plan to leave us there and let natural selection judge us. Whatever the above sounds like, it is not in any way " a beasting". The whole point is that it is not stressed, and there is a time-out signal if we feel overloaded anyway. We're here to learn, and learning we are, as well as having a good laugh all the way through the week. Yes, we have progressed an awful lot during a short space of time, but then we have the attention of two very competent divers and instructors, so that's hardly suprising.
Imagine my suprise when we woke with a fully grown Hippopotamus amphibius in the room. As the room swam into focus I realised that although there was indeed an enormous mammal in the room, it was merely howard snoring. I checked to make sure my fillings were all in place, and staggered down to the breakfast room in self defence, with GLOC just a moment behind me.
The plan today was to do three 40 metre dives, each once requiring changes in ascent rate, bottle rotations, and multiple gas switches. At any point, Rich was of course free to mess with us and induce failures for us to manage. "Manage" is the appropriate word now. Problems requiring thinking through rather than just a fast response, as a hasty action that seems to work now might cause you further problems later on down the line. With the training dives only giving us ten minutes on the bottom and ascent times of approximately 15 minutes, our aim was to ensure the ascents were as smooth as possible.
To goal for the day was to ensure that we stayed together as a team, as in elbows touching in a triangle of three if possible, at exactly the same depth, and breathing the right gases at all times, whilst obviously ensuring the ascents kept to time.
The three dives were all pretty similar. Ten minutes or thereabouts at the depth of 40 metres, with failures going on. There were failed isolators, failed bottom stages, failed right posts, failed left posts. Some were fixable, some were not. We had to remember who had what failed so we knew who could donate gas and who couldn't and who was the potential weak point in the team, re-ordering the team accordingly. Without going through every dive, I'll do the last one, as it was challenging one.
Descend to 6 metres on a mix we were simulating to be almost hypoxic, so fast down to 6 metres. There switch to bottom stage, and perform a bubble check. All good. down we go. 20 metres per minute. At the bottom - 40 metres, swim along the wall, GLOCS left post fails. Howard's torch fails. Re-order the team. Howard goes into fix GLOC whilst I provide a visual reference for buoyancy control. Very, very dark. GLOC sorted, swim on. GLOC's bottom stage runs out. He tell us and the team switches to backgas. Howard's suit inflation bottle runs dry. My iolator fails. Howard's in there to check whilst GLOC provides reference. As it's the isolator I know what's coming. I go out of gas. GLOC donates. I thumb the dive. Up fast in a triangle to 30 metres. Slow the ascent from 9 metres per minute to 6 metres per minute. up to 21 metres. Me back onto my own bottle of 50%. GLOC and howard switch to 50%. I bag up. Still at 21 metres. GLOC and Howard rotate bottles. I pass bag to Howard. I start rotation, but it's now time to move. I rotate the bottles on the move between 21 metres and 18 metres. GLOCs 50% bottle runs out. He switches to backgas and tells the team to extend the deco stops. Howard's 50% bottle runs out. He does the same. My 50% bottle runs out. We're now at 9 metres. Switch the team to backgas ready for the O2 switch. 6 metres. GLOC switches to Oxygen. howard passes him Bag. Howard switches to O2. I switch to O2. 3 minute stop. 2 minutes to surface at 3 metres per minute. Break surface and swim back to pontoon for debriefing.
Now, back in the B&B having watched the video self assessed, we're going down the pub for a pint.
We must be doing something right, the two Richards are letting us go to 70 metres tomorrow. Either that or they just plan to leave us there and let natural selection judge us. Whatever the above sounds like, it is not in any way " a beasting". The whole point is that it is not stressed, and there is a time-out signal if we feel overloaded anyway. We're here to learn, and learning we are, as well as having a good laugh all the way through the week. Yes, we have progressed an awful lot during a short space of time, but then we have the attention of two very competent divers and instructors, so that's hardly suprising.
Tech 2 Course Report: Day 4
Day 4
Very, very short report today. My head hurts. We did swim tests, we passed swim tests. We talked abotu decompression strategies. We took an exam, in fact we took 4 bloody exams. We planned 70 metre dives. We planned 100 metre dives. We talked about Oxygen Windows, counter diffusion, new directions in decompression strategies. We talked support divers and ommitted deco plans. We talked in water recompression.
then we mixed a lot of gas. Sorry, a LOT OF GAS. This was to cover us for the remainder of the course, which is a couple of dives to 60 metres and a couple of dives to 70 metres. Once we had all the gas we could lay our grubby chimp mits on, we decamped from Plymouth and headed back to the B&B in chepstow, ready for a busy day in the NDAC tomorrow.
Meanwhile I swam into a bulkhead and bashed my nose and forehead. Then I took enough painkillers to wipe out a small country, and painted my face in liquid plaster. I guess I'll have to wait and see how things look tomorrow.
Very, very short report today. My head hurts. We did swim tests, we passed swim tests. We talked abotu decompression strategies. We took an exam, in fact we took 4 bloody exams. We planned 70 metre dives. We planned 100 metre dives. We talked about Oxygen Windows, counter diffusion, new directions in decompression strategies. We talked support divers and ommitted deco plans. We talked in water recompression.
then we mixed a lot of gas. Sorry, a LOT OF GAS. This was to cover us for the remainder of the course, which is a couple of dives to 60 metres and a couple of dives to 70 metres. Once we had all the gas we could lay our grubby chimp mits on, we decamped from Plymouth and headed back to the B&B in chepstow, ready for a busy day in the NDAC tomorrow.
Meanwhile I swam into a bulkhead and bashed my nose and forehead. Then I took enough painkillers to wipe out a small country, and painted my face in liquid plaster. I guess I'll have to wait and see how things look tomorrow.
Tech 2 Course Report: Day 3
Day 3
you remember the scene in the Matrix when Neo is being shown "the world as it is today". The sky is dark and evil, constant storms rage, lightening bolts split the sky, everything looks imposing and dreadful. Looking at the weather reports for the day, that's pretty much how I expected to find Plymouth when I woke up this morning. Contrary to my expectations however, the day appeared to be fairly tolerable. the promised "wind from hell" had not appeared, and I had high hopes of getting in the water.
so, off we trotted down to Aquanauts, and leapt onto the boat. Once again we had aquanaut to ourselves, and young Joe as a deck bitch. 3 stages diving requires the strength of Atlas, or in the lack of superhuman arms and legs, a deck bitch. They ony need to achieve one thing, and that's connect the 3rd bottle onto the correct place on the hip D ring. You'd think that's the least of jobs, a mere trifle. And yet we were incredibly grateful to have Joe doing this, as he consistently put it into the correct spot and handed up the bottle at precisely the right moment. It was a sunny morning, and we were dropped in right next to the old fort inside the wall. Outside the wall, carnage was raging. We had put in a fairly tight shotline to give us a visual reference, and dropped down it to begin the planned dive. Down to 6 metres, where Rich wanted to see set piece demonstrations of valve and S drills". We did our best, and put in what I thought was a good performance. we then all did a double bottle rotation, whilst moving the team around the shot to try and provide some break from the current for the person doing the rotation. This worked really well. In terms of team positioning, we were now getting used to doing drills and descending/ ascending in a triangle. Close enough so that your elbows are touching every now and again. what we were adding into the mix now was a little more finesse on the drills and station keeping. We had been moving plus or minus half a metre, and Rich wanted to see the teams together at all times. Once we had doen the bottle rotations, we then ascended for a debrief. Rich decided he was happy with the progress, and we descended to the bottom so that he could mess with us. Having no other option, we lined off from the shot, as there was a current running and we had to return to it. I laid the line, with GLOc and Howard following. Rich descended intermittently and failed right posts, bottom stages, and the like, and problems were thought out and dealt with. This is an area we were developing. We were learning not to rush into sorting the problem you can breathe with a leaking post, and there's plenty of gas in the team. Think about how does this affect the rest of the dive, and then put in place the best solution, which might be one of several. Then re-order the time, and rearrange the dive accordingly.
We laid line for a little while until Rich gave us a failure requiring us to call the dive and swim back along the line. Basically, he put GLOc out of GAs. with Howard donating from the 3rd man position, and myself leading, we sandwiched GLOC in the middle, we left the line in place and swam back along it to the shotline. At the shotline, we stowed the bottom stages and switched back to backgas. up to the first stop depth and we switched to the 21 metre bottles. Once we were all on the 21 metre bottle, we all did bottle rotations and began the ascent through the intermediate stops. Howard bagged up. At 9 metres, we swapped back to our backgas ready for the move to Oxygen. Up to 6 metres and Onto the O2 for 3 minutes simulated deco. Rich came in and congratulated us, and then informed us We were to swap back to our bottom stages, boogie back down to 8 metres, and do the whole ascent again. Which we did.
this time we surfaced, and it was obvious that wind, current and chop were all picking up. i stowed the O2 bottle and cleaned myself up. At that moment I suffered a catestrophic loss of fabulousness. The top of the corrugated wing inflator hose seperated from the plastic connector at the top of the wing. this had the effect of dumping my wing instantly, and the 3 heavy stages dragged me underwater immediately. Arse. I popped my backgas reg back in my mouth, closed the suit and inflated it. As I stabilised at about 1.5 metres GLOC arrived and hauled me to the surface. Then everyone else arrived, and I just lay on my back as i was inflated like an SMb, my stages and anything remotely heavy clipped to me was quickly removed and distributed to the other divers. It was no drama. The worst that could have happened is that I could have been sitting ont he seabed at ten metres thinking "arse, I'm going to have to bag up and connect the stages to the line so they can be hauled up". This little incident ended the diving for the morning, so we headed back in for lunch. Debrief on the boat, and everyone was pleased with the performance so far. the plan was to get back in, grab some food, and head out again in a couple of hours once the various failures had been repaired.
So, 3pm in the afternoon, and TFT are heading back to sea. The plan this time was to drop to about 30 metres, so we could do the ascent with the bottle switches in the right place - 21 metres and 6 metres. This was, in Rich Lundgren's words, "the most challenging Tech2 conditions he had ever seen". We jumped into a faily calm sea to find a raging, swirling current. At about 20 metres God turned the lights out. We got to 30 metres and didnt find a bottom. The viz was les than a metre and it was very very black. Rich decided that conditions were just not up to the course, and called the dive. At this point God turned out two of the teams 3 HIDs, leaving me with the only remaining light. As we were there, we did bottle rotations whilst hanging onto the washing line, and switched at 21 metres, feeling along the hoses from the 2nd stages to the bottles to ensure teammates were switching to the right gas. There was a definite lack of pretty, but everything was functional, and we hit the surface when we were suppoed to, give or take a minute.
Back to Aquanauts, and its now 6pm. Time for theory then. Decompression strategies, decompression illness. It went on through the early evening and continued over dinner. We wrapped up about 2130 and headed back to the B&B. Bearing in mind the abysmal weather forecast, we canned the rest of the week in Plymouth. The plan now is to finalise theory and swim tests and administration and exams etc tomorrow, and then spend two days at the NDAC working up to the 70 metre dive on the deep day. Having tried the salt water, and having been spat out by the sea, we had decided to head back inland to a quarry to lick our wounds.
you remember the scene in the Matrix when Neo is being shown "the world as it is today". The sky is dark and evil, constant storms rage, lightening bolts split the sky, everything looks imposing and dreadful. Looking at the weather reports for the day, that's pretty much how I expected to find Plymouth when I woke up this morning. Contrary to my expectations however, the day appeared to be fairly tolerable. the promised "wind from hell" had not appeared, and I had high hopes of getting in the water.
so, off we trotted down to Aquanauts, and leapt onto the boat. Once again we had aquanaut to ourselves, and young Joe as a deck bitch. 3 stages diving requires the strength of Atlas, or in the lack of superhuman arms and legs, a deck bitch. They ony need to achieve one thing, and that's connect the 3rd bottle onto the correct place on the hip D ring. You'd think that's the least of jobs, a mere trifle. And yet we were incredibly grateful to have Joe doing this, as he consistently put it into the correct spot and handed up the bottle at precisely the right moment. It was a sunny morning, and we were dropped in right next to the old fort inside the wall. Outside the wall, carnage was raging. We had put in a fairly tight shotline to give us a visual reference, and dropped down it to begin the planned dive. Down to 6 metres, where Rich wanted to see set piece demonstrations of valve and S drills". We did our best, and put in what I thought was a good performance. we then all did a double bottle rotation, whilst moving the team around the shot to try and provide some break from the current for the person doing the rotation. This worked really well. In terms of team positioning, we were now getting used to doing drills and descending/ ascending in a triangle. Close enough so that your elbows are touching every now and again. what we were adding into the mix now was a little more finesse on the drills and station keeping. We had been moving plus or minus half a metre, and Rich wanted to see the teams together at all times. Once we had doen the bottle rotations, we then ascended for a debrief. Rich decided he was happy with the progress, and we descended to the bottom so that he could mess with us. Having no other option, we lined off from the shot, as there was a current running and we had to return to it. I laid the line, with GLOc and Howard following. Rich descended intermittently and failed right posts, bottom stages, and the like, and problems were thought out and dealt with. This is an area we were developing. We were learning not to rush into sorting the problem you can breathe with a leaking post, and there's plenty of gas in the team. Think about how does this affect the rest of the dive, and then put in place the best solution, which might be one of several. Then re-order the time, and rearrange the dive accordingly.
We laid line for a little while until Rich gave us a failure requiring us to call the dive and swim back along the line. Basically, he put GLOc out of GAs. with Howard donating from the 3rd man position, and myself leading, we sandwiched GLOC in the middle, we left the line in place and swam back along it to the shotline. At the shotline, we stowed the bottom stages and switched back to backgas. up to the first stop depth and we switched to the 21 metre bottles. Once we were all on the 21 metre bottle, we all did bottle rotations and began the ascent through the intermediate stops. Howard bagged up. At 9 metres, we swapped back to our backgas ready for the move to Oxygen. Up to 6 metres and Onto the O2 for 3 minutes simulated deco. Rich came in and congratulated us, and then informed us We were to swap back to our bottom stages, boogie back down to 8 metres, and do the whole ascent again. Which we did.
this time we surfaced, and it was obvious that wind, current and chop were all picking up. i stowed the O2 bottle and cleaned myself up. At that moment I suffered a catestrophic loss of fabulousness. The top of the corrugated wing inflator hose seperated from the plastic connector at the top of the wing. this had the effect of dumping my wing instantly, and the 3 heavy stages dragged me underwater immediately. Arse. I popped my backgas reg back in my mouth, closed the suit and inflated it. As I stabilised at about 1.5 metres GLOC arrived and hauled me to the surface. Then everyone else arrived, and I just lay on my back as i was inflated like an SMb, my stages and anything remotely heavy clipped to me was quickly removed and distributed to the other divers. It was no drama. The worst that could have happened is that I could have been sitting ont he seabed at ten metres thinking "arse, I'm going to have to bag up and connect the stages to the line so they can be hauled up". This little incident ended the diving for the morning, so we headed back in for lunch. Debrief on the boat, and everyone was pleased with the performance so far. the plan was to get back in, grab some food, and head out again in a couple of hours once the various failures had been repaired.
