Diary of a Deckhand - November 2007

There is nothing like an Orcadian night to make me feel very small indeed.

Helping Hazel (actually, I stood and watched while she welded and ground the bits) making the new cleats for "Dave" our new little steel boat, I stepped outside into the thick inky blackness of the night. Faint jingling told me that somewhere out there was a Pete probably hunting out something yuckky to eat, but other than this, and the muffled swearing coming from the GP shed, the night was only punctuated by the distant pop of fireworks.



Glancing upward the breathtaking sight of a million million stars stared back at me. Scattered as if dust on the infinite velvet of space I cannot help but stop and stare. A father who is an amateur astronomer has always made me curious in what is up there and a telescope allowed me to venture into outer space whenever the skies were cloudless.

Despite all this, there is one thing that scares the living poo out of me, and funnily enough it is the aurora. I remember being woken from the warm folds of sleep by my dad when i was around 6 years old to be shown the lights in the sky. Now for a 6 year old who;s brain was full of stories of aliens, this really did not do a lot for me. Amazingly enough he did it again about 4 years later with much the same effect - me sobbing uncontrollably under the duvet and sleeping with the light on for months afterwards. Somehow this fear still remains and last winter the sky remained devoid of the merry dancers, so I am yet to confront this one.

If you think that is a weird fear, other things which give me the overwhelming compulsion to go and hide are: thunder, spiders and polystyrene. I never said i was normal did i?

The feeling that I had lost something finally solidified into the fact that I couldnt remember what I had done with my long suffering mobile phone. A good hunt around for it, followed by the logical "what were you doing last time you had it" conversation tracked it down to my boiler suit which was hanging over a door in the house.......My nice, newly washed and dried boiler suit. With a mobile phone shaped lump in the pocket.

@rse!!!!!!!!!!!!

A quick attempt at raising the dead was rewarded with nothing. So it was off to woolies to buy a nice new one whcih also has an MP3 player in it. Ho hum.

When I'm on the farm over the winter I live in the lovely wooden cabin (its like a posher version of a static caravan) next to the deer fields. It has a double bedroom, shower room, fitted kitchen and living room, plus heating etc. All very nice. However, it is wood, and this is Orkney....

So plodding over towards my bed last night i hoped that the forecasted wind would just hold off long enough for me to get a decent nights kip. At 1am the wind got up to a sufficient level that i had to find my ear plugs and put them in. After being woken up several times by strong gusts, i finally gave up at 7am when the whole thing began to shake. Pulling on my clothes and wiping the sleep from my eyes i find that the lawn chair which was sat outside is now firmly planted infront of the door. Bum. After a good deal of shoving and wiggling I manage to escape and head over to the farm, being blown all the way.

I did consider adding some lead shot to the chickens breakfast to make it harder for them to be blown away. Either that, or dip their feet in glue. Paxo the rooster and his harem - Korma, Jalfrezi and Coronation were all safely in the long byre annoying the sheep, so I sadly binned the idea.

No sooner had I got a cup of tea then the power goes off. Double bum. Both mine and Hazel's thoughts go to the safety of the boat in Stromness, so we jump in the car and head through to check everything is ok. A quick detour to the number one barrier (Churchill barriers link the mainland to the southern islands).




Next it was through to Stromness, with the Stennes Loch looking very lumpy indeed, a murky brown colour with rolling waves I was dreading to see the state of the harbour. Thankfully the harbour turned out to be flat calm due to the direction of the wind. Off to Julia's for a nice brekkie and a huge Caramel Mocha



After this we both want to go and see what is happening at Yesnaby, a local beauty spot with huge cliffs. Approaching the cliff top car park i can feel the butterflies in my stomach flapping around. I know the truck weighs a fair bit, but thats an awful strong wind!



After that it was up to the Bay of Skaill



And finally to the breathtaking Birsay







Finally back home to make sure that the farm was still in one piece and the power back on. We have eggs in the incubator so hopefully it wasnt off for too long.

Who am I exactly? I never really did a proper introduction, so here you go.....

My name is Helen, and I am 27 years old. A bit short and rather well padded, with short blonde hair and some rather gruesome ear and facial piercings, a legacy of a misspent youth.

Originally from Northumberland with my parents from West Bromwich near Birmingham, my mother doing various sales jobs and my father being an industrial chemist for many years. They left the rat race to start their own business in 1988.

