Kyarra @ Easter A day diving in Swanage April 17, 2006
Posted by Mark Gilmour in : Dive Reports, UK diving , trackbackFinally back in the sea. After having 6 sea dives canned this year so far I finally made it into the sea and a very nice introduction to 2006 it was. Ian (airassisted from YD) and I had arranged for him and his family to come down and visit for the weekend and while he was down he and I could escape off for a days diving on the south coast. There is an awful lot of choice down here and I just love it. We were debating between Portland doing the Salsette, Portsmouth doing U1195 and Swanage doing Kyarra. After much deliberation we decided on Kyarra with Martin & Pat from Swanage Bay Charters.
Diving off Mary Jo
I have dived a couple of times with Martin off Mary Jo and quite like the ease of it. They run a shuttle service out to Kyarra and local wrecks & drifts around the bay. A major plus point is of course the diver lift which makes getting out of the water nice and straight forward. Martin is also very proficient at giving the safety brief before hand.
Getting on the Pier - Anyone who has ever been to Swanage knows you have to get there early if you want to park on the pier. Although the ropes off time for us wasn’t until 11.20am we were down in Swanage for just before 9am and got the last parking space on the pier. I think the parking prices have gone up this year as in total it cost £10 for 2 divers and the car but the money is destined for the pier preservation trust so I don’t begrudge that all. So feeling quite smug that we had made it onto the pier we parked and wandered over to Divers Down to see about sorting out Ian’s fill. Back at home he had been done over with a 36% fill which was supposed to be 32%, leaving him a few metres short of the wreck if he was diving 1.4ppO2. We had enough time for them to blow some of it off and top it up with air to get it to 32.4%, much more reasonable.
Being Easter the pier was pretty busy with lots of people getting their first sea dives of the year in under the pier. We bumped into Dan E who was down with Dacorum BSAC for the weekend and also met a couple of new YDers Seadart Bob, who we met on the pier with his son and spent a good hour chatting about various things and SwissDave who we met down in the town.
As it neared 11am we got our kit sorted and made our way over to the boat , unfortunately we had too much time to get ready and were the last two on the boat. (If any of the others on the boat are reading this then I apologise!! ) As a result our kit got set on the deck all over the place. Martin did his safety brief and we made the short trip out to the wreck. About 20 minutes later we were at the marker buoy waiting for slack, for some there was a little too much swell but within a 5 or so minutes the tide had slowed enough. A team of four including two rebreather divers went in before us, we managed to scramble all our kit together and set ourselves up to go in next.
Back in the sea at last - I really enjoy diving, even the mechanics of it, which is essentially what I do when I go to any of the inland quarry or lake sites in the country but getting back in the sea is what it is all about. As we hit the water from the boat, a feeling of calm came over me, I couldn’t wait to get on the shot and head down and explore. The rush on the boat though meant that we needed a few minutes to compose ourselves and get ready to descend. Ian gave me the signal he was ready and off he speed down the shot. The visibility was a very pleasing 5-7m as we descended, as we neared the wreck though it increased to about 10m horizontally giving a decent view of the section of the wreck the shot was tied in at. We reached the wreck in about 22m of water somewhere around midships. We then headed off with the majority of the wreck on our right which leads I am told towards the stern, dropping in and out of holes in the decking, a lot of which has collapsed in creating some very enjoyable swim throughs. As we popped out of one a very shoal of bib or maybe Cod made their way in front of us obscuring the upper portion of the wreck. At this point we headed back towards the bow past the shot, finding a couple of decent sized conger on the way. As we passed the shot the current was starting to run a lot harder and so we didn’t make it all the way to the bow. Instead we decided to let the current drift us over the wreck and down the side of the wreck we hadn’t seen. As we did this, Ian signalled me he had found something and beckoned me back. I pushed against the increasing current to see what the fuss was about. He pointed his torch into the hold, at first I didn’t see anything, then I saw what looked like a large pipe approximately a foot in diameter. I then saw the pipe had a strange bluey/grey tinge to it and realised it was the body of a very large conger. What purturbed me is I didn’t know where it’s head was. I panned my torch left and found it about 1-2m away from me to the left. The body was about 3m below me to the right. This was a big brute. We backed away and continued our drift over the wreck. At 42minutes we thumbed the dive and I reached into my pocket to get my SMB out. Upon entering the water I had remembered that I hadn’t brought my brand new crack bottle smb onto the boat with me so when I pulled out my backup on the spool Ian gave me a very funny look. He was ready to deploy his rather than see me mess around with a spool but I needed to take my spool off and connect my KT reel on. The actual disconnect and connection was fine but unclipping the reel off my kit just didn’t seem to happen. Ian helped out there, so connected up and a quick burst of air into the SMB and up it floated. I had a couple of minutes of deco obligation which quickly vanished when I switched to 70% at 12m. We surfaced on the hour mark and found we were again last on the boat…. (sorry again to the rest) Back on board Martin handed me a hot chocolate and we set off back to the pier.
Our second dive of the day was going to be the pier but after getting back and seeing how the tide had turned and the wind got up the vis in the bay and swirling around the pier had turned to a very sandy sludge. So we canned that and went for a wander around Swanage and the pier. We saw Mike Marsh’s new cat being prepared on the pier for launch in a few weeks time. Looks a very nice big boat. We then grabbed something to eat before heading back home via the ferry into Sandbanks. One tip- never take the ferry, always go via Wareham, the queue for the ferry was about an hour. By that time we would have been home!!!
A very enjoyable dive on a decent size wreck that I would love to go back on and get another couple of dives as there is plenty to see. Lots of swimthroughs including a nice opening towards the stern that we didn’t get the chance to go and explore in. One to recommend and also Martin with Mary Jo on Swanage Boat Charters.
There is a wreck tour on Divernet, although looking at it, I think the wreck has collapsed a little more than when this tour was published in 2003
Comments»
Great weekend mate, and always a pleasure never a chore
[…] The Easter holiday was a busy time for us, with all sorts happening. Now sooner had it begun then it was ended. For Easter we had some friends (Ian, Sue and Isabelle) visit with us for the long weekend, which was a really fun weekend. Mark and Ian went diving on the Saturday while Lisa, Sue and the children went playing at Moor valley country park. […]