So, 3pm in the afternoon, and TFT are heading back to sea. The plan this time was to drop to about 30 metres, so we could do the ascent with the bottle switches in the right place - 21 metres and 6 metres. This was, in Rich Lundgren's words, "the most challenging Tech2 conditions he had ever seen". We jumped into a faily calm sea to find a raging, swirling current. At about 20 metres God turned the lights out. We got to 30 metres and didnt find a bottom. The viz was les than a metre and it was very very black. Rich decided that conditions were just not up to the course, and called the dive. At this point God turned out two of the teams 3 HIDs, leaving me with the only remaining light. As we were there, we did bottle rotations whilst hanging onto the washing line, and switched at 21 metres, feeling along the hoses from the 2nd stages to the bottles to ensure teammates were switching to the right gas. There was a definite lack of pretty, but everything was functional, and we hit the surface when we were suppoed to, give or take a minute.
Back to Aquanauts, and its now 6pm. Time for theory then. Decompression strategies, decompression illness. It went on through the early evening and continued over dinner. We wrapped up about 2130 and headed back to the B&B. Bearing in mind the abysmal weather forecast, we canned the rest of the week in Plymouth. The plan now is to finalise theory and swim tests and administration and exams etc tomorrow, and then spend two days at the NDAC working up to the 70 metre dive on the deep day. Having tried the salt water, and having been spat out by the sea, we had decided to head back inland to a quarry to lick our wounds.
Tech 2 Course Report: Day 2
Day Two
After decamping from the NDAC last night and driving to Plymouth, we had high hopes for a week's diving in the sea for a change. Alas, it was not to be. It was, to be fair, blowing it's nadgers off today in Plymouth, with the forecast for the week getting worse and worse. However, seeing as we had the boat to ourselves we went out anyway, especially as we only needed 10 metres of water.
so we dropped into a ridiculous current, in terrible viz, and attempted to hold station carrying 9 stages between the three of us, and perform v drills, S drills and bottle rotations. A few steps into my valve drill Howard had had enough and called the dive. I did a flow check of all my valves (now including the three bottles and the argon bottle) and we ascended. On the surface it was clear that Rich was having as hard a time watching us as we were performing, but we decided to try and get in closer to the fort and see if the current eased up. It just didn't happen. After a little while, the dive was called and we got back on the boat. Getting off and on the boat is a bit ttoo much like hard work to be buggering about in 10 metres. Howard suggested that we skip the remainder of the course and jump immediately in on the Affric at 70 metres, with the logic that anyone that survived the dive should be given an automatic pass. Luckily for us, Rich decided that this would probably not be the best of plans, so we headed back to Aquanauts to make the mst of the remainder of the day by covering theory.
So, into the classroom we went, and discussed minimum deco as it is affected by having a bottom stage. strategies for different bottles including the use of additional deep deco mixes, and how these affect minimum gas. Tech2 adds a level fo complexity in the theory to the point where there simply are no right or wrong answers. there certianly is no GUE big book of rules about how deco is conducted or how gas strategy is managed. Rich simply enabled us to discuss all the options and come to our own conclusions. This course is all about making you think for yourself, rather than try and provide you with answers. It was a very interesting discussion, and moved onto decompression illness and oxygen toxicity, and what options are available - or indeed simply not available- when things occur at different depths. For the example, GUE's approach to Oxygen management is that the only gas on which we ever push the PPO2 to 1.6 is Oxygen at 6 metres. In a freakish coincidence, we train to lift unconscious divers from 6 metres. The deeper the decompression mix, the lower the Max PPo2 is on it. none of them reach 1.6. The discussion went along the lines of that we reckon we'd have a fair shot of lifting a toxing diver from the shallows, but the toxing diver at 70 metres is probably going to die. This took the discussion back to the reasoning why we are so anal about gas analysis and the gas switching procedure requiring a team authorisation as the final check in about 6 to make sure the gas is safe for that depth. We discussed how to handle hypoxic mixes when getting on and off the boat, and why we always ascend on Oxygen, and never on backgas.
.
The discussion moved around the managagement of gases to the treatment of bends, and current thoughts on immediate treatment of DCI with heliox rather than Oxygen. The two Riches wee bang up to date with the lastest research emerging in the area of decompression, and as all three of us find the topic fascinating, this went on for some time. we also discussed tweaking and playing with the deco, what areas can be played with, and what areas should be left alone. We planned out a 100 metre dive, reminding us that Tech2 gives you a set of tools you can use to risk analyse and plan pretty much any Ocean Dive, rather than being a fixed set of rules to be obeyed. More and more, the message was "what would you guys do and here's some ideas to choose from", rather than "this is the way we do it".
The discussion continued over dinner, although the weather made frequent visits to the list of topics on the table. The weather does not look good for the remainder of the course. The plan for tomorrow was to do 2 dives, a shallow skills dive to 10 metres, and then a progression to 25 metres where Rich could mess with us, and see more of an ascent. Personally, I don't think we're going to have any more joy tomorrow than we did today diving wise, but we're learning a lot anyway, and having fun.
After decamping from the NDAC last night and driving to Plymouth, we had high hopes for a week's diving in the sea for a change. Alas, it was not to be. It was, to be fair, blowing it's nadgers off today in Plymouth, with the forecast for the week getting worse and worse. However, seeing as we had the boat to ourselves we went out anyway, especially as we only needed 10 metres of water.
so we dropped into a ridiculous current, in terrible viz, and attempted to hold station carrying 9 stages between the three of us, and perform v drills, S drills and bottle rotations. A few steps into my valve drill Howard had had enough and called the dive. I did a flow check of all my valves (now including the three bottles and the argon bottle) and we ascended. On the surface it was clear that Rich was having as hard a time watching us as we were performing, but we decided to try and get in closer to the fort and see if the current eased up. It just didn't happen. After a little while, the dive was called and we got back on the boat. Getting off and on the boat is a bit ttoo much like hard work to be buggering about in 10 metres. Howard suggested that we skip the remainder of the course and jump immediately in on the Affric at 70 metres, with the logic that anyone that survived the dive should be given an automatic pass. Luckily for us, Rich decided that this would probably not be the best of plans, so we headed back to Aquanauts to make the mst of the remainder of the day by covering theory.
So, into the classroom we went, and discussed minimum deco as it is affected by having a bottom stage. strategies for different bottles including the use of additional deep deco mixes, and how these affect minimum gas. Tech2 adds a level fo complexity in the theory to the point where there simply are no right or wrong answers. there certianly is no GUE big book of rules about how deco is conducted or how gas strategy is managed. Rich simply enabled us to discuss all the options and come to our own conclusions. This course is all about making you think for yourself, rather than try and provide you with answers. It was a very interesting discussion, and moved onto decompression illness and oxygen toxicity, and what options are available - or indeed simply not available- when things occur at different depths. For the example, GUE's approach to Oxygen management is that the only gas on which we ever push the PPO2 to 1.6 is Oxygen at 6 metres. In a freakish coincidence, we train to lift unconscious divers from 6 metres. The deeper the decompression mix, the lower the Max PPo2 is on it. none of them reach 1.6. The discussion went along the lines of that we reckon we'd have a fair shot of lifting a toxing diver from the shallows, but the toxing diver at 70 metres is probably going to die. This took the discussion back to the reasoning why we are so anal about gas analysis and the gas switching procedure requiring a team authorisation as the final check in about 6 to make sure the gas is safe for that depth. We discussed how to handle hypoxic mixes when getting on and off the boat, and why we always ascend on Oxygen, and never on backgas.
.
The discussion moved around the managagement of gases to the treatment of bends, and current thoughts on immediate treatment of DCI with heliox rather than Oxygen. The two Riches wee bang up to date with the lastest research emerging in the area of decompression, and as all three of us find the topic fascinating, this went on for some time. we also discussed tweaking and playing with the deco, what areas can be played with, and what areas should be left alone. We planned out a 100 metre dive, reminding us that Tech2 gives you a set of tools you can use to risk analyse and plan pretty much any Ocean Dive, rather than being a fixed set of rules to be obeyed. More and more, the message was "what would you guys do and here's some ideas to choose from", rather than "this is the way we do it".
The discussion continued over dinner, although the weather made frequent visits to the list of topics on the table. The weather does not look good for the remainder of the course. The plan for tomorrow was to do 2 dives, a shallow skills dive to 10 metres, and then a progression to 25 metres where Rich could mess with us, and see more of an ascent. Personally, I don't think we're going to have any more joy tomorrow than we did today diving wise, but we're learning a lot anyway, and having fun.
Tech 2 Course Report: Day 1
Day 1.
Well, either GUE has undergone a fundamental shift in it’s approach to training, or at the very least the UK training director has a very different style than this team has encountered previously. Previously, various members of this team have been threatened with verbal assassination, clubbing with a stick, and on one memorable day, stabbing by Tech instructors in the past. Not anymore. Now, the instructions is more of a specialised coaching. The instructors listen, and give individual guidance. The course is more about you and your requirements, albeit within the usual strict performance requirements of a GUE course.
But then, Tech2 is a bit of a weird course. There is a depth limit on the qualification, but the course gives you the tools to plan and execute pretty much any open circuit dive you care to invest the time and energy in. The drills described in the course materials are there as guidelines, and are modified by the instructors to suit your specific learning needs. The course materials themselves are well prepared, and reviewed by most of the senior team at GUE. We got the feeling that at the Tech2 level, we were being brought more into the fold than previously. It’s a fascinating experience.
Anyway, we all rocked up at the NDC to do the first day. Richard Lundren (RL) is the official instructor, and so did the official safety briefings and introduction to the course. As Rich Walker (RW) was interning on the course, he would be delivering most of the actual content under the ever watchful eye of RL, with RL chipping in here and there to add a different perspective, or give the benefit of his frankly ludicrous amount of diving experience.
On land, we walked through gas switching and stowing procedures. These were obviously the same as at Tech1 level. Well, not quite. Whilst the procedure was obviously identical, there was a great deal more finesse put into it, with checks and balances here and there, all designed to reduce the risk of swapping to the wrong gas when you have a potentially large number of bottles clipped to you. We went through it mentally a few times before moving on. We then discussed how to handle multiple bottles. RW has a great style of doing this, which I remembered from my fundamentals course with him. Contrary to popular belief, GUE instructors by and large do not say “Do things this way because I say so”. What they, and especially RW do is to let the group discuss it, and use the benefit of experience to point out potential flaws in your argument. Pretty soon we had come to the ideal solution( to fit in with the rest of the DIR configuration and procedures obviously) for wearing two bottles, and a leash containing one or more other bottles. We then had quite a discussion about how all of these boltsnaps should be arranged on chest and hip d rings, which I guess sounds like overkill until you try it in the water and realise that unless you do have a robust solution for doing it, usually means you end up cross-clipping things and getting into a nightmare of stress.
We then talked about how to rotate deco bottles, to bring bottles off the leash and onto you, and take bottles off you and onto the leash. Again, a robust procedure, which we practiced out of the water for a while, and spent the rest of the day doing in the water. For those interested, a summary might be unclip the tail of the stage you want to put on the leash, and unclip the leash whilst your hand is already back there. Bring the leash to your front. Unclip the nose of the stage you want to put on the leash, and clip it onto the leash. Now unclip the bottle that was already on the leash, and nose clip it to your chest d ring. Finally, take the leasg round and clip it onto your hip, and tail clip the stage whilst your hand is there. To those that think that sounds complicated, it’s done with a minimum of movement, and makes a lot more sense when you see it. To those to whom that sounds simple, remember you can’t see much of what is happening on your hip, and moving all of these bottles around plays holy hell with buoyancy and trim.
Ahh buoyancy. Deep joy. We all struggled with that today. 3 heavy bottles attached – more gas in the wing. That meant it dumped from the wing quicker. So coming up to stops , we had to relearn how much gas todump to bring you to a stop without overshooting it or dumping too much. This took a couple of dives, and is something we need to keep working on.
Once all of the theory was out of the way, we jumped in for a 2 and a half hour dive. We descended to 6 metres and did valve drills and S drills. Again RW was looking for more finesse. Now cam our first bottle rotation and ascent. Well, we didn’t hit the surface, but I got lost in the procedure and just stressed out. We recovered it but it wasn’t by any means pretty. Descend again, and this time we go to ten metres, and start laying line. Like Tech1, the line laying is a distraction to give you something to do, rather than keep a concerned eye on the instructor. Mr bubble gun appeared several times and made things fail. Right posts failed, left posts failed, deco bottles failed, stage bottles failed. Masks disappeared, people went out of air. It was Tech1 all over again, but with more bottles. And considerably less stress. I suspect partly the lack of stress is down to the fact that we have moved on as divers since Tech1. But part of it is definitely the more relaxed teaching style.
Once RW was satisfied he couldn’t fail anything else, we went into an ascent.
8 metres. Start the clock. Wait 1 minute, move to 7 metres. Wait one minute. Move to 6 metres. Switch team to 21 metre bottle. 3 minutes deco during which to do the bottle rotation. Wait 1 minute. Move to 4 metres. Switch back to backgas ready for the switch to Oxygen. . Stow the 21metre bottle hose. Move to 3 metres. Switch to Oxygen. 3 mins deco. Clear up hoses, tidy up lightcords. 1 minute at 2 metres. 1 minute at 1 metre. Surface.
That became our ascent for the day, and we did it several times. At one point RL stepped in and said we needed some more time doing rotations. So we dropped to 6 metres and just rotated. And rotated, and rotated. At the beginning of the dives the rotations were just terrible, but got smoother and smoother as we went on. Partly this was us just getting better and better at it. But partly it was breathing down the bottom stage, as moving an AL80 full of nitrox onto a leash in front of you is a nightmare as it is so heavy. On a real multi bottle mix dive, it would be full of mix rather than nitrox and would behave very differently.
5 o clock and we left the water for a debrief. RW announced there was enough there for him to work with. Tech1 skills were there but rusty and the bottle rotations had improved during the course of the day. Plan for the next day would be more finesse of V and S drills, and tighten teamwork during failures and ascents. This was no surprise to us, as we had a pretty good idea of what had gone well and what needed some work.
On the last GUE course I did I sat in my car at the end of the first day and gave serious consideration to giving up and driving home. This time, I can’t wait for tomorrow to begin. Apparently, we’re going to dive in something called “the sea” tomorrow. This will all be very new to us, but that’s what courses are for I guess.
Well, either GUE has undergone a fundamental shift in it’s approach to training, or at the very least the UK training director has a very different style than this team has encountered previously. Previously, various members of this team have been threatened with verbal assassination, clubbing with a stick, and on one memorable day, stabbing by Tech instructors in the past. Not anymore. Now, the instructions is more of a specialised coaching. The instructors listen, and give individual guidance. The course is more about you and your requirements, albeit within the usual strict performance requirements of a GUE course.
But then, Tech2 is a bit of a weird course. There is a depth limit on the qualification, but the course gives you the tools to plan and execute pretty much any open circuit dive you care to invest the time and energy in. The drills described in the course materials are there as guidelines, and are modified by the instructors to suit your specific learning needs. The course materials themselves are well prepared, and reviewed by most of the senior team at GUE. We got the feeling that at the Tech2 level, we were being brought more into the fold than previously. It’s a fascinating experience.
