Portsmouth

August 3rd & 4th 2002

This trip was arranged by Andy Cox and the divers booked onto the Meridian Express were, Andy Cox, Jasmine Sharp, Steve Jones, Louise Thompson, Maria Kjellen, Neil Weller, Ade Gorst, Steve Binks, Jason Poynting and Matt Stevens.

Meridian Express is a powerful boat and very fast. Great for getting to the wrecks further out.

Travelled down to Portsmouth on Friday evening hoping to miss all the traffic, wrong !! Had a lot of hold ups on the M4 and then the A34. Maria and Neil arrived later at about 9pm. 

Neil dropped Maria off at the hotel and then left to find his own B&B, about 45 minutes later he finally achieved this feat, having had to resort to phoning his wife and asking her to switch on the computer and use Microsoft Autoroute to give him a route from the street that he was on to the one where his B&B was located. 

Neil later attempted to join Maria and myself in a pub which was less than 5 minutes from his B&B and arrived over half an hour later after many mobile phone calls to try and direct him. 

Anyway that’s enough about Neil for now, see later for his attempts at fish identification. 

Dive One Saturday

Camberwell EAN30 Run time 56 minutes

The Camberwell was a British steamer of some 4,100 tonnes and 112 metres long and was sunk in 1917. She is currently at a seabed depth of 29 metres. 

Saw a huge lobster and by the size of its pincers I knew that there was no way that I wanted to come into close contact. 

Dive Two Saturday

Luis, EAN30, Run time 42 minutes

The Luis was a 380 foot, 2,484 tonnes steamer that was built in 1916 band was carrying flour, oats and anti personnel artillery shells when she was sunk by 2 torpedoes from UC71 which killed for of the crew. 

Lou had to abort this dive while still on the surface as her dry suit had sprung a leak. I then went down with Andy. The wreck is quite large and most of the dive was spent drifting, as the current had started to pick up. Found a lobster inside a hole but it resisted all attempts to get it out.

We came across some of the aforementioned artillery shells, or at least that’s what I was later told they were. Now I realise why Andy was waving his hands around and suggesting that I put it back down. In this area there were also lots of lead shot, small balls of about 10mm diameter.

After finishing on the wreck we drifted off it for several minutes before sending up DSMBs to reveal to the skipper that we were nowhere near the boat. 

After the days diving Matt Stevens offered the services of his club’s compressor to give us air fills for the next day. Many thanks due here as the nearest nitrox fills would have been quite some distance away. 

Dive One Sunday

UB81, EAN24, Run time 64 minutes.

This class 3 u-boat was commanded by Rheinhold Saltzwedel, who, during his career spanning 22 patrols, sank 111 ships, totaling 170,000 tonnes. He, along with 27 of the crew of 34 died when the UB-81 struck a mine in 1917. 

This was my first dive to the wreck of a submarine, and as soon at you get to the bottom of the shot the number of fish everywhere is amazing. We had waited for slack water so there was virtually no current so moving around was quite easy. Lots of conger on the wreck in the many holes and tubes that were open. The time really flew past and we easily ran up 20 minutes of stop time. As the current has started to pick up we had drifted for quite a distance from the shot line by the time we surfaced. 

After the dive Neil said that he had seen a baby dolphin on the wreck. That’s what happens when you have to dive on air and not nitrox. Had Neil been on a richer mix then he may have seen that the dolphin that was smiling and making eyes at him was, in reality, a conger. 

Quote of the day however, came from Louise. She had fixed her dry suit leak and the patch had held fast. She explained that she had been successful and was now “only wet in the usual place” ! ! !   

Dive Two Sunday

Nab, EAN24, Run time 35 minutes.

Final dive of the weekend was to a large structure that was built for use during the war. I believe that it was for anti submarine work. Basically it rises 40 feet into the air and then underwater looks like a wedding cake, with tiers at 5, 10, 15 and 20 metres.

There were a lots of shoals of fish in the area and a few lobsters. However this was not a dive that I particularly enjoyed. I was simply a matter of working your way down the tiers then back up again. Due to the current running we were confined to the lee of the structure. The current was quite strong as when we ascended from the 5 metre shelf, within a very short space of time we had drifted over a hundred metres.