Weymouth April 17th & 18th 2004

This was planned by Chris some time ago as "just another trip", then it soon became apparent that this was going to be numbers as UKRS 100. On the basis of this Chris took on the extra work or arranging another boat, and additional accommodation so that as many people as possible could attend this particular dive.

The original 12 were booked aboard Our W with Woody, the additional divers were booked on Kyarratoo with Paul Cooper.

Despite there being 24 people originally booked the trip went ahead with only 12 on Our W, and 6 on Kyarratoo. Those taking part in this auspicious event were:

Our W

Chris Bell, Louise Thompson, Steve Jones, Alasdair Allan, Jason Poynting, Ken Tomlinson, Rich Meese, Danny Burchett, Steve Chaplin, Megan Clark, Craig Ballingal and Huw Porter 

This was Huw's last UKRS trip before going to work in Australia, so best wishes to him and Suzanne in their new life down under.

Kyarratoo

Nigel Hewitt, Adrian Hewitt, Jen Somogyi, Rob Hampton, Brod Mason, Adrian Smith, Kieran Barry (arrived Sunday, just in time for the worst of the weather and to once again perform his technicolour yawn over the side of the boat).

The first day saw at arrive at the boat at 7am, certainly the earliest start on any UKRS trip that I have been on. Don't they have more than one tide in a day??

Today Kyarratoo went to the Aeolian Sky and then to Lulworth. I will leave any details of these dives and hope someone from that boat writes another trip report.

Saturday

On the run out to the wreck site we saw a pod of dolphins in the distance following another boat. Then they broke away and crossed right in front of the bows of our boat, approximately 6 of them all quite big.

Dive One: Landrail, Max depth 34.1, Viz 4 metres, Run time 65 minutes

The Landrail was apparently mistaken for HMS Hazzard in the past, until such time as this ship was found off the Isle of Wight. The Landrail was 790 tons, she was 195 feet long and a beam of 28 feet. In addition to her guns she a bow torpedo tube and 2 torpedo launchers on her deck. At the end of her days she was being used as target practice and she sank in 1906 while being towed back into harbour.

I went in with Chris and Louise on this dive, however I lost them when Alasdair passed by and gave me a good kicking and dislodged my mask. Then later in the dive by some imaginative navigation (OK pure luck!!) I found my 2 buddies and the shot line. This proves that I must have been lost to see the shot line again after leaving it. Just after this point Chris and Lou had decided to go up so I continued for a while more, leaving the bottom at 40 minutes, and getting back to the surface on 65 minutes to more abuse from fellow UKRSers who failed to see the necessity of such a long dive. I prefer to call it additional research.

Dive Two: James Fennel, Max depth 17.4 metres, Viz 8 metres, Run time 47 minutes

The James Fennel was built in 1918 and was 123 feet long and had a beam of 22 feet. She weighed in at 215 tons. The ship sank in early 1920 when, in thick fog, she ran aground. No men were lost as they managed to get off along a rope which was secured by some local fishermen.

This is a traditional second dive and is really nothing to write home about. I went in with the same buddies but immediately went off on a wander. I had a quick looks around some bits of wreckage then drifted off. I saw some quite big wrasse and lots of rocks covered in anemonies and sponge, but nothing of any particular interest. Towards the end of the dive I did come across another wreck with a nice size anchor embedded in the sea bed, not sure what this wreck was, maybe the Gertrude.

At the end of the first day the forecast was not looking good for day 2, some very high winds were predicted, however the information that we were getting was sufficiently ambiguous not to call it off immediately and to turn up on the Sunday and see what the weather would be like.

Sunday

The Kyarrtoo was today going to the Elena R, complete with its compliment of 4 divers, as was mentioned earlier Kieran arrived a day late to entertain everyone with his projectile vomiting. Kieran is no stranger to this activity as can be seen in the pics taken on his first UKRS trip, also to Weymouth, this time last year.

Dive One: Aeolean Sky, Max depth 30.2 metres, Vis 3 metres, Run time 46 minutes

The Sky was a 10,715 ton Greek cargo ship that sunk in 1979 following a collision with MV Knuppel. She was 490ft x 72ft and lies on her port side. The viz can be quite bad on this wreck and also dark, so it can be quite easy under these conditions to accidentally penetrate the wreck.

Diving with Lou we were first in and as the weather was already closing in it was politely suggested that I might want to cut my dive time somewhat shorter than yesterday. A limit of 5 minutes deco was suggested, no mention of run time though....interesting.

As we dropped down there was a considerable current running and also some surge, this was the same even once we had got to the bottom. We made our way around to the bows and to the anchor still in its pipe. From her we explored the somewhat sheltered area where we found a winch and various other bits of machinery, as we move higher up the wreck to bag off I found a nice smiley conger in one of the pieces of piping. Upon arriving at the surface, having done no more than 5 minutes of deco as requested, the sea conditions had considerable worsened, and it is at times like this that you are grateful for boats with a tail lift.

Given the worsening conditions there was no opportunity for a second dive so we headed back into Weymouth. Many thanks to Chris for taking on the task of arranging 2 boats, and several B&Bs and attempting to keep everyone happy.

It wouldn't be a typical UKRS trip if we didn't talk about who broke what this weekend.

So let's start with:

Al, who has won so many kit destruction awards that he now just accepts such nominations as commonplace.

Prior to the first dive he was having a little bit of a problem with is inflator bottle for the DSMB. He tries bigger and bigger spanners to try and take off the top and release the pressure until he fixed it??? permanently (f##ked it, more like). This was then consigned to the sea bed to join the various other bits of scrap metal. Thus leaving Al to practice the age old skill of inflating the DSMB manually.

Following this he had intermittent oxygen cell problems on his breather, but in fairness he didn't actually break this piece of kit.

Huw missed the first dive on day one as he had a leaky first stage, this seemed to be cured by borrowing another first stage and fixing all his bits to it. He did point out that he should maybe get his regs serviced more often than every 3 years.

Craig missed all but the very first dive after tearing the boot on his dry suit. Somehow he didn't want to take up the challenge of hiring a semi dry for day two.