Anyway, we all rocked up at the NDC to do the first day. Richard Lundren (RL) is the official instructor, and so did the official safety briefings and introduction to the course. As Rich Walker (RW) was interning on the course, he would be delivering most of the actual content under the ever watchful eye of RL, with RL chipping in here and there to add a different perspective, or give the benefit of his frankly ludicrous amount of diving experience.
On land, we walked through gas switching and stowing procedures. These were obviously the same as at Tech1 level. Well, not quite. Whilst the procedure was obviously identical, there was a great deal more finesse put into it, with checks and balances here and there, all designed to reduce the risk of swapping to the wrong gas when you have a potentially large number of bottles clipped to you. We went through it mentally a few times before moving on. We then discussed how to handle multiple bottles. RW has a great style of doing this, which I remembered from my fundamentals course with him. Contrary to popular belief, GUE instructors by and large do not say “Do things this way because I say so”. What they, and especially RW do is to let the group discuss it, and use the benefit of experience to point out potential flaws in your argument. Pretty soon we had come to the ideal solution( to fit in with the rest of the DIR configuration and procedures obviously) for wearing two bottles, and a leash containing one or more other bottles. We then had quite a discussion about how all of these boltsnaps should be arranged on chest and hip d rings, which I guess sounds like overkill until you try it in the water and realise that unless you do have a robust solution for doing it, usually means you end up cross-clipping things and getting into a nightmare of stress.
We then talked about how to rotate deco bottles, to bring bottles off the leash and onto you, and take bottles off you and onto the leash. Again, a robust procedure, which we practiced out of the water for a while, and spent the rest of the day doing in the water. For those interested, a summary might be unclip the tail of the stage you want to put on the leash, and unclip the leash whilst your hand is already back there. Bring the leash to your front. Unclip the nose of the stage you want to put on the leash, and clip it onto the leash. Now unclip the bottle that was already on the leash, and nose clip it to your chest d ring. Finally, take the leasg round and clip it onto your hip, and tail clip the stage whilst your hand is there. To those that think that sounds complicated, it’s done with a minimum of movement, and makes a lot more sense when you see it. To those to whom that sounds simple, remember you can’t see much of what is happening on your hip, and moving all of these bottles around plays holy hell with buoyancy and trim.
Ahh buoyancy. Deep joy. We all struggled with that today. 3 heavy bottles attached – more gas in the wing. That meant it dumped from the wing quicker. So coming up to stops , we had to relearn how much gas todump to bring you to a stop without overshooting it or dumping too much. This took a couple of dives, and is something we need to keep working on.
Once all of the theory was out of the way, we jumped in for a 2 and a half hour dive. We descended to 6 metres and did valve drills and S drills. Again RW was looking for more finesse. Now cam our first bottle rotation and ascent. Well, we didn’t hit the surface, but I got lost in the procedure and just stressed out. We recovered it but it wasn’t by any means pretty. Descend again, and this time we go to ten metres, and start laying line. Like Tech1, the line laying is a distraction to give you something to do, rather than keep a concerned eye on the instructor. Mr bubble gun appeared several times and made things fail. Right posts failed, left posts failed, deco bottles failed, stage bottles failed. Masks disappeared, people went out of air. It was Tech1 all over again, but with more bottles. And considerably less stress. I suspect partly the lack of stress is down to the fact that we have moved on as divers since Tech1. But part of it is definitely the more relaxed teaching style.
Once RW was satisfied he couldn’t fail anything else, we went into an ascent.
8 metres. Start the clock. Wait 1 minute, move to 7 metres. Wait one minute. Move to 6 metres. Switch team to 21 metre bottle. 3 minutes deco during which to do the bottle rotation. Wait 1 minute. Move to 4 metres. Switch back to backgas ready for the switch to Oxygen. . Stow the 21metre bottle hose. Move to 3 metres. Switch to Oxygen. 3 mins deco. Clear up hoses, tidy up lightcords. 1 minute at 2 metres. 1 minute at 1 metre. Surface.
That became our ascent for the day, and we did it several times. At one point RL stepped in and said we needed some more time doing rotations. So we dropped to 6 metres and just rotated. And rotated, and rotated. At the beginning of the dives the rotations were just terrible, but got smoother and smoother as we went on. Partly this was us just getting better and better at it. But partly it was breathing down the bottom stage, as moving an AL80 full of nitrox onto a leash in front of you is a nightmare as it is so heavy. On a real multi bottle mix dive, it would be full of mix rather than nitrox and would behave very differently.
5 o clock and we left the water for a debrief. RW announced there was enough there for him to work with. Tech1 skills were there but rusty and the bottle rotations had improved during the course of the day. Plan for the next day would be more finesse of V and S drills, and tighten teamwork during failures and ascents. This was no surprise to us, as we had a pretty good idea of what had gone well and what needed some work.
On the last GUE course I did I sat in my car at the end of the first day and gave serious consideration to giving up and driving home. This time, I can’t wait for tomorrow to begin. Apparently, we’re going to dive in something called “the sea” tomorrow. This will all be very new to us, but that’s what courses are for I guess.
Thursday, 4 September 2008
The chimps tackle T2
Well this week sees the Chimps (well GLOC, Garf and Howard) tackle Tech 2 with Rich Lundgren and Rich Walker down in Plymouth. Will 5 days of full on beasting and dive theory take its toll on their fabulousness? We will have to see...
Monday, 4 August 2008
TFT's "Nuts Deep in Rust" Narvik Tour 2008
Narvik is a town of 18,000 people in the county of Nordland, Norway. "Nord" means North, and this is not an underestimation. Look at a map of the world. Now head up the uk with your finger until you reach the Shetland Islands. Now move your fingers to the east and you should hit Oslo. Now move your finger north again and when you almost run out of country you'll be in the Narvik area. Now you;re in the Arctic circle, where a day last six months, and the following night the remaining six months. Where everything is tough enough to survive a change in temperature from day to night of 30 degrees to minus 30 degrees. And where the water is testicle-retractingly cold.
Narvik is dominated by an Iron Ore shipping plant, and it is to this plant that the town owes its growth. The ore is shipped from the rich mines in Sweden. During the summer the ore can be shipped from other locations, but in the winter Narvik is the most northerly harbour that does not freeze over. It is to this day a busy shipping pant, and a busy location, and much of the goods that are imported into northern Norway still come through Narvik.
The strategic importance of this harbour was not lost on the Germans in World War 2. Their entire economic and war footing was based on steel, and the supply of iron ore for that steel of vital importance. during the summer months, the ore could be shipped from the Swedish town of Lulea, but in the water Narvik was the only option. The town thus became the focal point of the Norwegian campaign for the Germans.
On April 9th, 1940 ten German Destroyers, each carrying 200 mountain warfare troops, slipped into the Ofoten Fjord and quietly made their way to Narvik. Two outdated coastal defence ships, the Eidsvold and the Norge were alerted and fired warning shots across the German ships bows. The Germans were under orders to capture Narvik without a fight if possible, so after some signals were batted back and forth, the Norwegians sent across an officer to speak to the Germans. When the German captains failed to convince the Norwegians to give up without a fight, torpedoes were immediately slammed into the side of the Coastal defence ships, putting 276 men into the freezing waters, where they lives ended. This battle lasted less than 20 minutes from start to finish. The Germans had successfully invaded.
As a matter of complete coincidence, the day previously had seen a British task force int he area laying mines to stop just such an occurrence, as Churchill had decided there was no way he could accept Johnny foreigner having access to all that iron ore. Commodore Bernard Warburton Lee commanding the 2nd destroyer flotilla had 5 H class British destroyers. On the way to Norway, he wrote to his wife "I believe the war is going to start soon, and I am going to start it".
Warburton-Lee was a "bit handy" at this Naval battle stuff. He arrived at the entrance to the port, hidden by snowstorms from Johnny foreigner. He then took the Hardy, Hunter and Havock into the harbour, and sank two of the German destroyers with a withering force of torpedoes and gunfire. Thus ended the Wilhelm Heidkamp and the Anton Schmidt. Next, the Hotspur and Hostile joined in a second attack which sank a number of merchant ships. Warburton-Lee then withdrew outside the harbour.
Warburton-Lee decided to remain at Narvik for long enough to make one more attack, before making his way back out to sea. Before he could go this, the three destroyers from Herjangs Fjord appeared to his north west. Now they were at sea the larger German destroyers had the British at something of a disadvantage, which soon got worse when they were attacked by the two destroyers to their west. The British were now caught between two attacks. The Hardy was badly damaged, and had to be beached while the Hunter was sunk outright. Captain Warburton-Lee was killed in this phase of the battle. He was later awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross. A third British destroyer, the Hotspur was also badly damaged. The five German destroyers had also taken some damage in the fighting, and failed to press their advantage, allowing the two relatively undamaged British destroyers to rescue the Hotspur. On their way out of the fjord, the British sank the German ammunition ship Rauenfels, the only one to have reached Narvik.
Three days later the British returned to Narvik in much greater force (second battle of Narvik, 13 April 1940), with the battleship HMS Warspite and nine destroyers, and quickly sank the surviving German ships.
The ferocity of the battle can only be imagined. At one point, the Hardy turned broadside to the harbour and launched TEN torpedoes. The end result of all this carnage is that the harbour and fjord were simply littered with destroyers and with merchantmen of all sizes. It looks a little more peaceful today.
The harbour today has been cleared of some of the destroyers, all dumped outside the harbour in a perfect formation for diving together. However, some of the merchantmentmen, not considered a risk to shipping, are still exactly where they sank, perhaps 5 minutes from the dock. they lay in a natural harbour , surrounded by mountains. the water is brackish, as although he fjord is tidal the water itself hardly moves, and the run off from the mountains is just so staggeringly huge. The end result for divers is an extremely well protected mecca for wreck diving, with perfectly clear but cold water, no currents or significant water movement to speak of, and extremely well preserved wrecks. Today you can still dive most of the German Destroyers, although some of the British ones are protected. You can also dive the merchantmen. The all lie in 30 metres of water or shallower.
The Dive Boat
The MS Galten is a converted Swedish Mine Sweeper. 24 metres long and extremely solid in the water, she could handle heavy seas with ease, never mind the glass calm waters of the Norwegian Fjord. She was converted by skipper Anders to serve as a perfect technical dive boat, and is extremely well fitted out for this. The boat has lots of nice little touches, like a ship behind every twinset for simultaneous filling of all bottles, a built in sauna, an attached rib for picking up divers and fishing, and a large sheltered kitting up area.
The boat was tied up at Narvik Havn (The port of Narvik) every evening, but the long trip back from the dive sites was an average ten minutes so this was hardly a chore. The skipper was ably assisted by crewmember Patrick, who besides being a dab hand with crewing a boat, is also a hotel trained chef, and provided the divers with three cooked meals a day to keep the home fires burning. The boat had a good ladder at the stern, a large top desk for drying kit and snoozing, and enough berths for the two crew and twelve burly divers, including some private rooms as well as a large stern bunk room. Needless to say this stern bunkroom smelled like the inside of a skunk’s arse by the end of the week.
The full line of DIR divers for the invitational trip, made up of YDers and DIRXers was
1. Rich Walker
2. GLOC
3. Garf
4. Howard Payne
5. James the Badger
6. Joe Hesketh
7. Zuckerkringel
8. Jimbob
9. Osama Gobara
10. Godiva
11. Vid
12. Aitch
This was an interesting collection of divers at all levels, from fundies qualified people, to Tech1 and Tech2, with some Cave1 and Cave2 levels thrown into the mix. Obviously we had 12 identical sets of kit, but also a collection of scooters and enough spares to kit another few divers.
There was no issue with the kit as Rich had arranged several tons of shipping, so we packed up all our kit, spares, toolkits, scooters etc, and sent them off to Norway. This removed much of the stress of packing, and left us with 30kg to handle last minute items and clothes etc. Quite a pleasant way of organising things.
All we had to do now was get there.
26th and 27th July 2008
Well, the first day started off badly, tailed off a bit in the middle, and the less said about the end the better. It started with Gareth having a nightmare with his camera requiring no less dramatics than a frantic drive into London to Cameras Underwater, just before we were due to leave for Heathrow, and then having to beg YDer and Chimp Technician David to meet him at a secret location in order for David to perform field repairs on one of the camera strobes. David, armed with multi-tester and portable soldering iron, saved the day, as he has done many times in the past.
Next up for a pre-trip nightmare was Howard. Howard, the duke of cool, the master of calm, stepped out of his flat for a quick beer, and let the door close behind him. For the love of God. A very panicky half hour was then spent trying to figure out what to do, contemplating special-forces style breach through to lock picking and removing windows. However, in the end he decided that the most appropriate approach would be to walk in through the unlocked back door and take it from there. Situation number two – resolved.
Next up is Badger, who arrives pretty much on time to pick me up, and then proceeds to run over a cat on the way out of Haywards Heath. Obviously, we then pulled over and I went climbing through the fences and bushes looking for this injured cat. Eventually I found it, and aside from a bit of shock, it did not appeared to be inured, so as we had no idea of where the cat had come from I texted the local CPL branch to let them know, and we then continued on our way.
We were due to meet at the Thistle hotel in Heathrow. I believe the plan was that this would mean we would not have to get up early, and could have a couple of beers. Fantastic. After driving through Heathrow three times Badger and I eventually found the hotel and met up with Howard and GLOC, who had arrived half an hour earlier. There was an Indian wedding going on at the hotel, and the smell of food from the hotel was absolutely amazing. So we went directly to the bar to order food and beer. And more beer. And more beer. Eventually, we decided that as we were getting up at 4am to go to the bloody airport, we should all go to bed. Which we did. And then Badger and I went down to the bar again. For more beer. And more beer.
Somewhere around 1am, and absolutely shitfaced, I went to bed. I closed my eyes and it was 4am. I had the mother of a hangover. I had the father of a hangover. And I could feel a lot of little hangovers coming on.
Between 4am and 6pm was just planes, trains and automobiles. A flight to Oslo. Three of hours of waiting. A flight somewhere else. A 50 mile taxi. Gahhh. Narvik is not a simple place to get to. As the day went on, everyone else got taller, more blonde and more beautiful. and we looked more like a sack of shit.
At this point it’s worth introducing a few facts about Norway. Firstly, whilst waiting in Oslo, I ordered 3 coffees and three ham and cheese sandwiches. The lady behind the counter relieved me of twenty eight pounds. That’s 28. As badger eloquently put it, “nut crunchingly expensive”. DVDS cost between 20 and 30 quid. CDs are 20 quid. A pint, oh let’s not even go there.
Next fact is that it doesn’t go dark in Narvik in the summer. I mean ever. This plays very strange mental tricks with your head. It plays havoc with your sleeping patterns and kicks your circadian rhythm in the nuts. Very bizarre.
Next fact. Northern Norway is gut wrenchingly, stomach-flippingly, jaw droppingly beautiful. The view on the final plane flight coming across the fjords and seeing the effects of the glaciers was just breathtaking. It was incredible, and everyone was looking out the windows.
