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Organiser: Antony Slegg
The weather during the week couldn't have been better with blue skies, almost flat water and great in-water visibility with water temperatures of around 17ºC. Andy Skippered most of the week and was helped by Carl, the son of the Weymouth RNLI Coxswain. Skin Deeps onboard compressor was out of action although they did get it running briefly so we had to get cylinders filled at Old Harbour. This wasn't exactly arduous
Dives:
Mon: Elena R - Black Hawk
Tue: Aeolian Sky - Lulworth Banks
Wed: M2 - James Fennel
Thu: St Dunstan - James Fennel
Fri: Pomeranian - East Portland Cliffs (didn't dive this one)
Monday
Elena R
In near perfect conditions we dived the Elena R to the east of Portland. Although quite well broken, the stern area stands several metres off the seabed and in the good viz made an intersting start to the week.
Black Hawk
I hadn't visited the site of the Black Hawk since the early 1990's, in the pre-GPS era, when we never managed to locate it. The wreckage covers a large area and is being surveyed by the Adopt-A-Wreck scheme. Lots of fish life including what we think was a bass, a fish I have never seen.
Tuesday
Aeolian Sky
The Aeolian Sky is a huge wreck that I dived for the first time last year. Again we landed on the stern and took a look at the rudder. The dive was going really well and I felt very good on my KISS having reduced my weighting to 8lb. That was until I tried to find why my left wrist was getting a little damp and I stuck a finger right through my wrist seal leaving a hole about 3/4 inch across. Needless to say water poured in and the dive terminated. I wasn't into deco so I just a nice, slow ascent with Adrian and got out of the water, taking a lot of it with me.
Lulworth Banks is a series of vertical rock ledges about 1 metre high and roughly parallel. The strong tides mean that there isn't huge amounts of life but the vis was good and the drift not too fast so it was possible to stop briefly at each ledge.
Wednesday
M2
Everyone looks forward to diving the M2 and as we watched the grapnel plunge into the clear blue water and could clearly see about 8m of the shot line we knew it was going to be good. Myself and Ben, both diving KISS rebreathers did a nice slow tour of the whole vessel, starting from just in front of the conning tower, along the port side, around the stern ascending to near deck level as we went along starboard to view the gun. Then up to the slender bow to see the torpedo doors, back along the deck to the hangar and up the conning tower.
James Fennel
The James Fennel is another wreck, that is familiar to many but new to me. At first we thought we wouldn't find her, landed in among the rocks we found a few small pieces of steel before finding the boiler and engine which lie very close to the propellor, itself half buried. We lazily zig-zagged across the wreck and seeing a steel bar sticking up behind a rock I thought to myself, "Wouldn't it be funny if that was the anchor", it was, but it wasn't that funny. We swam back across the wreck almost as far as the boiler before ascending.
Thursday
St Dunstan
This bucket dredger lies on its port side, the chain of armchair sized buckets clearly visible along with a massive gear wheel. Round at the stern we saw a John Dory. I've never seen many of these and now two in the same Summer, the first was at Newquay. Just forward of the stern on the uppermost side was a sadder site. A large piece of fresh fishing net had trapped about a dozen spider crabs. I tried for several minutes to cut some free but they were all too badly entangled.
James Fennell
Although we had dived it earlier in the week I was keen to dive it again. This time I was diving with Martyn and every dive site is different if dived with a different buddy. Landing just in front of the boilers we made a quick look for the conger in the fire box before swimming around to the propellor and then slowly moved forward swimming across the width of the wreck. I managed to locate the anchor off the port bow and then Martyn spotted a cuttle fish which stayed with us for a minute or so before moving away. Then we found another anchor before swimming further away from the wreck and around the huge boulders.
Friday
The deepest wreck of the week at 36m to the seabed if you really tried, achieving the aim of giving Sports Divers a chance to build on their previous experience.
Myself and Ben were buddied again and did a good exploration of this wreck site since it was new to both of us. Most of the decks have collapsed but the stern stands quite proud and a large piece of machinery sits on top. Possibly part of the steering gear but we weren't sure. The bow is damaged and there may be more lying further off the main part of the wreck.
Cliffs
To end a week of great weather and the occasional boat hiccough about half of the team dived along the cliffs south of the Portland south harbour entrance.