You need to read the post Paranoid on SS El de Bayo before reading this post.

We headed back to Dover Marina for a spot of lunch and a leisurely 4 hour wait for slack. This gave me time to take my sodden undersuit socks to the marina toilet block where there was a tumble dryer, £1 and 40 minutes later my socks were dry. Not trusting my Fourth Element Artics to the tumble dryer I left them out in the sun on the back of the boat to dry and then went for lunch, having failed to top up my tanks from the empty 12L cylinder I brought with me. Next lesson learnt. check all cylinders before I leave home. Thankfully Jay and Aide had a number of 15l with them and I stole a bit from them.

Lunch was very pleasant sat outside the Flagship pub across from the marina enjoying the sun.
We headed out again from the marina at about 2pm and turned right to head down the coast towards Dungeness chasing the vis.

The decision this time was to dive the HMT Drumtochety, an armed trawler from the Dover patrol which sank in 1918 after striking a mine. I quite like diving trawlers as they tend to remain shipshaped – think James Barrie in Scapa Flow. This was no different, apart from sitting upright on the seabed, this time at about 35m. Having dried out and moved my reel to a more accessible position on the stage bottle this time we jumped in. Again the trickle of water started immediately down my leg. We ventured off down the shot, I was a little too eager and had to wait at 12m as I saw that Dianne had stopped. I waited assuming she had had a problem with equalising. A moment or two later Paul passed me going down the shot and signalled that Dianne was indeed having trouble with her ears. At that point I saw her making a large OK signal with her torch and waited for her to join me at 12m. I signalled her to go ahead of me just in case she had any more problems but we glided effortlessly down to the port side of the bow where the shot lay. We didn’t make it all the way to the sea bed as already a number of lines went from the shot onto the deck of the trawler. I unclipped my reel but signalled to Dianne there was little point in reeling off as at this point I was already down to 80bar and so we wouldn’t be going far. We headed off along the top of the railing towards the bow and followed the rail of the ship. The hull was covered in dead mens fingers and other anemones and I spent some time seeing if I could spot any nudibrancs, I couldn’t, I not that good at spotting them. However due to the current still running all the anemones were open and still feeding and it was quite a spectacle. I thoroughly enjoyed it. We made our way back to the shot. Dianne was very wary of my gas guzzling but once back on the shot I still had 50 bar in my twins and would change to deco gas at 12m so was OK. We slowly made our way back up the shot. This time Dianne performed a much better MP3 player deployment and we waited out the safety stop listening to the demo tunes preinstalled on the player. Unfortunately she had not had the time to install any music. I was still impressed though by how clear the sound was.

After 36 minutes total dive time we surfaced. A much more successful dive especially on my part. I must admit at one point I had thorught after the first dive that was it for me for the day, but I was very glad I stayed on to do the second dive. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

In the end it was a very good day, I need to give a special thanks to Dianne who was extremely patient as a buddy especially on the El de Bayo when I was being a bit precious.

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I am sure that when I booked on to this dive I can’t have looked at the start time. 7am meet for a 7.30am ropes off. Oh well I thought an early start. I had packed the car the night before so when the alarm went off at 4.45am all I had to do was fall out of bed and into my clothes and into the car. I think I was the last to arrive at the marina but still not late to halt a prompt departure on time. Once loaded onto Neptune we were off, due to the low mist reducing surface visibility we decided to aim for just outside the main shipping lanes and chase the vis. The group decision was Urania or SS El de Bayo. Lying in approximately 40m but with the decks at 32-34m and fairly intact this was a good choice. Paul Oliver has done a fantastic sketch of how she lies which he has posted onto YD - click here

According to Canterbury Divers Website she was sunk in a collision with the Liner SS Westmorland in dense fog. She was struck near the engine room and the damage so severe that within 2 minutes she was completely immersed by the cold dover waters.