Next fact. The water is cold. I mean involuntary-retraction-of-testicles, can’t feel your legs kind of cold. Badger, GLOC , Rich Walker and I went for a 6k run sooner after we had arrived, and went we came back we joked about jumping in to cool off. Whilst Gareth was dipping his toes in the water and saying “fuck that” I dived off the railing into the water. Well bend me over backwards and roger me gently with a chainsaw. It was unbelievably cold. Rich had mentioned something about Narvik being in the Arctic circle and the waters coming directly south from the north pole, and somewhere in my head a little voice was reminding me of this, whilst my balls leapt up into my body and my fingers and down shut down in self defence. I swam to the ladder rather quickly. Gareth, blatently peer pressured, now had no choice but to jump in or face me making “cluck cluck” sounds all week. So in he went. And out he came, swearing and shivering. Badger took a little more convincing, but fair play he went in. We decided afterwards to go for a quick run and dip every morning, or at least every morning we could face it.
28th July
As we had promised ourselves, Badger, GLOC and I got up an hour before everyone else and ran 5 k along the causeway in the morning sunshine, whilst the sun burn off the very low cloud cover and revealed another beautiful day. When we got back to the boat people were starting to get up, but the three of us jumped in the water to cool down, which was very, very effective. A great breakfast was had by all, and a very lazy trip out to the first wreck took a grand total of ten minutes from time the engine was fired up to the time we were tied into the shot. Think Scapa with all the wrecks moved to just outside Stromness harbour, all the mountains pulled up into snow-capped peaks, and the water temperature dropped to about 10 degrees.
The SS Romanby was a British Merchantman 130 metres long weighing approximately 4880 tons, and now lying in approximately 28 metres of Water. She was sunk during the invasion in 1940, partially filled with Iron ore right next to the quayside. Today, she is completely open, with all holds and corridors accessible to those willing to penetrate the wreck, and a stunning dive if you are a wreck ferret.
TFT was split into two teams, as Rich W had joined us and this made for a team a little large. So as Howard is a complete tart, and Rich looks a bit handy in the water, we put them with Gareth so Gareth could take photos, whilst Badger and I would play who can wriggle into the most unfeasibly small looking gap in the wreck. This turned out to be a result, as Badger and I share a similar attitude to wreck diving, in that the point is to be on the inside of them.
Kitting up on the boat is just no drama. There’s loads of room, and with 12 DIR divers on the boat, there was no faffing or fettling, changing kit or deep discussions on deco or minimum gas. Everyone just kitted up, went through their team checks, and jumped in. Lovely.
Badger and I descended the shot and I immediately located the first big dark hole I could find, inverted to a heads down position, and that was the last time I saw the outside of the wreck until the end of the dive, an hour later. I’ll let Gareth tell the story of the dive and the wreck with his pictures, but it was a wreck ferrets dream. Multiple levels, long corridors, each hold completely accessible, even the enormous engine room full of wrecked equipment and tools, accessible to those not too wary for a penetration dive. The wreck has 4 holds, and each of them are lined with a layer of Iron Oxide. Picture the scene in the movie alien where Kane is lowered into the egg room and the walls and floor of the room are covered with a fine mist. It was just like that. Without the face-hugging, chest-bursting, multi-jawed, homicidal alien monsters of course. The “mist” looked green fro the light until you shined your torch into it, at which point it went bright orange. Incredible, and true to form, our Gareth took some stunning pictures, which are going to end up on people’s desktops I suspect.
What followed was 60 minutes of delightful diving. Badger and I called the dive pretty much at the same time, when we reached minimum gas. We swam back to the shotline, which was no effort in the incredible visibility (this is the nearest wreck to the harbour with the worst visibility, but it was still 15-20 metres in places), and then ascended back to the boat. After this first dive, we steamed back into Narvik, and the 6 hour surface interval gives you an indication of the tone of this trip. Slow, no stress, no hassle, everything done at a relaxed pace.
We all went up to the Narvik Musem, which gives a detailed history of Narvik’s involvement in the second world war. There was everything you might expect and a few suprises, like the sniper’s nest discovered in he 70’s as it was abandoned 30 odd years earlier and moved piece by piece and recreated in the museum. Fascinating stuff. Obviously, there was lots of information about the battles themselves, but that story is easily researched and explained elsewhere.
The second dive of the day was even better than the first – the same wreck, but now we knw our bearings. James and I headed for an opening we had spotted earlier in the day and dissapeard in the wreck to reappear 1 hour an 15 minutes later, covered in rust . At one point James and I debated passionately whether or not a gap was wide enough for us to squeeze through, and I resolved the discussion by getting myself properly wedged into it. In a perfect example of DIR trim and buoyancy control I pulled some piping out of the silt and threw it out of the way, leaving enough room for us to get through. James decided not to swim through the wall of now complete zero viz, and found another way to reach me. He then “had words” with me It was a great laugh, and everyone had a great dive. I’m sure others will post descriptions of the wreck itself, but unfortunately there were no real photos from the second dive, as Gareth had left his camera on manual focus.
After dinner that evening, some of us decided to climb the 1KM hill overlooking the harbour. There was a 30 minute walk to a cable car, then a 600 metre cable car ride, followed by a fairly serious 400 metre hill walk. About 8 people made it to the top of the cable car. 5 people made it a hundred metres further. Only Chris and I made it to the top of the hill. We arrived at 11.30, still, and at midnight we had a snowball fight in the midnight sun. Now how often do you get to experience something like that. We walked back to find everyone else asleep, hardly surprising as it was now 2 am. Strangely I did not have problems sleeping that night.
The next day had promises of interesting dives, as it would be our first visit to two of the German warships – specifically two destroyers lying side by side in close proximity. James and I decided to buddy up again as we had had a laugh the day before. Gareth remembered the auto focus.
Tuesday 29th July 2008
Anders had decided to put us on the pile of destroyers right outside the port for two dives. these would be the Wilhelm Heidkamp and and Anton Schmidt. These wrecks were both 125 metres long, and approximately 12 metres broad, weighing circa 3500 tons each, and lying side by side immediately outside the harbour entrance where they were dumped for being a nuisance to shipping. this being a DIR boat, a great deal of research had been done on the wrecks we were to dive.
the ships now lie in approximately 28 metres of very clear water. Howard had decided that today was a scooter day. This left Badger, GLOC and I to have a bimble about, with penetrating the wreck again number one of the list of “must do’s for the day”. Skipper Anders had briefed everyone on the wrecks for the day, and we had learned that there were corridors allowing access, but requiring very careful finning. Some of the corridors allowed a complete swim through, and some were blocked by cables and fallen plating some distance in. Guess which one we chose…
Badger started laying the line. However, I wasn’t happy with the way he was doing it, so took over the number 1 role. The corridor was maybe 1 metre high by 1.5 metres wide. There was little room for aggressive finning, and certainly no vertical forgiveness for anything other than flat trim so it was all very gentle, very slow. I tied off every 4 metres or so. After a while I came to cables blocking the corridor. Arse. I knew they were both behind me so I reached behind me and gave the turn around signal. There was no way we could turn around we this was now a bit of a pain in the arse, as even using slow gentle fin kicks had destroyed the viz. So all three of us back-kicked all the way back long and out of the corridor, staying in touch contact, trying not to piss ourselves laughing at picking the one bloody corridor that was a non-starter. The wreck spat us out like a shit flavoured mint imperial, an we were fallowed by a cloud of crap. I recovered the primary tie off and we decided to stay outside for a bit. We swam around the central destroyer, peering into holes. What astonished us was how bloody small all the entrances were. We concluded that whilst the high command of the German Navy was run by German nationals, a crack Nazi unit had actually captive bred a race of oompah loompahs to run their warships as there’s no way people could fit down some of those hatches.
One of the destroyers is still sitting upright, so we focussed on this for the reminder of the dives. It is covered in life, which I found to my regret when GLOC caught badger and I playing starfish Frisbee and gave us the wagging finger that says “badcrumble says no”. The water temperature was actually relatively pleasant, and the viz better than anything I have seen in the UK, with the possible exception of the tabarka in Scapa. Everybody surfaced and began the continual laughter that accompanies a good dive on any dive boat in the world.
Forty Six minutes into the dive, God decided it was time to end the dive, as the inflator button from Gareth’s Halcyon Inflat-o-matic shot out of the inflator and disappeared into the depths, with the contents of his twinset desperately trying to follow it. Gareth handed off his camera to badger and shut down his right post. We called the dive at this point, and ascended where we were, with Badger and I keeping a close eye on GLOC, who was very carefully ascending without dumping any more from his wing than absolutely necessary. The ascent went fine, and we broke into the sunlight ofa 30 degree day in Narvik, just in time for Chef Patrick’s Salmon and Asparagus soup, with, of course, his homemade bread, which was becoming a daily highlight.
The guys began filing the cylinders for the second dive of the day, which was another visit to the central destroyer. We had decided on a specific area just aft of the bridge area to investigate and look for a way into the wreck.
This dive promised some great shots for Gareth. We went into the wreck a little, but it actually offered little in the way of openings, or so we thought until we saw Joe Hesketh make the sign of the cross and follow an unstoppable Howard Payne into a penetration that ended up going the entire length of the wreck. An outstanding performance. We had begun a similar penetration, but in tohe third room I was unhappy with the amount of cables and loose plating flapping around, and turned the team around to swim out again. On the way out my arm began to feel cold. Unfortunately, my suit flooded immediately after we exited the wreck, so that was pretty much the end of that for me. I had obviously grabbed onto one too many bits of rusty crap when doing tie-offs, and holed my dry glove in four separate places. I sent GLOC and Badger off of their own and mad ea leisure swim to the shotline and drifted up slowly. You could see the Galten on the surface from the bottom of the line and despite the cold arm I spent 15 minutes ascending the shotline, just watching all the divers below me on the wreck, moving about in teams of 2, 3 and 4. that was something I hadn’t been able to do before, so I just chilled out, ignored the arm, and drifted up at about a minute per metre to the surface. Out of the water I ran for the shower as I was bloody freezing.
That evening, following a “very” brief team chat, the team broke it’s vow of abstinence and headed down to the local supermarket to buy as much local lager as humanly possible without actually having to perform surgical procedures to remove kidneys and other high value items to sell. The local lager was called “Arctic”. It might as well have been called “drain-o”. It was horrific. We had to drink gallons of it before it began to taste acceptable, and only a bottle of vintage Cuban rum finally washed away the taste.
Several hours later, and completely toasted, we found out that the dive tomorrow was the deeper one of the week. Oops. At that point we called it a night, but not before Patrick had done us proud again with a dinner of reindeer meat and mashed potato.
Wednesday 30th July 2008
1st Hermann Kühne (125x11m ca 3500t)
2nd MS Strassa (127x18m)
Today was the longest steam of the week, and the skipper was somewhat anxious to get going early. It was going to be literally some miles and it must have taken a good 30 minutes to reach the dive site. Somehow we endured the boredom of the endless trip to the divesite. This one was going to prove to be an interesting dive, as it was a destroyer resting at an angle so that the stern of the ship was in 38 metres of water, and the bows were in two metres, so a leisurely hour could be spent drifting upwards from the bottom an finishing your deco still on the wreck. Badger and I dropped in together and descended to the bottom. I let Badger lead as he has that cave diver’s calm, slow approach, ideal for drifting about on a wreck slowly. We moved from 37 metres up to 30 metres, at which point Badger indicated for us to swim back down. I was a little baffled and shouted “what’s up are you not fucking narked enough or something” to him as we were breathing a weak nitrox mix for the dive. His reasoning soon became evident as we rounded the stern of the destroyer and came into what was perhaps 30 metres of light blue water, and an absolutely stunningly preserved wreck. We spent an entire hour drifting around the wreck, with no real need or desire to go inside it as the views wee incredible. We ended up at 2 metres, decoing out on Oxygen, to conclude what was the best dive I have ever had.
The afternoon plan was to dive a couple of merchantmen lying side by side in relatively shallow water. This is my sort of dive. Huge wrecks with loads of opportunities for squirreling around inside them. With great anticipation, I lay down in my bunk to chill out before the dive. And then woke up when everyone was kitting up. I was exhausted, and the thought of rushing to kit up did not fill me with glee so I called the dive and went back to sleep. I got up a bit later when everyone was in the water and thought “I’ll just pop through and check through my kit to make sure it is all ready for tomorrow” and found, to my horror, that my kit had been gang raped in my absence. My backplate was lying on the floor. My cylinders were missing. My torch was missing, it was all quite pitiful. That’s life in TFT though. If you can a dive your decision is not questioned but your kit is immediately up for all takers. Hey ho. Jimbob had taken my cylinders and Badger had wanted to try out a 21W Hid, so off he went with it. This proved to be a costly mistake, as he immediately decided he had to buy one. Then Osama told him he was selling one and had it with him and that was pretty much the end of that. Everyone surfaced safely after their dives to inform me that essentially I had missed the best dive of the week. However, divers being divers they could have missed the wreck and I would have been old that, so I didn’t beat myself up.
That evening was once again lovely, with sunshine over the mountains. Patrick cooked up a storm of freshly caught sea otter meat (caught whilst we were diving, how cool is that), pork chops and potatoes, and TFT supplied the beer. We had gone to the supermarket and bought some slightly more upmarket beer in self defence as none of us could stomach another can of denture cleaner. We also disovered the sauna on the boat that night, and fired it up to 90 degrees before a gang of us ran out and jumped into the arctic waters. I sounds horrific to type it, but it’s very, very refreshing and thoroughly recommend. The skipper has promised to post our testicles to us when they are found.
Thursday 31st July 2008
1st Neuenfels (140x19m 11600t)
2nd Fisser (116x16m)
The pan for the day was back on 32% and back onto the two merchantmen. The two wrecks are so large and intricate that you could spend the week on them. There were scooter teams going in, teams planning on gentle bimbles, teams planning on getting nuts deep into the wreck. GLOC, Badger and I were I the last category, whilst Howard was going off for a scooter with Osama and Joe.
So, this time it was a 4 hold merchantman, lying right inside Narvik Harbour so literally only a 10 minute steam from the quayside to the wreck. Tough week this. The XXX is lying completely upright, with all holds and engine rooms accessible on multiple levels. It was 140m long and 20 metres wide, so a good size wreck, plenty big enough for Howard to cause mayhem on his scooter, whilst leaving enough small passages for the three other members of the team to play about in.
We jumped in and did a bubble check at metres. Everything good and we dropped down to the bottom. Max depth for this dive was 24 metres, and our average around 19, so we had oodles of time and gas. In the end we did 75 minutes on the wreck and then 10 minutes O2 deco. The wreck is lying very open, with a massive torpedo hole in the port side, where she was walloped in 1940. The holds have been emptied, but there is still plenty to see. We started at the stern, where the twin props are still in place, although mostly buried in the sand. Gareth took the obligatory photos here, and we then ascended to the stern rail of the wreck. The following 70 minutes we spent descending into each hold in turn, swimming round each level in the hold, before finding some passageway or hole into the next hold. We spent the entire dive inside the wreck, and although it was a little misty, with that same green / orange iron oxide mist we had seen earlier in the week, the visibility was still very good indeed.
One interesting moment passing between the holds was had when Badger and I were trying to decide whether or not to line into a hole to investigate whether it went through to the next hold, or whether it was no worth it. Just at the moment we made what we thought was a prudent decision based on available gas to NOT go into the hole and find an easier way in, Howard came barrelling through on his own, at full tilt on his Gavin, from the other side. The light at the end of the tunnel is a fat hooligan on a miniG. We shook our heads in despair, and began the swim through, safe in the knowledge that if that asbo-wielding psychopath an fit through the bloody hole, there’s no way it was going to be a problem for any of us.
