HMT Drumtochety April 25, 2007
Posted by Mark Gilmour in : Dive Reports, UK diving, Wreck Diving , trackbackYou 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.
Comments»
[…] 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 […]