Northumberland is very like Orkney, a rural community with all the plusses and minuses this brings. Northumberland is a truly beautiful county, with untouched beaches, lonely hillsides and woodlands silent except for the birds. It is much more population centre based than Orkney, obviously it is not a crofting landscape as Orkney is.

I lived in a small village called Lesbury where my parents ran the tiny village shop and post office. Living in such a rural place I did the usual thing for a girl to do, which was become obsessed by horses. Eventually this wore off, and I moved on to kayaking and general watersports where I finally became an instructor in 1998.

I went to the local schools where I did ok and left to go to University in Newcastle to study Environmental Management where I got a BSc (Hons) in 2001.

I moved in with my then long term partner to a little house in the same street as my parents who have now retired. First working at the local vets, then at a boat builders and finally as a “Knights Quest” employee for Alnwick Castle. The best part of this job was doing the Harry Potter tours, where you dressed up in robes, had a spell book, a broomstick and even a golden snitch. During the busy periods you would be talking to up to 250 people. Lets just say I learned to project my voice very well very quickly!

The cascade at the top of the Alnwick Garden (taken by me, honest!)

One of the water features in the Alnwick Garden




Throughout everything since I left university my one true passion remained diving. Being introduced to the sport a week before my final exams as a ploy to keep me sane, it hooked me and has never let go. No matter what job I did, it suddenly struck me that I was simply working to pay for the diving. A friend of mine Chris Hall was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease in 2005 and I saw him for the last time in January 2006. Chris passed away in May 2006, less than a year from diagnosis. At that point I had yet to confirm my decision to move to Orkney, but seeing his reaction to my plans made it so clear I needed to start being happy in what I did. No point in being miserable to pay for the things you enjoy is there.

Chris and Liz


Hazel who ran the Stormdrift out of Stromness was looking for crew, and I was looking for an escape. Telling my partner I was leaving for what was planned to be 8 months was hard, but somehow he understood. We had been together for 13 years, maybe too long. That summer was a fantastic one. Diving in Scapa Flow is some of the best diving you can possibly hope to do. Working with the BBC to help film a section of “Coast” was excellent fun, as was meeting so many divers in such a short period. After the season I continued to live on board the Stormdrift in a tiny space 6ft long by 3ft wide by 5.5ft high until the weather got so bad I could hardly pull the boat in against the quay to get off in the high winds. I moved in with Kev in a house share which was excellent and got a job in both the Café Bar and in Argo’s Bakery.

Stormdrift


The galley all laid out for breakfast


Over the summer myself and Hazel found that we both worked together so well we could move on from the Stormdrift that Hazel had run for four years. A boat was for sale in Stromness, and eventually we made plans to purchase what is now called the Valkyrie.

Eventually lambing came around and I left Stromness to help with the night shift. Suffolk sheep are big in comparison to many other breeds, but since these are pedigree sheep they are also worth a lot more. Eventually a good number of small woolly things were bouncing around the shed and we could relax a little.

Small mad wooly thing


The Lodge where I live over the winter - the ladders behind it pointing into space are the escape from the deer fields. A very important thing if you are ever in with a stag. Think of something the size of a small cow, with the mentality of a bull armed and dangerous with 17 points per antler who can run at 30mph. I would want a suit of armour and and an armed guard!


Taking the boat to Fraserburgh for a survey and seeing her on the slipway was an interesting one – what had we done! This thing was HUGE! An eventful journey back to Stromness through the Pentland Firth and finally we slip our ropes over the stout black bollards on the pier.

Repairs to the deck

Our stand at the dive show


A long time was spent planning, re planning, faffing, worrying, painting, and generally mucking around with the boat. We had to repair some of the deck, moved the benches around, repainted the saloon, and most importantly added a diver lift. This is a moveable platform which lifts the divers out of the water and up to deck level. A close friend of mine has MS and struggles to walk, therefore this was ideal for keeping him diving as it cuts out having to climb a ladder.



The season started a little shakily, with a near vertical learning curve for the both of us, but after a couple of weeks we had it pretty slick. Needless to say, by the end of the season we were slick as a slick thing on national slick day.

So that’s about it really.