After approximately 60 minutes, we had covered all the holds, encountering most of the other teams on the way. We then exited the wreck and began a slow leisurely swim over the top of it back to the shotline, where we met up with another three divers. We swam up slowly to 6 metres, swapped to the Oxygen bottles we were carrying, and then looked down at the wreck for ten minutes whilst relaxing. We ascended at 1 metre per minute to the surface, and got out.
Patrick served up an outstanding spag bol whilst Gareth started processing his photos (some crackers today as I’m sure you’ll see sooner or later) and Badger waited for Howard to surface so he could hurl abuse at him, a task he performed with both passion and vigour, although it was all in good humour. Whilst GLOC had said "Howard could have slowed down a bit", and I had said "Howard FFS you nearly made me shit my drysuit", Badger, with his usual eloquence just stormed up to him and said "You're a F*cking menace you fat c*nt"
So, a good lunch was had by all, and we all sat back in the now emerging sunshine to wait for the cylinders to be filled and the boat to move the boat to the second dive of the day, another merchantman. Once again, Badger, GLOC and I planed to squirrel around in the silt and rust, whilst Howard and his hooligan friends fly around on their scooters.
Squirrel around we did. For about 75 bloody minutes. the trouble was, I had called the dive after about 65, but a miscommunication led to the message not being recieved by Badger HQ and GLOC HQ. so we swam on for ten minutes until I just lost my rag and called an immediate ascent. We did the ascent fine but were now 150 metres from the boat. A full on garf temper tantrum was interrupted by Badger suggesting we move out of the way of that "fucking huge chinese superfrieghter bearing down on us you stupid T*wat". I shut up and swam for it . Back on the boat and apologies all round for miscommunicaitons and temper tantrums. GLOC, as always, pulled some stunning photos out of the bag, and it was a top dive once we had all calmed down a bit and I had stopped shaking. Hey ho
We were now being totally spoilt with food. We had fresh Salmon for lunch, and some unidentifiable meat for dinner. Bearning in mind that we had eaten rudulf, and watched sea otter sqealing it's last on the end of a Norwegian harpoon, we had stopped questning what we were being fed with. Apparantly the cuter the animal, the more likely norwegians are to eat it, and the more delicious it is. This is not a place for fish huggers.
01.08
1st Wilhelm Heidkamp
2nd Romanby
The last day. We knew today was going to e a cracker. As per UK diving trip rules, we had all agreed to get mind bogglingly shitfaced that evening, following a couple of marathon dives. Badger and I werre geared up for Oxygen Deco to leave the week ncie and cleanly, and GLOC was after some specific images. With this in mind, the plan was Gareth and I would do the first dive together, with Badger and howard Teaming up with Joe. And then Badger and I would team up for the second dive, with Gareth and Howard teaming up for the second dive. This was the perfect combination as Howard is a complete camera hog and cannot resist being in front of the lens, and I can't interrupting a dive to "model" a shot. Howard will,on the other hand, spend anentire dive doing this.
so, the first dive of the day was the Wilhelm Heidkamp, one of the German Destroyers, funnily enough named after an engineer who saved the battlecruiser Seydlitz during the first world war - a battlecruiser later scuttled at Scapa flow. Anyhoo, I digress.
It was a delightful morning. the weather had turned a bit during the week, but picked up on the last day to see us off nicely. We had had a fantastic week, and were now thinking just of having a fun couple of dives rather than the "penetration to the max" approach we had adopted for the earlier part of the week. We were also going to do some nice slow ascents to leave the week nicely and cleanly.
That being said, the very first thing we did was descend into the mess hall and lay a line into the port passageway. This gave us about a 30 metre penetration into the wreck, passing hatches into lower levels and doors off to the side. GLOC decided that, on this last day, neither of us wanted to get into multilevel penetration, so we just had a nice straight line to swim.
we swam all the way out of the wreck, and then turned around and collected up the line as we swam back through the passageway.Here we encountered a bit of an issue. I was reeling in the line that Gareth had laid, and it had become trapped on a doorr handle. It proved impossible to release. The visibility inevitably closed in. This was not a problem. I knew Gareth was ahead of me on the line, and I knew the line was good to the exit. so I cut the line, ensuring I left the line to the exit secure. I then clipped off the reel and swam up, collecting the line very slowly and carefully by hand as I went. Gareth, of course, was happily waiting for me when I gave him the universal inter-agency signal to indicate i was dissatisfied with the quality of his line laying. He laughed at me, tooka photo, and we swam on.
Swimming around the port side of the wreck, we saw where another team had lined into another passageway. As we swam over the wreck, we would see torches in the corridors beneath us, and the occassional hole through which we could see a tie off. When we reached the end ot he passageway, Howard emerged with a reel. A few seconds later James emerged. Gareth and I were curious as to the apparant lack of Joe Hesketh on the line, so we stayed for a minute to watch. joe, cool as ice, had simply become completely silted up, and just cooly waited for his team to come and get him, which of course they did. Another good example of training turning what could be a drama into just another fun dive. they had done a fairly serious penetration as well, going down some of the hatches Gareth and I had shunned, so much so I was fairly jealous at having done gone down them myself. Ahh well, another time.
there was a line across to the anton Shmidt, so Gareth and I swam across that and then ascended up the shotline at a nice slow pace. A very peaceful, relaxing dive for all.
The second dive of the day was always going to be a biggie. We were to be back on the Romanby, which was my favourite wreck of the week. Gareth and howard were teaming up with Robto go and get some stage and line photos, and Badger and I were planning to inestigate every nook and cranny of this large wreck. Badger had already informed me that I was to "go and eat a lot of carbs as this will be such a long dive someone else might be in power when you surface". I did exactly what he said and ate lots of energy giving chocolate and potatoes and even weetabox between dives. I fancied a long old dive on this wreck myself.
Badger and I spent 90 minutes on the wreck, with an average depth of 18 metres, and temperatures ranging between 6 and 10 degrees C, depending on what deck we were on. thanks to Badgers nice, slow relaxed pace, my SAC had dropped during the week from abourt 18 at the start of the week to about 13 now, even in these cold temperatures. A good lesson learned there. Badger used this pace to investigate every single hold we could get into, and every nook and cranny of the massive engine room. whilst this is an easy dive, everyone was aware that they are heavily silted and a msissplaced fin kick immediately turned superb viz into zero viz, so it was just a matter of relaxing, avoiding flutter kicking at all costs, and taking our time.
It was up there in the top 5 dives I've ever had. It was just perfect. A loooongbottom time, with some nice clean Oxygen on the ascent meant that most people surfaced feeling on top of the world, and ready for the major pissup that would inevitably follow.
Much kit Packing, fettling and tidying ensued, and it was 10 pm by the time we finished. This is, however not a problem when it doesn't get dark, you can quite easily sit up drinking outside all night. Whilst we didn't quite manage this feat, we did consume gigantic quantities of "catering cider", which Badger had decided could "quite possibly give you magical powers if you drank enough". We also finished off the world's supply of Arctic beer to protect the rest of humanity from drinking it. We all went to bed, happy that we had had a stunning week's diving.
The next day was a reverse of the trip out, only with more pain and suffering. We ALL looked rough now. There were things left on on the boat we had to go back for, things left on the boat needing posting out to us, paperwork lost at the airport, tat purched for loved ones. We didn't buy a lot from the duty free becuase duty free in norway is like being gently molested as opposed to gang raped. It might not be the worst that can happen to you, but it's still bloody unpleasant. We also looked like we had all been through some sort of gang initiation ceremony, with our throats suffering from salt burn.
However, at the end of the day, everyone made it to where they were supposed to go.
As for Team foxturd, we had a final mcdonalds together at Heathrow airport before Howard and GLOC drove off, and Badger and I headed for Sussex. It was the end to a stunning week. I had learnt a great dea, certainly about DIR. All week teams had been chopping and changing. All week kit repairs and replacements were happening. All week, things just worked becuase we were all diving the same configurations, the same plans, the same guidelines. I am normally against DIR-only boats as I see them as exclusive, but I have to admit its a very efficient way of running a boat. However, most importanly, I had learnt a great deal about our team. It's fair to say we provided much of the chaos and madness above the water, but in the water when it was appropriate the humour dissapeared and we looked after each other. We took the piss ruthless on the boat, and watched each other carefully under it. This made for a very safe and enjoyable week. We all had a bloody good laugh, some bloody good memories, and I suspect a repeat performance will be happening at some point. In the meantime, the team has Tech2 approaching in the next few weeks, so no doubt there will be another report up then.
so thanks to everyone on the boat, especially rich Walker for organising it all, but especially to GLOC, Howard and Badger for being a good laugh and a solid team in the water.
Thursday, 26 June 2008
Dive team identify Orkney wreck
A team of technical divers has brought years of research to an end with the identification of the wreck of the SS Remus off Orkney.
The divers, led by Kevin Heath and Hazel Weaver, skipper on MV Valkyrie dived a mark in 60m off the east of Orkney on 15 May.
The SS Remus was a 1,079-ton rear-engined collier, one of only three sunk in the Orkneys area, which was sunk during World War One when it struck a mine on 16 Feb 1918.
The ship was on a sealed orders mission which meant there is no record of what she was supposed to be doing but it is likely that she was heading north to meet a capital ship to transfer coal.
Kevin has spent many years researching this and many other wrecks in the area. He was convinced the wreck which has been previously identified as the SS Remus was not following some detailed multi-beam sonar images, but needed divers to go down and identify and image the wreck site.
A trip was put together on the Yorkshire Divers forum with the aim of diving some deeper wrecks inside and outside of Scapa Flow and the SS Remus and another unidentified wreck were on the itinerary.
With calm winds and no swell, the conditions were ideal for this 60m dive. Visibility was around eight-ten metres and the wreck was relatively intact for something of this age. The two boilers and engine were in the correct relative position to the stern and a brief survey was conducted.
Photos were taken of the boilers and the bow section but unfortunately neither the bell nor the maker’s plate were found. This is not surprising considering the wreck has been trawled over several times looking at the amount of netting on the site.
Following the dive and a debrief of what the divers had seen and a review of the photos taken, Kevin was certain that this is the Remus although definitive evidence such as the bell or maker’s plate is still required.
This report was published in Sport Diver magazine after a submission by GLOC, one of the dive team involved in the identification of the wreck.
The divers, led by Kevin Heath and Hazel Weaver, skipper on MV Valkyrie dived a mark in 60m off the east of Orkney on 15 May.
The SS Remus was a 1,079-ton rear-engined collier, one of only three sunk in the Orkneys area, which was sunk during World War One when it struck a mine on 16 Feb 1918.The ship was on a sealed orders mission which meant there is no record of what she was supposed to be doing but it is likely that she was heading north to meet a capital ship to transfer coal.
Kevin has spent many years researching this and many other wrecks in the area. He was convinced the wreck which has been previously identified as the SS Remus was not following some detailed multi-beam sonar images, but needed divers to go down and identify and image the wreck site.A trip was put together on the Yorkshire Divers forum with the aim of diving some deeper wrecks inside and outside of Scapa Flow and the SS Remus and another unidentified wreck were on the itinerary.
With calm winds and no swell, the conditions were ideal for this 60m dive. Visibility was around eight-ten metres and the wreck was relatively intact for something of this age. The two boilers and engine were in the correct relative position to the stern and a brief survey was conducted.Photos were taken of the boilers and the bow section but unfortunately neither the bell nor the maker’s plate were found. This is not surprising considering the wreck has been trawled over several times looking at the amount of netting on the site.
Following the dive and a debrief of what the divers had seen and a review of the photos taken, Kevin was certain that this is the Remus although definitive evidence such as the bell or maker’s plate is still required.This report was published in Sport Diver magazine after a submission by GLOC, one of the dive team involved in the identification of the wreck.
Thursday, 19 June 2008
Team Foxturd Preferred Suppliers
This link is for Team Foxturd to show its appreciation of our favourite suppliers. These are companies who have shown to have personally provided a service above that which you would normally expect; be that price, level of service, timeliness or anything that makes the Chimps say 'he needs a little recognition'.
Jim at Amphibian Water Sports.
Cylinder cleaning - cheap, fast turnaround
Gas fills - one of the cheapest around and good 250bar fills.
Suit repairs and servicing. No problem too much for them.
Supplier of dive equipment and operator of a hard boat in Plymouth
Top rate skipper based in Weymouth. Operates Lamlash, an exped class fleet tender and Outcast a Venom 38 hardboat.
Jim at Amphibian Water Sports.
Cylinder cleaning - cheap, fast turnaround
Gas fills - one of the cheapest around and good 250bar fills.
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SDS WatersportsSuit repairs and servicing. No problem too much for them.
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Brian Allen at AquanautsSupplier of dive equipment and operator of a hard boat in Plymouth
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Grahame Knott at Outcast Diving/Weymouth DivingTop rate skipper based in Weymouth. Operates Lamlash, an exped class fleet tender and Outcast a Venom 38 hardboat.
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Steve Johnstone at Channel Diver
Another top class skipper, this time operating out of Brighton and covers trips into the English Channel and across to France
Another top class skipper, this time operating out of Brighton and covers trips into the English Channel and across to France
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Brian Cooper: 07810 881899. Link on YD Independent Scuba Service Technician (for most regulator types we believe..) Lovely bloke, very knowledgeable.
The Badger Loses His Virginity (on the DIR-UK boat)
As I drop down the shot line I can see the exhaust of the team that hit the water a few minutes before us mushrooming up and reflecting the torch beam of GLOC behind me like a series of concave mirrors. I equalise, add a little air to my dry suit and continue down the shot. After few moments the outline of the LH Carl comes into view below us, silhouetted in the bright green ambient light, deck structure visible for at least 8m in every direction. I flow check, gas check and get my self trimmed and comfortable. Signal OK to Gareth and off we swim to explore the wreck.
I suspect that described dozens of dives that happened over the beautiful weekend that we have just enjoyed all over the UK. What makes it special to me was that I was at 47m on my first dive after completing my GUE Tech 1 diver just few weeks before with Richard Walker.
I spent the preceding week watching the forecast and tracking down enough Helium for my gas mix (some bright spark at the club had bought a J of balloon gas!!) I was ready to go. Gas selection is easy at Tech-1; 21/35 or 18/45 with one 50% or 100% deco. I chose 18/45 and 50%. What information did we have before the dive? None!! Isn’t that great. I knew where to meet and the range would be Tech-1. That's all I need to know.
It’s worth noting we don't go anywhere near the MOD of the 18/45 but if the dive did end up with parts of the dive profile at the edge my Tech-1 training, the PPo2 was still nice and low and the END would make my first dive after my course (without the watchful eye of Richard Walker ever present!) nice and relaxed.
I was going to be diving with Gareth (GLOC) so did I care what gas mix he chose? Nope. It would be one of the two standard gases for that range and they both have the same deco profile in that range. Easy.
I was luck enough to be on the boat Outcast with Grahame Knott at the helm and some of the divers from the DIR-UK mailing list. It’s quite a thing to be the baby Tech-1 diver on a boat with divers that had more hours at the back of caves or hanging in deco than I had women, and that is going some!! I had met a couple of the team before and the new introductions were quickly made.
