Weymouth 9th November 2002

This end of season trip was organised by Craig Ballingal and the others on the trip were Louise Thompson, Steve Jones, Al Allen, Chris Bell, Rich Meese, Rob Hampson and Digs. 

I set off at 4:15pm on Friday to join the usual car park that seems to develop around the Bristol area and onto the M5 every weekend. After picking up Louise we finally got to Weymouth at 7:45. As we arrived we saw Al getting the last parking place in the whole of Weymouth. OK a slight exaggeration but parking places are certainly a precious commodity, even in November. Somewhat amazing that Al had got to Weymouth as he had to make a 50 mile detour after continuing on his usual route, this despite road signs telling him that the A35 was closed.

We were booked aboard Kyarratoo for this trip with skipper Paul Cooper. Two good reasons to be using this boat are firstly that it has a lift, and secondly Paul does a great lunch in between dives. 

Despite bad weather earlier in the week, Saturday was very calm and all was looking good for a couple of interesting dives.   

Dive One: Binnendyk Max depth 28.5 metres, run time 37 minutes. EAN26

The Binnendyk was a Dutch steamship sunk on 8th October 1939 after hitting a mine. She was 400ft in length and weighed in at almost 7,000 tonnes.

As we started to go down the shot line it was immediately apparent that this was not going to be a good viz dive. In fact below 10 metres it also got very dark so by the time we hit the wreck (yes I do mean hit it) the combination of poor viz and darkness meant that you could see for only about half a metre. Somehow or other we still managed a 37 minute run time, and I saw a crab!!! However I can’t write much else about this dive as I haven’t got a clue what the wreck looks like, or where I was most of the time. 

In between dives we were well fed by Paul and also entertained by the dolphin that has become a regular sight in and around Portland Harbour. 

For our second dive we had very little choice. The Hood was out, as we would have had to wait a further 3 hours for something resembling slack. Our next choice was the Countess, but as we were on our way to the site another boat was also making its way there, so we diverted to the landing craft instead.   

Dive Two: Landing Craft Max depth 17.4 metres, run time 33 minutes. EAN 26

Only 4 of us went in for this dive. Again the viz was not too good, about 1.5 metres but enough for us to do 2 full circuits before deciding that we had had enough. Very silty around this wreck and not much to see, a couple of Pollack and some blennies was about all that I could manage to see.   

Thanks to Chris for the pics that I have put here. For more pics see his web page.