Favourite food – Rob’s green Thai curry mmmm thai curry.
Favourite drink – pear cider
Favourite music – Sigur Ros an icelandic band at the moment, but it changes a lot
Favourite place – diving on the F2 or the UB116.
Diving qualifications to anyone who cares -

BSAC Dive leader which allows to 50m and to take someone unqualified.
IANTD Adv Nitrox - use accelerated deco
TDI Normoxic Trimix - use trimix 18% oxygen to 60m. I lurve helium. It reduces the narcosis whcih is like getting drunk at depth. When you dive deeper than about 25-30m nitrogen becomes toxic and interferes with the brain. It is the equivalent to getting drunk. Someone said for every 10m depth it is like drinking a neat shot of spirit. So, to couteract this we breathe helium which does not give us narcosis - the altering of our brain chemistry to make us feel drunk. Most people use this beyone 50-60m, but i like it shallower than this as its much safer.

In our cylinders on our backs we commonly carry air. Simply air, just as you breathe on the surface. This is compressed into a cylinder and depending on the size, depth and other factors will last anything up to a couple of hours. I personally carry two 12 litre cylinders which will at 20m last me for bl00dy hours. To be safer we sometimes use nitrox which is gas with a higher percentage of oxygen. This cuts down the amount of decompression we need to do but also limits the depth as oxygen is actually toxic if breathed at certain concentrations at depth.

So now you know :o)

Walking past the spare room I catch a tiny snatch of the sound I have been waiting for. Chirping is coming from the eggs in the incubator; I peer through the clear plastic lid and see at least three of the eggs are pipped – where the shell is broken by the baby as it tries to hatch out. Leaving them to get on with it, I return a few hours later to find three small yellow fluffy chicks nestling amongst the remains of their shells. Leaving them until morning I find three more, who are all transferred to the brooder.





I pull on my wellies and start my jobs, pouring grain and pellet food into buckets and then into the troughs in the main shed. Every single sheep is yelling its head off as I walk down the central aisle and they all race around to be first to get their noses into the metal container as I swing it into the pen. Next I attack the huge bale of haylage and fork it into the big wheelbarrow filling it twice over, and transferring it to their hay racks. Lastly I climb onto the stack in the GP shed and throw down eight bales of straw to go into the lambing shed for bedding. Two buckets of food are poured into the troughs for the deer, and I go and hose out all of the various poultry and re-fill their feeders.
All of the above takes around an hour and a half, if I rush i can get it down to around 45 minutes.

Other jobs I have done is power washed part of the lambing shed to stop it getting icy and slippy when the cold weather comes along. Cleared part of the store room and now have a huge pile of stuff to be thrown away.

Oh yeah, and I write some stuff to put on here too :o)









Repeat the above twice a day, with the occasional other bit thrown in to keep me on my toes.

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Sitting in the office contemplating a bath, I glance upward into the usually black void that is the deer fields and sky above. Occasionally you get the lights from an aircraft coming into land at the airport, but this was different. The bright red light drifted slowly down before blinking out. Grabbing the phone I dial 999 and ask for the coastguard to be put through to the friendly voice in the control room perched on the Knab, Lerwick, Shetland. We visited them when we went to Shetland earlier in the year with a group of divers.



Orkney is covered by Shetland Coastguard and they would coordinate a search for anyone in trouble. The proximity of bonfire night made me slightly dubious as to if it was someone in trouble, but you can’t take that risk and I am thankful it is not my decision to make. Turns out it was the third false alarm in only a few days. Someone somewhere needs to be shown what happens when the lifeboats get called out and its not a nice night.

The below story was put on my old blog so some might have already read it. I will repeat it here for those who might not.

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Grabbing some binoculars from the drawer I peer with some difficulty towards the shore of South Ronaldsay. We were making for Kirkwall, Orkney, a five hour journey by sea from Stromness via the Pentland Firth. A rolling easterly swell gently pushed us to a five degree roll, severely diminishing my ability to focus on what had caught my eye. But, despite the roll, I could make out a huge rusted boiler pushed up onto a rocky beach below the patchwork of green fields dotted with cows.

This sighting remained forgotten about until we met up with Kevin Heath, a local diver with a huge talent for finding and researching wrecks. He informed me that the boiler was that of the Irene, a 2,300 tonne Liberian steamer which was wrecked after issuing an SOS that she was drifting out of control in a force 9 south east gale. The vessel finally went aground on the shore of South Ronaldsay on the 17th March 1969. The whole crew were taken off the stricken boat, with no harm coming to any of them. But this is only a tiny fraction of the story.