James on the LH Carl
One familiar face was Iain Smith who I had done the GUE Cave 1 course with in January this year. Iain had driven overnight from Glasgow, via London to join the dive. It has to be said that man has whiter legs than can even be explained by his Gaelic genes and have no right to be on public display. Long trousers next time Iain, please! Also for reasons unknown, even to him, he left his scooter in the car.
And as we sat in sunshine at the quayside in Weymouth watching Bob, Andy and Joe loading scooters and Clare and Al assembling their RB80's was a great sight.
As a side note I had read a great deal about the RB80 but had never seen one in the flesh so thanks to Clare and Al for taking the time to talk me through that amazing piece of kit.
Bob Cooper :)
A couple of suggestions were made by Grahame for the days dive and the wreck LH Carl (LH Carl) was agreed. The LH Carl was sunk on the same day as the Salsette by the same U-Boat.
Realistically, the only plan Gareth and I had to make was who ran the deco, who was going to shoot the bag and how much deco did we want to do. Easy, so easy in fact that Gareth decided I should run it (with his reputation, this may have been the safer option!!). The controlling factor for me at the moment is my deco SAC, so we agreed 35 mins max deco. We would know when we hit the wreck what that would mean in terms of bottom time at our average depth. Easy, no complex plans on slates or two different computers on each arm, just make a plan based on what you know, then adjust as you need using simple easy to remember patterns. Min gas was worked out before we jumped in using the sounder depth from Grahame and didn’t need to be adjusted when we got to the bottom.
The really bad weather we had over the weekend!
The plan was simple, Clare and Al would hit the water first (what’s the point of having a rebreather if you aren’t going to extend your bottom time!) Greg and Iain would go in next, then GLOC and I, with Andy, Bob and Joe as the scooter squadron bringing up the rear.
This is where I hoisted my newbie status flag high above my like a majestic banner. All my dry kit is in a mesh bag under my seat, Grahame is pouring buckets of water over me to cool me down and the water is soaking my mesh bag and all my worldly goods. Bugger.
During the final pre-dive prep Joe had a problem with his scooter and rather than muck around with that, he just left his scooter buddies and joined myself & GLOC. No discussion of what gas or what computer or what profile, just minimum gas and what length deco we had planned. Joe gets the 'armchair' position or as we like to call it, 'Lucky Pierre'.
Unfortunately on hitting the water Joe had a primary light problem and decided to call his dive at the surface. I secretly suspect he had just spied another pack of hob-nobs that had gone unnoticed on the way out and was securing the lot!
So Gareth and I enjoyed a cracking 30 minute dive, with a swim through, great viz and some really top photographs.
The wreck sits in 54m and rises to 47m from the seabed. The bow section is quite intact with a nice swim through on the deck below the winch gear. The deck below that could be penetrated but it silted out really quickly with rusticles dropping down and GLOC turned around before we had gone more than a couple of metres in. After a few laps and exploring we wondered where everyone else was so we moved aft past the vertical hull break to find the boilers, engine and aft section some 15m across the seabed. Unfortunately we only found the boilers and stern section with a few minutes of bottom time left. After 30 mins of bottom time, with great viz and some cracking photo opportunities, I thumbed it and ran the ascent and deco. We hit the surface 40mins later feeling good with sunshine on my face. (Sunshine is not a euphemism for anything else before someone makes a comment!!)
Despite learning a little lesson in properly securing (and removing!) a catheter, the deco was easy and seemed to fly past, albeit a little damp!!
Kit offloaded and whizzed across to Scimitar Diving (Scimitar Diving Ltd Hardboat Diving Made Easy) for the gas fills and off we went for a curry in the Balti House where we were joined by Vonny. Many thanks to Vonny for putting us up for a good nights rest. I hope that was your cat we left asleep on the sofa.
Greg and James on the SS Chateau Yeams
The day couldn't have gone better especially as the trip out provided an excellent photo opportunity to show how big Bob Cooper’s nose really is!!
The following day we had a planned ropes off of 11:15 to the same area as conditions the day before were excellent. Unfortunately this departure meant that Iain was going to have to knock the trip on the head as he had to drive all the way back to Glasgow to start a shift at 07:00! Iain, top tips, look at the tide times before committing to a 900-mile round trip and you might get 2 dives in!!
The wreck we were going to was the SS Chateau Yeams/Yquem/Youem (Chateau Yquem SS WRECK). The prospect of getting onto a less common wreck with almost perfect dive conditions set spirits high and we were not disappointed. Chateau Yquem SS was traveling from Dunkirk to Barry in ballast, when torpedoed on the 30th June 1917. She sits upright at 44 metres standing 16 metres proud.
The Badger emerging from his hole on the SS Chateau Yeams
Where the shot went in there was a large mono-filament net draped over the port side but fortunately with the 10m+ visibility and the high levels of ambient light, this was easily avoided. We went down the port side moving forward to the bow section which stands some 15m proud of the seabed at 47m. Over the bow section which has collapsed crane towers and winch gear, through a couple of swim-throughs/companion ways and towards the stern which has almost disappeared. The scooter team came buzzing past on a couple of occasions. The rear deck was fairly collapsed but Clare and Al found the bridge section and went inside. Maybe next time.
30 minutes was up and I thumbed the dive; GLOC ran the deco, and I had the bag. For many this might seem like the 'perfect storm' of team responsibilities, but the pessimists were proved wrong. A slightly stuck spool was expertly caught on its way down by Greg who had joined us for that dive.
Greg and James on the bow of the SS Chateau Yeams
We were not the only team 'challenged' by a spool; Bob Cooper discovered that he had exactly 20m of line on his. The only problem was he was at 21m. Thankfully his right arm (for reasons best left unmentioned here) is 1m long and the stop was held, albeit with Bob looking like he was flagging down a bus.
A nice ride home in the last afternoon sun and fish and chips on the quayside rounded of a really great couple dives with a top team of divers. Thanks again to Grahame for skippering.
For me it was something of a personal milestone and achievement in a diving career that had started for me on holiday in Sharm in 2002 and has now afforded me some of the most amazing dive experiences. It was chance to put into practice more of the core philosophies and skills of GUE diving that I had started to learn with Fundamentals last October and Cave 1 in January. I believe that it shows the training offered by GUE and its instructors not only gave me a certification, but actually equipped me with the skills and confidence to safely undertake the sort of dives I want to do and really enjoy a cracking first Tech 1 weekend.
I suspect that described dozens of dives that happened over the beautiful weekend that we have just enjoyed all over the UK. What makes it special to me was that I was at 47m on my first dive after completing my GUE Tech 1 diver just few weeks before with Richard Walker.
I spent the preceding week watching the forecast and tracking down enough Helium for my gas mix (some bright spark at the club had bought a J of balloon gas!!) I was ready to go. Gas selection is easy at Tech-1; 21/35 or 18/45 with one 50% or 100% deco. I chose 18/45 and 50%. What information did we have before the dive? None!! Isn’t that great. I knew where to meet and the range would be Tech-1. That's all I need to know.
It’s worth noting we don't go anywhere near the MOD of the 18/45 but if the dive did end up with parts of the dive profile at the edge my Tech-1 training, the PPo2 was still nice and low and the END would make my first dive after my course (without the watchful eye of Richard Walker ever present!) nice and relaxed.
I was going to be diving with Gareth (GLOC) so did I care what gas mix he chose? Nope. It would be one of the two standard gases for that range and they both have the same deco profile in that range. Easy.
I was luck enough to be on the boat Outcast with Grahame Knott at the helm and some of the divers from the DIR-UK mailing list. It’s quite a thing to be the baby Tech-1 diver on a boat with divers that had more hours at the back of caves or hanging in deco than I had women, and that is going some!! I had met a couple of the team before and the new introductions were quickly made.
James on the LH CarlOne familiar face was Iain Smith who I had done the GUE Cave 1 course with in January this year. Iain had driven overnight from Glasgow, via London to join the dive. It has to be said that man has whiter legs than can even be explained by his Gaelic genes and have no right to be on public display. Long trousers next time Iain, please! Also for reasons unknown, even to him, he left his scooter in the car.
And as we sat in sunshine at the quayside in Weymouth watching Bob, Andy and Joe loading scooters and Clare and Al assembling their RB80's was a great sight.
As a side note I had read a great deal about the RB80 but had never seen one in the flesh so thanks to Clare and Al for taking the time to talk me through that amazing piece of kit.
Bob Cooper :)A couple of suggestions were made by Grahame for the days dive and the wreck LH Carl (LH Carl) was agreed. The LH Carl was sunk on the same day as the Salsette by the same U-Boat.
Realistically, the only plan Gareth and I had to make was who ran the deco, who was going to shoot the bag and how much deco did we want to do. Easy, so easy in fact that Gareth decided I should run it (with his reputation, this may have been the safer option!!). The controlling factor for me at the moment is my deco SAC, so we agreed 35 mins max deco. We would know when we hit the wreck what that would mean in terms of bottom time at our average depth. Easy, no complex plans on slates or two different computers on each arm, just make a plan based on what you know, then adjust as you need using simple easy to remember patterns. Min gas was worked out before we jumped in using the sounder depth from Grahame and didn’t need to be adjusted when we got to the bottom.
The really bad weather we had over the weekend!The plan was simple, Clare and Al would hit the water first (what’s the point of having a rebreather if you aren’t going to extend your bottom time!) Greg and Iain would go in next, then GLOC and I, with Andy, Bob and Joe as the scooter squadron bringing up the rear.
This is where I hoisted my newbie status flag high above my like a majestic banner. All my dry kit is in a mesh bag under my seat, Grahame is pouring buckets of water over me to cool me down and the water is soaking my mesh bag and all my worldly goods. Bugger.
During the final pre-dive prep Joe had a problem with his scooter and rather than muck around with that, he just left his scooter buddies and joined myself & GLOC. No discussion of what gas or what computer or what profile, just minimum gas and what length deco we had planned. Joe gets the 'armchair' position or as we like to call it, 'Lucky Pierre'.
Unfortunately on hitting the water Joe had a primary light problem and decided to call his dive at the surface. I secretly suspect he had just spied another pack of hob-nobs that had gone unnoticed on the way out and was securing the lot!
So Gareth and I enjoyed a cracking 30 minute dive, with a swim through, great viz and some really top photographs.
The wreck sits in 54m and rises to 47m from the seabed. The bow section is quite intact with a nice swim through on the deck below the winch gear. The deck below that could be penetrated but it silted out really quickly with rusticles dropping down and GLOC turned around before we had gone more than a couple of metres in. After a few laps and exploring we wondered where everyone else was so we moved aft past the vertical hull break to find the boilers, engine and aft section some 15m across the seabed. Unfortunately we only found the boilers and stern section with a few minutes of bottom time left. After 30 mins of bottom time, with great viz and some cracking photo opportunities, I thumbed it and ran the ascent and deco. We hit the surface 40mins later feeling good with sunshine on my face. (Sunshine is not a euphemism for anything else before someone makes a comment!!)
Despite learning a little lesson in properly securing (and removing!) a catheter, the deco was easy and seemed to fly past, albeit a little damp!!
Kit offloaded and whizzed across to Scimitar Diving (Scimitar Diving Ltd Hardboat Diving Made Easy) for the gas fills and off we went for a curry in the Balti House where we were joined by Vonny. Many thanks to Vonny for putting us up for a good nights rest. I hope that was your cat we left asleep on the sofa.
Greg and James on the SS Chateau YeamsThe day couldn't have gone better especially as the trip out provided an excellent photo opportunity to show how big Bob Cooper’s nose really is!!
The following day we had a planned ropes off of 11:15 to the same area as conditions the day before were excellent. Unfortunately this departure meant that Iain was going to have to knock the trip on the head as he had to drive all the way back to Glasgow to start a shift at 07:00! Iain, top tips, look at the tide times before committing to a 900-mile round trip and you might get 2 dives in!!
The wreck we were going to was the SS Chateau Yeams/Yquem/Youem (Chateau Yquem SS WRECK). The prospect of getting onto a less common wreck with almost perfect dive conditions set spirits high and we were not disappointed. Chateau Yquem SS was traveling from Dunkirk to Barry in ballast, when torpedoed on the 30th June 1917. She sits upright at 44 metres standing 16 metres proud.
The Badger emerging from his hole on the SS Chateau YeamsWhere the shot went in there was a large mono-filament net draped over the port side but fortunately with the 10m+ visibility and the high levels of ambient light, this was easily avoided. We went down the port side moving forward to the bow section which stands some 15m proud of the seabed at 47m. Over the bow section which has collapsed crane towers and winch gear, through a couple of swim-throughs/companion ways and towards the stern which has almost disappeared. The scooter team came buzzing past on a couple of occasions. The rear deck was fairly collapsed but Clare and Al found the bridge section and went inside. Maybe next time.
30 minutes was up and I thumbed the dive; GLOC ran the deco, and I had the bag. For many this might seem like the 'perfect storm' of team responsibilities, but the pessimists were proved wrong. A slightly stuck spool was expertly caught on its way down by Greg who had joined us for that dive.
Greg and James on the bow of the SS Chateau YeamsA nice ride home in the last afternoon sun and fish and chips on the quayside rounded of a really great couple dives with a top team of divers. Thanks again to Grahame for skippering.
For me it was something of a personal milestone and achievement in a diving career that had started for me on holiday in Sharm in 2002 and has now afforded me some of the most amazing dive experiences. It was chance to put into practice more of the core philosophies and skills of GUE diving that I had started to learn with Fundamentals last October and Cave 1 in January. I believe that it shows the training offered by GUE and its instructors not only gave me a certification, but actually equipped me with the skills and confidence to safely undertake the sort of dives I want to do and really enjoy a cracking first Tech 1 weekend.
Team Advil Take A Trip To The Mother Ship - Florida 2008
Back The Truck Up Buddy
Di With THAT Truck
The week started well with me being upgraded to Premium Economy on the top deck of the 747 for the journey out to Orlando. Dianne, Duchess Of Norfolk (aka Madfish), who was travelling with me, remained down in cattle class with several hundred screaming children on their way to Disneyland for the half term holiday. There was no trouble telling her apart from a ray of sunshine when she ventured up stairs to find me stretched out sitting next to John Grogan quaffing Champagne and discussing his deco strategy (“I like to get things bubbling before the gas switches” – no sh*t!)
I offered her my huge reclining seat right next to the emergency exit (even more legroom than usual) and got her a glass of bubbly in an attempt to stem her plans for mass infanticide downstairs. I contemplated offering to swap seats with her, but a quick check down below revealed that she was sitting next to a honeymooning couple who were like something out of a Harry Enfield sketch and the kids had turned the entire lower deck into the opening scene from Gladiator, so I popped back upstairs and hoofed her out of my seat pronto.
Ginnie Springs - The Devils Ear Sits Under The Buoy By The Boat
Things didn’t improve when we arrived and Dollar car rental only offered us an 8 seater people carrier which she instantly dismissed as being far too small. Several more vehicles including a Mack truck and one of those things they use for towing Space Shuttles were all dismissed out of hand and we finally settled on a Ford F150 minibus which was so huge that the bonnet was in a different time zone to the tailgate. By the end of the week – even I had to concede it had been a great call as it became our second home as we drove all round northern Florida to the various dive sites. The truck promptly pulled to the right every time we drove past a petrol station and on its first visit to the pumps when it was still only 2/3rds empty – it took 27 gallons to fill it up!
