Weymouth March 5th & 6th 2005

This was the second of the winter breaks that I had booked with Ian Taylor of Skin Deep. The first of these was in December, and everyone enjoyed it so much that we did it all over again. Ian does a superb deal which costs £75, this includes 4 dives, 2 nights B&B, a packed lunch and free air on board.

Whereas in December we had stayed at The Bunker in Portland, this time we stayed at Margaret’s B&B. Those of us on the trip were myself (Steve Jones), Louise Cronin, Darren Cronin, Adrian Smith, Megan Clark, Steve Chaplin, Alan Harriman, Dean Clark & Kieran Barry (he attended for the Sunday only)

Chris Bell, Danny Burchett and Paul Feakes were also booked on the trip but were unable to attend. 

Saturday

Dive 1: Elena R, Max depth 30 metres, Run time 47 minutes, Viz 3 metres

The Elena R was sunk by a mine in 1939 while en route to Antwerp. She was a  Greek ship weighing in at 4,576 tons, she was 370 feet long and 53 feet wide. The ship has been well broken by salvage, however there are some parts that still stand quite high.

I was diving with Adrian for this weekend and we went in first to tie in, it wasn't completely slack and we drifted along the side after tying the shot. This meant that we missed the main part of the wreck. However when we ran out of wreck we found our position and made our way back. At the very end of the dive just as we were bagging off we found one of the boilers, but no time to hand around as it was quite cold. 

Dive 2: British Inventor, Max depth 21 metres, Run time 39 metres, Viz 3 metres

The British Inventor was sunk by a mine in 1940 en route to Abadan. She was a 7,000 ton ship but only the bow  part sank, while the rest was towed away for repair. All that is left now is a pile of plates but makes for a comfortable second dive. After completing the dive it is possible to drift off onto scallop beds of Lulworth Banks.

Quite a disappointing dive as there is nothing except the aforementioned plates, and you soon run out of things to see. So after only a couple of minutes Adrian and I were on nothing but sea bed. 

Sunday

Dive 1: Landrail, Max depth 34.5 metres, Run time 53 minutes, Viz 4 metres

We all got to the boat on time and set off for the wreck site, we got around The Bill, and then Ian anchored in a quiet bay and had to admit that he had made a mistake with the time for slack, (his first mistake since 1974 apparently) so we had some time to kill before setting off once again for the site.

We were again first pair in to tie in the shot. We managed to find one very large lobster and there were also a lot of large bib. There are quite a lot of holes on this wreck that can be entered, but on this occasion we stayed outside, and just did a general tour around.

Dive 2: The bottle bank, Max depth 18 metres, Run time 30 minutes, Viz 4 metres

This was a repeat of the final dive that we did on the previous trip. A visit to Portland Harbour for some scalloping to round off the weekend. I soon had a problem with my VR3 which showed that I had 21 minutes of "no deco time" when I went in, and during the dive when it showed that I had some deco obligations it showed that I had to go “down” to 21 metres do the first stop. Rather difficult when the bottom was at 18 metres. Then by the time that I reached the surface it showed that I had some 700 minutes of deco to do, so decided to just do about 6 minutes at 5 metres which I deemed to be plenty of time.