So... with my newfound love of diving I ventured off with the divers at Imperial College to Portland harbor and a great many wrecks from days long past.
The weekend started with phenomenal organization from our mighty group leader, a small yet indomitable woman by the name of Jo Swarbrick. She was working hard for a 7pm departure (there was a pint in it for her if she could actually get the minibus moving by that time). Remarkably we made it to our accomodation (a scout hut in Poole) by 9pm at which point we went wandering along a trail to pub where a band was playing lots of music... none of which was original. Fortunately, it was a Badger Brewery pub, so the ale made up for the atmosphere - oh yes, and there was good company too.
Saturday morning we awoke at some inhuman hour and ambled out to the minibus. Once we were at Portland harbour the first wave of divers quickly sorted their kit and made their way to the beach. The boat suddenly rolled into the water and the kit was swiftly loaded on. Sadly there was a bit of a delay with our coxswain (a fellow named Andy Haynes) having to wait for some stupid fool who was trying to get cash back at the parking lot ticket booth. Nontheless, we were out on the water well ahead of schedule and diving on the Countess before 10am.
The Countess of Erne was built by the firm of Walpole, Webb & Bewley of Dublin in 1868. She was an iron hulled paddle steamer approximately 73m (240ft) in length, with 2 engines, built by Fawcett Preston & Co of Liverpool, delivering a total of about 300hp to two side paddles. She was fitted out to able to carry approximately 700 passengers, with more than 100 of those being in first class. She was also able to carry 700 tons of cargo... a pretty big ship.
Sometime during 1888-1889, she was put up for auction in Liverpool, where she was purchased by the Bristol Steam Navigation Company who put her into service for 2 years, before she was sold for scrap. In 1890, she was coverted into a coal hulk and used at several ports before finally being moored in Portland Harbour.
On the 16th September 1935, she broke free of her moorings and drifted before holing herself on the north-east breakwater of Portland Harbour and shortly afterwards sank.
My diving buddy (Clare the feisty) and I dropped down to the remains of the Countess at 10:20am and while I found the wreckage absolutely fascinating I think my buddy found luring fish by tossing small bits of silt into the water to be even more interesting... sigh. I must admit, the trick certainly worked and most of the fish on the wreck wandered up to her in sheer wonder (probably trying to figure out what on earth this silly human was up to). The visibilty wasn't bad, but there was a lot junk (for lack of better word) floating around.
We returned and the second wave was waiting. They zoomed off as soon as kit was swapped and we promptly brought our tanks in for filling.
There was a bit of a de-kit and some munching on soggy hamburgers. Leo was pooped on by a seagull, but otherwise nothing else exciting happened.
The second wave returned and those of us in the first wave were waiting and ready on the beach. Unfortunately, during their scheduling activities the weekend planners forgot to allow time for our Dive Master and Boatsman to eat. We were almost two hours ahead of schedule by this point though, so it wasn't really an issue.
Once meals were eaten and toilets were visited we got on the boat and headed out to the dredger. On our way out we were stopped by an old geezer who was cross about us boating too quickly. This was odd since the area we were in has apparently never been limited to 6 knots before. Sadly, the old geezer was in a harbour patrol boat so we really had to look interested and read the pamphlet that he handed us showing the new speeds in the different sections of the harbor.
When we finally made it to the dredger it was surrounded by dive boats. None of us really wanted to dive the dredger with that many divers on it, so we made a snap decision to dive the Spaniard instead.
Now, there isn't a lot known about the Spaniard. Spaniard is its modern name, it was also once known as the Enecuri and was a 3000 tonne Spanish steamer that sank under mysterious conditions in 1900. The wreck lies in a very silty area of Portland Harbour and is now very broken up. The visibility is renowned for being terrible and the wreck barely visible. So I wasn't expecting much.
Well, so much for expectations... not only did I find the Spaniard but I was amazed by it. The main deck had exposed ribs all around covered in kelp and loads of fish. Clare took a bearing and started finning along... so I followed... I assumed that she knew where she was going. My assumption proved wrong and we got lost in the silt we had been warned about, visibily dropped. Somehow we ended up exploring a bunch of boulders with large crabs on them. After a lot of bumbling around, Clare eventually did find the boat AND the shot line (in a cloud of bubbles she applauded herself quite merrily).
The rest of the afternoon went well for the second wave and we eventually retreated to the scout hut for a fantastic bbq. In spite of the fact that our scout hut host (Brett) had done all the shopping on his own Jo Swarbrick and I with all of our dietary limitations were able to find food that we could eat. There was a lot of food! Brett actually bought more meat and more beer than our group could consume after a long day of diving.
Before bed, our valiant dive marshall sorted out the plan for Sunday and arranged all of our buddy assignments. The following morning we arose again at some evil hour of the morning and started cleaning the hut. Some of us were more coherent than others, but then again some of us had drunk more than others the night before.
We arrived at the harbor and were once again well ahead of schedule when we got out on the water. I was buddied with Leo Carlin this time and as we descended we thought we were going down to look at two WWII landing craft that had been sunk during the Blitz. We were wrong. We found a boat that was very large and nearly rectangular in shape - which did not match the landing craft description that we had been given earlier. We followed along the side of the hull for a while turned to cross the deck as we neared the bow. The deck was MUCH longer than I expected it to be. We hit our turn around point (140 bar) and decided to keep going along the deck because we didn't think it could be that much longer. Well, we did find the end of the deck and started back along the opposite side of the hull. We debated in an odd bit of sign language over which way to go for a while and then a few of our fellow divers passed us. I motioned that I was looking for the shotline and they gave me directions. Leo and I started following the directions, but it didn't matter. Our dive time would be up soon and we needed to give ourselves decompression time to hang at 6m and at this point, since no shot was in site, we deployed a DSMB. This all went fine and we surfaced right at the tail end of our stated dive time. Still have no idea what sort of vessel we were exploring though.
When we returned Jo-bi-wan Kenobi (Swarbrick in a bright pink hood) was mustering the troops and ready to get wave two out on the water.
A 1.5 hour relaxed lunch was had as wave two returned. Very restful and pleasant. Again, the weather was fantastic. We all got on the boat and noticed we were missing someone important... our dive marshall. I had to wander back up to the minibus and wake up Joseph who had fallen into a deep sleep.
In the afternoon I buddied with Naiomi and we went to dive a sunken dredger. To be honest, there wasn't much left of the ship. But that was ok because there was loads of life. My vaunted buddy attempted to play matchmaker with a number of spider crabs but only succeeded in starting a brawl between a number of them. We had to tear the poor things off of each other before moving on. All in all it was a good dive.
When we go back, we de-kitted and started arranging the tanks and bags so that all could be sorted as soon as the second wave got back. When they returned we washed all of their gear and loaded bags as soon as they were done putting things away. Our organisational abilities were something to truly marvel at.
As we were about to leave, we had a minor problem with the minibus... it wouldn't start. We tried jumping it off of Chris's car, but no luck. Then we tried jumping it off of Andy Stalker's car... again no luck. Lots of unhappy noises came from the engine. Then, when all hope seemed lost, Jo-bi-wan tapped into the the power of the force and suddenly the engine snapped to life.
Got back to London around 10pm, dropped off all the kit (which had already been cleaned in Portland), and headed home after a fantastic weekend that went like clockwork.