Two hours of driving north from Orlando found us in High Springs – home of GUE and Extreme Exposure - we had arrived at the Mother Ship.
Selection Of DIR Approved Snorkels At EE
Northern Florida is a big surprise – not at all what I was expecting: green, lush rolling hills and farmland – a bit like the New Forest
We checked into the Country Inn which is 5 minutes down the road from EE and was to be our base for the week. It’s a bit like staying in your Nan’s spare bedroom with more chintz than you could poke a stick at but at £10 each a night all in, split between The Duchess, myself and David Martin - you really couldn’t complain. Your money goes a long way out there just now.
Bryce At The EE Gas Station
The following morning – we were all up early with jetlag and piled next door into Winn Dixie which is a sort of redneck Asda. Di was somewhat disappointed they didn’t have a Waitrose, but promptly did her usual “Supermarket Sweep” and emptied the entire drugs aisle into a trolley and Team Advil (American Nurofen) was born.
Me Kitting Up At Jackson Blue
The B*ttplugs Of Madison County
On the Monday – Corey has arranged for us to travel a couple of hours north to dive the magnificent Madison Blue. Di insists on driving and every time we reached a stop sign we all peel our noses off the dashboard and remove the set of 104’s that were now imbedded in the back of our heads. I felt that a little driving lesson would be in order and helpfully explain that good braking should be like taking a sh*t. A gentle squeeze to get things going followed by a long even push and then finish with a gentle taper at the end. I explain that the desired shape we are looking for is like a cigar not a wedge of cheese. I helpfully speculate that when Di is enjoying a “motion” – her arse must snap shut at the end like a jail door. She gratefully thanks me for the driving lesson and declares a filth “time out” for five minutes as the truck had now descended into total hysterics and we are completely lost. Five minutes pass and she breaks her own “Filth Amnesty” with a discussion about whether if Halcyon made b*ttplugs – would they be Delrin with a NiMh battery? I tell her that she’s a dirty girl and just sharing a truck with her makes me feel soiled. By this stage we’ve seen every single bridge in Madison County and a few besides and we're hopelessly lost again. I suggest that perhaps Clint Eastwood’s next film should be called “The B*ttplugs Of Madison County”? He can have that one on me – I don’t expect any royalties. We decide to lay down some ground rules for general truck banter: we only stop if someone cries: the banter not the truck that is...
Finally we arrive and Bryce has been there for nearly two hours already, bored out of his brains waiting for us. He pretends it’s OK and says he’s been sorting kit. This basically consisted of unwinding and rewinding his safety spool, line by line about a hundred times. Madison Blue was worth the wait, I’m not sure Bryce could say the same for us.
Paul On The Boat At Merritts Millpond
GUE HQ & Extreme Exposure
We were calling in twice a day at Extreme Exposure to pick up and drop off our tanks. EE is the base for all of GUE’s teaching and the WKPP’s diving activities and forms a focal point for all the visiting DIR divers to meet: Think the best dive shop you’ve ever seen with a huge gas station to one side and GUE’s offices in the building next door and you get the picture. EE is run by Doug Mudry who epitomises the expression “nothing is too much trouble” and bent over backwards to make our week go as smoothly as possible, whilst all the time giving his students 110% on the Fundies class he was running at the same time. It’s not unusual for him and the guys to be working into the early hours filling tanks and sorting out equipment. This is at its worst during the weeks when the WKPP are diving and around 300 bottles need filling!
Team Mudry as they are known are Doug’s staff : Paul, Bryce, Kevin and Andrew: All super fit, super enthusiastic and mostly Cave 2 with either Jarrod or David – they live to cave dive and most of them are to be found buried in a wet hole somewhere in cave country at every available opportunity. They also provide shallow water support for the big WKPP dives. Paul was sporting the remnants of two black eyes – I speculated he’d been caught exploring wet holes that didn’t belong to him and warmed to him immediately.
The EE Gas Station
Paul, Kevin and Bryce provided guiding for us on most of the days and proved to be great fun and worked tirelessly to enable us to get the most out of the week. I asked Paul to debrief us after one of the dives and provide some constructive criticism. The feedback he gave us was insightful and revealing and I told him I thought he would make a great GUE Cave Instructor. He replied that when you looked at the existing GUE Cave Instructors like Rhea and Messersmith – they are still absolutely at the top of the game even now despite being in their late 50’s. He described them as “life divers” and his respect and admiration was obvious. He said that at 24 he wanted to gain experience first but someday he hoped someday to follow in their footsteps. I was touched by the thoughtfulness of his reply and felt it vindicated my original judgement. The quality of GUE’s next generation of Cave Instructors is not in doubt in my opinion. In the meantime Kevin and Paul both teach Recreational diving for EE. Reckon you'd get a damn good open water course with these guys!
Which brings us on to Team Bifocal! So called with irreverent affection by Team Mudry because they have a collective age of about 786 and most of them have bifocal lenses in the bottom of their masks
These guys are the GUE Jedi Council: people like Mark Messersmith, John Rose, Bob Sherwood and the Team Bifocal “Poster Boy” himself: David Rhea: Many of them have been cave diving for longer than some of us have been alive. They still run rings round people half their age and provide the deep support for the WKPP. They look like they’ve been carved out of the limestone Karst itself – stand them all next to each other and you'd have the Mount Rushmore of cave diving.
Matty G & Osama
As I struggle to get through the flow into the Devils Ear at Ginnie Springs for the first time on the Wednesday – Mark Messersmith was coming out With Chris, Ed and Pieter who were all doing Cave 1. As I bounce around like a frog in a liquidiser chewing through gas in what is basically a 20’x3’ fire hydrant, he hovers motionless in the flow barely moving an inch. Several things became apparent about Team Bifocal from observing one of these DIR “Big Beasts” close at hand in their natural habitat: Firstly – they have evolved to the extent that they now breathe underwater without the use of scuba. The twinset, regs etc are there purely for decoration. Secondly communication underwater has been pared down from crude hand signals to just the occasional disdainful glance at a student and Jedi Mind Tricks. He looks me straight in the eye: “Difficult are the ways of the force; practice, often you must; pies less must you eat”
40 minutes later we resurface, Ginnie hands me my arse on a plate – not for the last time that week either.
Di had the Team Bifocal experience two weeks previously when she did Cave 1 with David Rhea. From her description it sounds like she had to exchange her very soul for a Cave 1 card. “The nicest thing he said to me on the whole course was when he bubbled my left post and I refused to shut it down because I was breathing it and he told me afterwards: Girl: that’s the least retarded thing you’ve done all week” I reply that he sounds like a complete hard arse: “Oh no – he’s a lovely man” More Jedi mind tricks...
The Headspring At Little River
I go diving with her for the first time in a year and she’s transformed from being a solid diver to having that GUE “Tech Magic” in the water. She shows me her Cave 1 card like it’s a nugget of pure gold. Its sits with plenty of other cards in her purse which will buy practically anything – but the one that buys nothing and can’t be bought at any price sits closest to her heart...
The Halcyon Factory Tour
Ginnie has bent me over and given me a good spanking again so we pack up and make our way over to the Halcyon factory for a tour organised by Jarrod’s sister: Corey. Corey is like Gareth Lock – she organises everyone with great humour and gets the job done while the boys are out playing! For the week we were there – she had arranged packed lunches, breakfast at EE, cool boxes a great diving itinerary, a two day trip to Merritt’s Millpond in the North, a BBQ one evening and countless other little nice refinements that really made it a memorable week, all very much appreciated.
Halcyon is based on a small industrial estate just on the edge of High Springs. Casey comes out to greet us and reminds me that I’m supposed to be going diving with him later that week. We’d chatted when he and JJ came over for the dive show the year before and he kindly offered back then. Part of me was hoping he’d forgotten, part of me couldn’t wait. I have about 10 cave dives to my name at this stage – so no pressure there then! We arrange to meet up on the Friday.
Di's Cave 1 Buddy Dima - Top Man
Casey hands over to the Production Manager: Steve, who has been with the company practically from the start, like many of the staff, and he shows us round. Casey accompanies us for the whole tour – but he got Steve to do the talking which was a nice touch and his pride in the company and their products was evident throughout.
Halcyon is a huge surprise. I expected it to be more of an assembly plant – but they make everything from scratch. The attention to detail and quality is superb. Wings are made with ballistic nylon bladders rather than urethane for greater strength and puncture resistance; they even make their own hoses. Each and every item: wings, hoses lights etc are all tested to several times beyond their working pressure before being considered “Halcyon Worthy” and dispatched off to retailers. The concept of “Halcyon Worthy” sounds cheesy and American to an English audience – but if you visit the factory – you’ll understand.
Turkey Vultures Hoping We Screw It Up At Jackson Blue
Steve explains that because they make everything in house – they can produce working prototypes within weeks and play around with ideas in a way that a lot of manufacturers would find difficult. I had previously thought of Halcyon as being slightly behind the curve when it comes to newer technologies like Li Ion – but the truth is they look carefully at all the new technologies as them become available but won’t implement them until they are 100% happy that they can get the quality and reliability consistent and right. It makes sense.
We finish the tour and Matt says he feels embarrassed about moaning about recent price increases now, not least because Corey Smith the Tech Services Manager has sorted out some issues with his 18w HID, including changing the bulb, all while we waited in about 10 seconds flat. In an attempt to carry the unified team thing through to the manufacturing – everyone at Halcyon is called Corey – quite how they tell each other apart heaven knows? It’s like turning up at a mafia funeral and shouting “Tony”
Joe Hesketh & Myself Kit Up For A Dive At Little River - It's 105 Degrees!
Di and I go night diving at Ginnie later in the week with Corey Bell: Halcyon’s Product Development Manager: Night diving is one of the lovely surprises with cave diving – clearly when you’re underground, whether it’s day or night makes no odds. Emerging back into the cavern zone and swimming across the Santa Fe river by twilight listening to the bullfrogs croaking and distant Alligators barking is a truly beautiful and surreal experience. Much like surfacing through the thin film of dumped aviation fuel at Wraysbury on a Wednesday evening and catching the faint aroma of the old chemical toilets. Corey had been rubbing himself all round the walls of Ginnie like a dog with an itch. When we get out I ask what he was doing and he explains that they are doing some abrasion testing on the Cordura outer covers of their wings. Just another example of the lengths they go to. He’ll be coming over to the UK in September to see how the company’s products work in an ocean environment both off the South Coast and up in Scapa Flow – I look forward to diving with him again then.
Corey Bell With Di At Little River
Merritts Millpond
On the Wednesday – we head north to Merritts Millpond, a dammed river formed by the Jackson Blue headspring. We are staying overnight at Hole In The Wall House and we have a boat to visit the various caves along the Millpond itself. A more idyllic setting you couldn’t hope to find and home to some of Florida’s finest cave dives: Jackson Blue, Hole In The Wall and Twin. For many people: Downstream Hole In The Wall is the best cave dive in the whole of Florida.
Hole In The Wall House At Merritts Millpond
The house sits on the edge of the millpond and has it’s own jetty for mooring up the boat. Complete with it’s own pool table and huge living room – it’s the perfect party house and we waste no time filling the fridge with beer and settling in.
The Headspring At Jackson Blue - Cave Entrance Is Right Under The Diving Board!
After an excellent meal in Marianna just up the road we return with fireworks and the banter and a beers go late into the night.
The Cypress Trees Looking Out Onto The Lake
Hole In The Wall and Jackson Blue are just mindblowing – the highlight of the trip – I can’t wait to return. The variety of the caves in Florida is really surprising - they all have their own distict "personalities"
The Boats Moored At The Jetty By The House
Friday arrives all too soon and I arrange to meet Casey at Ginnie late in the afternoon. He arrives in a truck that gives ours a run for its money accompanied by John Rose, one of the WKPP’s longest serving divers. John turns out to be what’s known around those parts as “A Southern Gentleman” and he instantly puts me at ease whilst chatting as he assembles his RB80. He’s there to square away a few issues prior to the following weekend’s WKPP push dive.
We kit up and I have a good rummage around McKinlay's kit to find that he basically dives stock Halcyon everything with almost no mods at all. We hit the water and some smartarse chucks me snorkel. I consider a BWRAF check but we settle for a bubble check instead and then descend through the Devil's Ear. I don’t really do nerves, but it takes me about double normal time to tie into the primary line and I’m diving like a Korean housewife. I settle into the dive and about 50 minutes later we return. I'm struck that regardless of experience: the DIR system just works from the bottom to the top – everything feels familiar and instinctive – just as it had when diving with so many other GUE trained divers that week. I can’t talk too much about that dive other than to say that it was the absolute highlight of my three year journey through DIR / GUE and it will stay with me for a long time. Anyone who things “Gillette is the best a man can get” hasn’t been diving with Casey McKinlay…
From The Left: John Rose, Me Looking After Casey's Snorkel, Casey McKinlay
We head back for dinner at High Springs and join some of the rest of our group at “The Great Outdoors”. David Rhea is holding court over in the corner, the ever present toothpick hanging out of the mouth. Di is fawning over him like a schoolgirl with a crush. He certainly fills a room. Think Johnny Cash with fins and a bit more gravitas – you get the picture. We sit down for dinner and the conversation turns to the age of George Irvine. Apparently he’s in his late fifties which I would never have guessed, but no one’s sure. I suggest cutting him in half and counting the rings. Jarrod and Casey give David a bit of friendly stick about being an old fart as well and he gives it right back to them with “extreme prejudice” as GI3 used to say. It feels like having dinner with the chimps back home. All sarcasm is a team resource.
What A Week
One of the best holidays we’ve ever had – everyone agreed. The diving, the fantastic social: meeting Chris, Ed and Pieter and seeing them pass Cave 1, Dima from Russia who was with Di on Cave 1 and had us in stitches all week, meeting Os for the first time. So many great people
Kevin On One Of The Boats
GUE has truly grown into the “Global” part of it’s name and one of the great pleasures of diving this way for me is meeting cool people from all over the world and going diving together with almost no planning or prior preparation needed. Even with complex dives – you’re all on the same page which leaves more time for having fun and the diving itself.
Huge thanks to Clare and Corey who put so much work in behind the scenes in order to make the trip run seamlessly and so successfully and to Jarrod and Casey who, in spite of a packed schedule – spent loads of time with us all week.
And finally to Doug and the guys who showed us that “Doing It Right” isn’t just an in water thing – see you all soon and thank you all
Di With THAT Truck
The week started well with me being upgraded to Premium Economy on the top deck of the 747 for the journey out to Orlando. Dianne, Duchess Of Norfolk (aka Madfish), who was travelling with me, remained down in cattle class with several hundred screaming children on their way to Disneyland for the half term holiday. There was no trouble telling her apart from a ray of sunshine when she ventured up stairs to find me stretched out sitting next to John Grogan quaffing Champagne and discussing his deco strategy (“I like to get things bubbling before the gas switches” – no sh*t!)