My little Wobble

The shot placement for our dive was right in the cargo hold. It was unfortunate that one couldn’t tell until one reeled off from the shot that this is where it was. This for me was the straw that broke the camels back but I’ll come to that. My buddy for the day was Dianne (Chunderfish/Madfish) who was an excellent buddy particularly when I had a bit of wobble on this dive. It started as soon as I hit the water. As I entered I felt a cool trickle of water enter into the left leg of my drysuit, I checked my pee-valve to make sure it was completely closed – it was. Great I thought another leak, it may well be time to change suits. The leak wasn’t too severe and my undersuit was doing a good job of soaking up the water so I carried on. As we descended the shot, the early plankton bloom created a dark curtain that blocked all of the rather glorious but hazy sun from penetrating below 25m. So this was going to be a dark dive. No real problems, I had volunteered for reeling off duties and away we go. Dianne and I had already discussed that we didn’t need to go racing off and cover all of the wreck (just as well really as it turned out). So at the bottom of the shot, unclip the reel. For some reason I could not work it loose. I had placed it on my left d-ring, which was not a wise choice, as it had got caught up with stage cylinder and I couldn’t get it off. Dianne tried once and failed then finally by yanking the stage out of the way she unclipped it. Hoorah at last , in fact I pretty sure I heard her give a faint cheer. By this time I was a bit cheesed off with myself for clipping it in such a stupid place! I started to reel off and Dianne moved off ahead of me. We had gone a few metres before it dawned on me that I had to tie the line of at places. Thankfully we hadn’t gone too far and I backtracked a little and found a suitable tie off. ”Doh”, I thought, “get it together”. By this time Dianne was a few metres ahead of me and towards the limit of my visibility, I caught her up finding another tie off along the way to find she had stopped and was indicating it was a dead end, at this moment I realised we had swam further into the hold and were surrounded by metal. I will admit to having a small paddy at that point and I signalled Dianne a single thumbs up which we had agreed earlier meant I’m not happy I want to go back. (two thumbs up meant I’m really not happy I wanna go home) At the moment in time, my thoughts immediately turned back to Garf’s experience in Scapa where he and John swam straight from the shot into the wreck and got lost. Now our situation was NOWHERE near that. For a start I had hold of the reel in my hand and we were only two tie offs from the shot. The combined things of leaky suit, the incident with unclipping the reel and the poor vis was at that point enough for me. I was even hearing things in I could have sworn my right post was leaking. Somewhat paranoid.

We returned to the shot and I just hovered there holding the shot. Dianne signalled she was going to have a look around the shot and then along the line left by Paul. It didn’t even register that she meant for me to follow her along the line. When she came back and signalled again, I got the message this time but was still paranoid about my apparently leaking right post. I signalled Dianne about this and she checked – I was all clear. I shook myself from the paranoia and continued on along Paul’s line which went up and over the hold onto the deck. We mooched along the line for a while and I started to appreciate just what a fantastic wreck this was. Unfortunately we met up with Paul and Mark all too soon who were reeling back to head to the shot. So we about turned and made our way back to the shot. We made a nice leisurely ascent completing our deco obligations and then some. Dianne had a rather unsuccessful try with her underwater MP3 player and then we ascended to bright sunshine and a ride back to Dover for lunch.

Evaluating this Dive.

I had a wobble on this dive because of a build of on their own quite minor things, the small leak, the unclipping the reel, heading further into the hold. I allowed myself to get unsettled most by not placing my reel in an easily accessible position. I knew before we entered the water that I would be reeling off, after all this is Dover, it is a return to the shot dive, it is April, plankton bloom it is going to be dark. So why or why did I clip it where I did? Inexperience in reeling off? – Perhaps Complacency? -probably. For the second dive that day I placed in a much more accessible position, ironically we didn’t use it on that dive. Click here for the Dive report on HMt drumtochety

Total Dive time 65 Minutes, Max Depth 38.2m Avg Depth 20.9m Water Temp 9.8 deg Backgas 29% Deco Gas 72%

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