Back in Dover - SS Cuvier March 3, 2007
Posted by Mark Gilmour in : Dive Reports, UK diving, Wreck Diving , trackback
The weather so far this year has canned a couple of dives for me, last Saturday while the family were scattered in Scotland and Devon I decided I would take the opportunity and sneek a dive in Brighton, but alas the weather put paid to that. All the opportunities to dive in January as well were canned. So when the metoffice inshore forecast read Force 4/5 up to 6 West becoming Cyclonic Force 8 I wasn’t hopefull. But at 6pm on Thursday the skipper declared the dive was on, the forecasts showed a break in the weather up to about 6pm on Friday and we were going to take it……..
The original plan was to dive the Hermes on the french side of the channel but with the forecast so iffy it meant possibly not making it back so another option was sought. This was going to be the SS Hermann, closer to Dover but when we neared the vis looked very murky so we bit the bullet and headed for the SS Cuvier, mid channel, best possible chance of decent vis but also deep in the heart of the shipping lanes.
The downside of Cuvier was that she lays at about 42m and so with us all on a mix of around 30% this meant limiting our depth a little. But this was not a problem as Dave, Skipper of Neptune placed the shot smack bang on the highest point or the wreck at 32m next to the first class cabins. As this was Dover, it is always return back up the shot so the decision to reel off so you can find the way back is a given, although in this vis it was hardly neccessary. In fact at times it was confusing which line to follow as I could see 3 or 4 different lines at one point.!!! Anyway Paul lined off which I was happy about, as I am not overly keen on it and he took us on a great route. We dropped from the shot into the corridors along the cabins and then down into one of the holds, which was full of sand. So having a seen a hole to go through, Paul led on into the second hold which again had a lot of sand in there, but also lots of crockery. He dropped further in and I waited on the remains of the deck whilst he had a look around. 
The crockery there was all broken but Brian brought up enough for everyone. (I have two rather nice little handpainted bowls sat on my desk now), so Paul left the area alone and didn’t stir up the sand with any digging. We continued on until we hit the stern of the deck area. We decided here to turn and head back along our line to the shot, again going through the holds and corridor arriving at the shot. Now was time for the not so fun part Deco on the shot. A fixed line that therefore has you fighting against any running tide. Thankfully the current didn’t really pick up until the last couple of minutes at 6m which by then I had cleared all my deco.
We arrived back on deck greeted by a hot chocolate and huge smiles after what was truly a great English Channel dive. One of the best. Unfortunately with skies looming it was time to hightail it back to port.
I made a conscious decision not to take the camera on this dive for if I did the vis probably turn out to be terrible. See everyone aren’t you glad I left the camera at home. So no pictures from the dive, just my profile and the crockery donated to me by Brian.
Comments»
Nice write up, as always, No 2