I offered her my huge reclining seat right next to the emergency exit (even more legroom than usual) and got her a glass of bubbly in an attempt to stem her plans for mass infanticide downstairs. I contemplated offering to swap seats with her, but a quick check down below revealed that she was sitting next to a honeymooning couple who were like something out of a Harry Enfield sketch and the kids had turned the entire lower deck into the opening scene from Gladiator, so I popped back upstairs and hoofed her out of my seat pronto.
Ginnie Springs - The Devils Ear Sits Under The Buoy By The Boat
Things didn’t improve when we arrived and Dollar car rental only offered us an 8 seater people carrier which she instantly dismissed as being far too small. Several more vehicles including a Mack truck and one of those things they use for towing Space Shuttles were all dismissed out of hand and we finally settled on a Ford F150 minibus which was so huge that the bonnet was in a different time zone to the tailgate. By the end of the week – even I had to concede it had been a great call as it became our second home as we drove all round northern Florida to the various dive sites. The truck promptly pulled to the right every time we drove past a petrol station and on its first visit to the pumps when it was still only 2/3rds empty – it took 27 gallons to fill it up!
Two hours of driving north from Orlando found us in High Springs – home of GUE and Extreme Exposure - we had arrived at the Mother Ship.
Selection Of DIR Approved Snorkels At EE
Northern Florida is a big surprise – not at all what I was expecting: green, lush rolling hills and farmland – a bit like the New Forest
We checked into the Country Inn which is 5 minutes down the road from EE and was to be our base for the week. It’s a bit like staying in your Nan’s spare bedroom with more chintz than you could poke a stick at but at £10 each a night all in, split between The Duchess, myself and David Martin - you really couldn’t complain. Your money goes a long way out there just now.
Bryce At The EE Gas Station
The following morning – we were all up early with jetlag and piled next door into Winn Dixie which is a sort of redneck Asda. Di was somewhat disappointed they didn’t have a Waitrose, but promptly did her usual “Supermarket Sweep” and emptied the entire drugs aisle into a trolley and Team Advil (American Nurofen) was born.
Me Kitting Up At Jackson Blue
The B*ttplugs Of Madison County
On the Monday – Corey has arranged for us to travel a couple of hours north to dive the magnificent Madison Blue. Di insists on driving and every time we reached a stop sign we all peel our noses off the dashboard and remove the set of 104’s that were now imbedded in the back of our heads. I felt that a little driving lesson would be in order and helpfully explain that good braking should be like taking a sh*t. A gentle squeeze to get things going followed by a long even push and then finish with a gentle taper at the end. I explain that the desired shape we are looking for is like a cigar not a wedge of cheese. I helpfully speculate that when Di is enjoying a “motion” – her arse must snap shut at the end like a jail door. She gratefully thanks me for the driving lesson and declares a filth “time out” for five minutes as the truck had now descended into total hysterics and we are completely lost. Five minutes pass and she breaks her own “Filth Amnesty” with a discussion about whether if Halcyon made b*ttplugs – would they be Delrin with a NiMh battery? I tell her that she’s a dirty girl and just sharing a truck with her makes me feel soiled. By this stage we’ve seen every single bridge in Madison County and a few besides and we're hopelessly lost again. I suggest that perhaps Clint Eastwood’s next film should be called “The B*ttplugs Of Madison County”? He can have that one on me – I don’t expect any royalties. We decide to lay down some ground rules for general truck banter: we only stop if someone cries: the banter not the truck that is...
Finally we arrive and Bryce has been there for nearly two hours already, bored out of his brains waiting for us. He pretends it’s OK and says he’s been sorting kit. This basically consisted of unwinding and rewinding his safety spool, line by line about a hundred times. Madison Blue was worth the wait, I’m not sure Bryce could say the same for us.
Paul On The Boat At Merritts Millpond
GUE HQ & Extreme Exposure
We were calling in twice a day at Extreme Exposure to pick up and drop off our tanks. EE is the base for all of GUE’s teaching and the WKPP’s diving activities and forms a focal point for all the visiting DIR divers to meet: Think the best dive shop you’ve ever seen with a huge gas station to one side and GUE’s offices in the building next door and you get the picture. EE is run by Doug Mudry who epitomises the expression “nothing is too much trouble” and bent over backwards to make our week go as smoothly as possible, whilst all the time giving his students 110% on the Fundies class he was running at the same time. It’s not unusual for him and the guys to be working into the early hours filling tanks and sorting out equipment. This is at its worst during the weeks when the WKPP are diving and around 300 bottles need filling!
Team Mudry as they are known are Doug’s staff : Paul, Bryce, Kevin and Andrew: All super fit, super enthusiastic and mostly Cave 2 with either Jarrod or David – they live to cave dive and most of them are to be found buried in a wet hole somewhere in cave country at every available opportunity. They also provide shallow water support for the big WKPP dives. Paul was sporting the remnants of two black eyes – I speculated he’d been caught exploring wet holes that didn’t belong to him and warmed to him immediately.
The EE Gas Station
Paul, Kevin and Bryce provided guiding for us on most of the days and proved to be great fun and worked tirelessly to enable us to get the most out of the week. I asked Paul to debrief us after one of the dives and provide some constructive criticism. The feedback he gave us was insightful and revealing and I told him I thought he would make a great GUE Cave Instructor. He replied that when you looked at the existing GUE Cave Instructors like Rhea and Messersmith – they are still absolutely at the top of the game even now despite being in their late 50’s. He described them as “life divers” and his respect and admiration was obvious. He said that at 24 he wanted to gain experience first but someday he hoped someday to follow in their footsteps. I was touched by the thoughtfulness of his reply and felt it vindicated my original judgement. The quality of GUE’s next generation of Cave Instructors is not in doubt in my opinion. In the meantime Kevin and Paul both teach Recreational diving for EE. Reckon you'd get a damn good open water course with these guys!
Which brings us on to Team Bifocal! So called with irreverent affection by Team Mudry because they have a collective age of about 786 and most of them have bifocal lenses in the bottom of their masks
These guys are the GUE Jedi Council: people like Mark Messersmith, John Rose, Bob Sherwood and the Team Bifocal “Poster Boy” himself: David Rhea: Many of them have been cave diving for longer than some of us have been alive. They still run rings round people half their age and provide the deep support for the WKPP. They look like they’ve been carved out of the limestone Karst itself – stand them all next to each other and you'd have the Mount Rushmore of cave diving.
Matty G & Osama
As I struggle to get through the flow into the Devils Ear at Ginnie Springs for the first time on the Wednesday – Mark Messersmith was coming out With Chris, Ed and Pieter who were all doing Cave 1. As I bounce around like a frog in a liquidiser chewing through gas in what is basically a 20’x3’ fire hydrant, he hovers motionless in the flow barely moving an inch. Several things became apparent about Team Bifocal from observing one of these DIR “Big Beasts” close at hand in their natural habitat: Firstly – they have evolved to the extent that they now breathe underwater without the use of scuba. The twinset, regs etc are there purely for decoration. Secondly communication underwater has been pared down from crude hand signals to just the occasional disdainful glance at a student and Jedi Mind Tricks. He looks me straight in the eye: “Difficult are the ways of the force; practice, often you must; pies less must you eat”
40 minutes later we resurface, Ginnie hands me my arse on a plate – not for the last time that week either.
Di had the Team Bifocal experience two weeks previously when she did Cave 1 with David Rhea. From her description it sounds like she had to exchange her very soul for a Cave 1 card. “The nicest thing he said to me on the whole course was when he bubbled my left post and I refused to shut it down because I was breathing it and he told me afterwards: Girl: that’s the least retarded thing you’ve done all week” I reply that he sounds like a complete hard arse: “Oh no – he’s a lovely man” More Jedi mind tricks...
The Headspring At Little River
I go diving with her for the first time in a year and she’s transformed from being a solid diver to having that GUE “Tech Magic” in the water. She shows me her Cave 1 card like it’s a nugget of pure gold. Its sits with plenty of other cards in her purse which will buy practically anything – but the one that buys nothing and can’t be bought at any price sits closest to her heart...
The Halcyon Factory Tour
Ginnie has bent me over and given me a good spanking again so we pack up and make our way over to the Halcyon factory for a tour organised by Jarrod’s sister: Corey. Corey is like Gareth Lock – she organises everyone with great humour and gets the job done while the boys are out playing! For the week we were there – she had arranged packed lunches, breakfast at EE, cool boxes a great diving itinerary, a two day trip to Merritt’s Millpond in the North, a BBQ one evening and countless other little nice refinements that really made it a memorable week, all very much appreciated.
Halcyon is based on a small industrial estate just on the edge of High Springs. Casey comes out to greet us and reminds me that I’m supposed to be going diving with him later that week. We’d chatted when he and JJ came over for the dive show the year before and he kindly offered back then. Part of me was hoping he’d forgotten, part of me couldn’t wait. I have about 10 cave dives to my name at this stage – so no pressure there then! We arrange to meet up on the Friday.
Di's Cave 1 Buddy Dima - Top Man
Casey hands over to the Production Manager: Steve, who has been with the company practically from the start, like many of the staff, and he shows us round. Casey accompanies us for the whole tour – but he got Steve to do the talking which was a nice touch and his pride in the company and their products was evident throughout.
Halcyon is a huge surprise. I expected it to be more of an assembly plant – but they make everything from scratch. The attention to detail and quality is superb. Wings are made with ballistic nylon bladders rather than urethane for greater strength and puncture resistance; they even make their own hoses. Each and every item: wings, hoses lights etc are all tested to several times beyond their working pressure before being considered “Halcyon Worthy” and dispatched off to retailers. The concept of “Halcyon Worthy” sounds cheesy and American to an English audience – but if you visit the factory – you’ll understand.
Turkey Vultures Hoping We Screw It Up At Jackson Blue
Steve explains that because they make everything in house – they can produce working prototypes within weeks and play around with ideas in a way that a lot of manufacturers would find difficult. I had previously thought of Halcyon as being slightly behind the curve when it comes to newer technologies like Li Ion – but the truth is they look carefully at all the new technologies as them become available but won’t implement them until they are 100% happy that they can get the quality and reliability consistent and right. It makes sense.
We finish the tour and Matt says he feels embarrassed about moaning about recent price increases now, not least because Corey Smith the Tech Services Manager has sorted out some issues with his 18w HID, including changing the bulb, all while we waited in about 10 seconds flat. In an attempt to carry the unified team thing through to the manufacturing – everyone at Halcyon is called Corey – quite how they tell each other apart heaven knows? It’s like turning up at a mafia funeral and shouting “Tony”
Joe Hesketh & Myself Kit Up For A Dive At Little River - It's 105 Degrees!
Di and I go night diving at Ginnie later in the week with Corey Bell: Halcyon’s Product Development Manager: Night diving is one of the lovely surprises with cave diving – clearly when you’re underground, whether it’s day or night makes no odds. Emerging back into the cavern zone and swimming across the Santa Fe river by twilight listening to the bullfrogs croaking and distant Alligators barking is a truly beautiful and surreal experience. Much like surfacing through the thin film of dumped aviation fuel at Wraysbury on a Wednesday evening and catching the faint aroma of the old chemical toilets. Corey had been rubbing himself all round the walls of Ginnie like a dog with an itch. When we get out I ask what he was doing and he explains that they are doing some abrasion testing on the Cordura outer covers of their wings. Just another example of the lengths they go to. He’ll be coming over to the UK in September to see how the company’s products work in an ocean environment both off the South Coast and up in Scapa Flow – I look forward to diving with him again then.
Corey Bell With Di At Little River
Merritts Millpond
On the Wednesday – we head north to Merritts Millpond, a dammed river formed by the Jackson Blue headspring. We are staying overnight at Hole In The Wall House and we have a boat to visit the various caves along the Millpond itself. A more idyllic setting you couldn’t hope to find and home to some of Florida’s finest cave dives: Jackson Blue, Hole In The Wall and Twin. For many people: Downstream Hole In The Wall is the best cave dive in the whole of Florida.
Hole In The Wall House At Merritts Millpond
The house sits on the edge of the millpond and has it’s own jetty for mooring up the boat. Complete with it’s own pool table and huge living room – it’s the perfect party house and we waste no time filling the fridge with beer and settling in.
The Headspring At Jackson Blue - Cave Entrance Is Right Under The Diving Board!
After an excellent meal in Marianna just up the road we return with fireworks and the banter and a beers go late into the night.
The Cypress Trees Looking Out Onto The Lake
Hole In The Wall and Jackson Blue are just mindblowing – the highlight of the trip – I can’t wait to return. The variety of the caves in Florida is really surprising - they all have their own distict "personalities"
The Boats Moored At The Jetty By The House
Friday arrives all too soon and I arrange to meet Casey at Ginnie late in the afternoon. He arrives in a truck that gives ours a run for its money accompanied by John Rose, one of the WKPP’s longest serving divers. John turns out to be what’s known around those parts as “A Southern Gentleman” and he instantly puts me at ease whilst chatting as he assembles his RB80. He’s there to square away a few issues prior to the following weekend’s WKPP push dive.
We kit up and I have a good rummage around McKinlay's kit to find that he basically dives stock Halcyon everything with almost no mods at all. We hit the water and some smartarse chucks me snorkel. I consider a BWRAF check but we settle for a bubble check instead and then descend through the Devil's Ear. I don’t really do nerves, but it takes me about double normal time to tie into the primary line and I’m diving like a Korean housewife. I settle into the dive and about 50 minutes later we return. I'm struck that regardless of experience: the DIR system just works from the bottom to the top – everything feels familiar and instinctive – just as it had when diving with so many other GUE trained divers that week. I can’t talk too much about that dive other than to say that it was the absolute highlight of my three year journey through DIR / GUE and it will stay with me for a long time. Anyone who things “Gillette is the best a man can get” hasn’t been diving with Casey McKinlay…
From The Left: John Rose, Me Looking After Casey's Snorkel, Casey McKinlay
We head back for dinner at High Springs and join some of the rest of our group at “The Great Outdoors”. David Rhea is holding court over in the corner, the ever present toothpick hanging out of the mouth. Di is fawning over him like a schoolgirl with a crush. He certainly fills a room. Think Johnny Cash with fins and a bit more gravitas – you get the picture. We sit down for dinner and the conversation turns to the age of George Irvine. Apparently he’s in his late fifties which I would never have guessed, but no one’s sure. I suggest cutting him in half and counting the rings. Jarrod and Casey give David a bit of friendly stick about being an old fart as well and he gives it right back to them with “extreme prejudice” as GI3 used to say. It feels like having dinner with the chimps back home. All sarcasm is a team resource.
What A Week
One of the best holidays we’ve ever had – everyone agreed. The diving, the fantastic social: meeting Chris, Ed and Pieter and seeing them pass Cave 1, Dima from Russia who was with Di on Cave 1 and had us in stitches all week, meeting Os for the first time. So many great people
Kevin On One Of The Boats
GUE has truly grown into the “Global” part of it’s name and one of the great pleasures of diving this way for me is meeting cool people from all over the world and going diving together with almost no planning or prior preparation needed. Even with complex dives – you’re all on the same page which leaves more time for having fun and the diving itself.
Huge thanks to Clare and Corey who put so much work in behind the scenes in order to make the trip run seamlessly and so successfully and to Jarrod and Casey who, in spite of a packed schedule – spent loads of time with us all week.
And finally to Doug and the guys who showed us that “Doing It Right” isn’t just an in water thing – see you all soon and thank you all