Diary of a Deckhand

The thought of getting a dive sent me into a weird sort of manic excitement, think of an 8 yearold being told they are going to disneyland or something. This was shortly followed by the cold dawning reality that to accomplish aforesaid dive i would need some dive gear, which currently was spread in a 22x5m space – namely the entire boat.

This is what the new galley looks like btw






My drysuit was retrieved from under the whaleback, as was a bag with most of the bits and bobs in it. Wing was on top of the freezer, twinset was where it always lives, lead was in the little pile by the compressor, fins were under the hammocks etc etc. Eventually i had the right gear and the worry started – would my bum still fit into my drysuit.....eek.

Soon enough its dive time and i am struggling into my suit – fortunately Ben seems to have built a little “growing room” into there and i could still haul it over my more than ample derrière. I fight with the rest of it, very glad to not have anything extra to contend with such as a stage or my camera, both of which i had contemplated taking in with me.

Arriving at the shot the four of us drop in and as soon as we reach the bottom of the shot go our seperate ways. I struggle a little with the switch on the halcyon torch as i have been an eejit and set the torch cannister too far back on my belt, but after leaving it alone for a couple of minutes and having another go i manage to flick the little switch and let there be light.

The vis was a good 6-8m with the particulate turning into a fine stringy snot which is rapidly dropping out of suspension leaving the top 6-10m of water very clear – hopefully not long until it drops out completley! The water temp was a bit chilly at around 8 degrees, and closer to 6 below the thermocline at 15m.
I complete my little faff and pootle off along the top surface of the wreck at around 14m, pausing to look at a hugemungous sea hare grazing on the algae on a flat plate. Dropping down to the seabed at 23m I head aft towards the stern.

The Karlsruhe is the most broken of the cruisers and the huge sections of totally unrecognisable wreckage rise above me. Poking from the silt is the breech and armour shield of one of her aft guns, well and truly splatted into the seabed. I right to the stern and then back up over the wreck, following a line over the engine room blast access hole. I marvel at how nature has claimed the rope as her own – it is now a mini reef entirely covered in plumose anemones all waving their hair like feeding arms in the underwater breeze. The wreck is almost totally devoid of fish life – one lonely pollack in the distance and the nose of a conger were all i saw until i scared the poo out of a mahoosive cod just forward of the shotline. Seeing me he darted for cover and well out of the beam of my torch and my curiosity.

Going back to the shot a tiny splash of colour catches my eye – the most perfect and madly coloured nudibranch is pootling along a plate edge. Bright purple with pink tips to his “dreadlocks” i hover and admire him for a minute or two and then make my way to the curiously brown shotline. These ropes will soon be back to their original colour with the hands of countless divers having rubbed the algae from their strands.

Surfacing into a slight chop and drops of rain which soon clear to give blue skies and a perfect ending to my long overdue first dive of 2008.