As you would expect, the lifeboat had been launched to assist with any rescue, named the TGB after an anonymous donor, it battled from its home port of Longhope, a small community in South Walls, Hoy. To get to the position of the Irene, it had to pass through the Pentland Firth.

The Pentland Firth is a fearsome stretch of water that separates Orkney from the mainland. The tide surges through this narrow space, rushing around the now abandoned islands of the Swona, Stroma and finally the Pentland Skerries with their characteristic double lighthouse. Working on the liveaboard the Valkyrie has meant that we have to through the firth occasionally, and each and every time it makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. These days it is filled with the vast bulk carriers heading east or west, channel 16 alive with their calls notifying the coastguard they are entering or leaving the Firth. These turbulent dark waters have become the graveyard of many a ship, and making 2 knots backwards against the current in a back eddy, I can see why.

The comparatively tiny lifeboat entered this wild stretch of water in the raging southerly gale, finding that the tides had met with the awesome opposing force of the wind and created a terrifying situation. At 8.40pm, forty minutes after launching the lifeboat gave her position as 3 miles south east of Cantick Head Lighthouse on South Walls, five miles from her launching place.

At this point she would be entering the tidal race which can make nine knots, versus the gale force winds whipping the sea to a fury. At 9.30pm the TGB was sighted by the lighthouse keepers on the Pentland Skerries, around four miles south east of her previously reported position.

The last reporting signal from the TGB was picked up by Wick Coastguard as she still ploughed north to assist the Irene. This was the last that was heard from the TGB.

The following afternoon after a massive search Thurso Lifeboat found the TGB floating upside down four miles south west of Torness with extensive hull damage. Once righted in Scrabster harbour seven bodies were found in the wreckage. Six of these were in the cabin, one in the Supernumerary and the coxswain still at the wheel with a broken neck. The eighth member of crew, the motor mechanic was never found. Coxswain Daniel Kirkpatrick, Second Coxswain James Johnston (son of Mechanic), Bowman Daniel R Kirkpatrick (son of Coxswain), Mechanic Robert R. Johnston, Assistant Mechanic James Swanson, Crew Member Robert Johnston (son of Mechanic), Crew Member John T Kirkpatrick (son of Coxswain), Crew Member Eric McFadyen. They left seven widows, one widowed mother and eight children, all of whom were pensioned by the RNLI.

Picking our way down the grassy slope to the pebble beach we can see the remains of the wreck poking from the glistening smooth water. Soon there are sections of plate, twisted and unrecognisable as any part of the ship. Two huge boilers lie among the jumble. A complete section of what was once the deck has been bent over, the wooden planking still attached to the underside where it has remained protected from the weather. When the Irene was run aground she was totally intact, what little is left of her is testament to the awesome power of the sea.
Sitting quietly on a section of plate I can’t even imagine the fear felt by the guys in that lifeboat in their final moments. The sheer bravery of going out in that kind of weather is unimaginable to most people, the irony that the stricken vessels crew actually walked ashore is never far from my mind. Somehow it seems so unfair.

Leaving the wreck to her peace, she seems an unlikely monument to those men lost attempting to save her.

Sometimes it is easy to forget the impact the sinking of a boat has. Not just on the people on board, but on those who go to their aid. The tiny community of Longhope was devastated by this tragedy. Fathers, sons, brothers all lost going to the aid of others.

Photographs are here: -
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/porgthediver/TheIreneSouthRonadlsay


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Now, some of you might have noticed that I have a real soft spot for cats. I miss the two I left with my ex more than anything in the world. The little one is pretty brainless so no chance of bringing her up here, she would be squished flat by either a sheep, deer, tractor or goose in 5 minutes flat. The five on the farm are my adoptive cats now, but they are farm cats and dont do the cuddle thing too well.

Scuba Cat who now lives too far away.


To settle the balance of cat/dog on the farm with the recent loss of Harry the King Charles, Carolyn is away picking up Hera, a Leonberger puppy. I really dont like big dogs. Seriously, they scare me a bit and this thing will grow to be a monster! 32inches to the shoulder! Thats longer than my inside leg! Time will tell, but I will post pictures to keep the karma right.

Well the new dog has landed, small, fluffy and with paws which are far too big, she does score highly on the cute scale. However, i really do not do dogs, so time will tell. Camera is on its way back from the Faroes, so some pics will be forthcoming soon. However, in the meantime, hows about this....

Pure genius and soooo accurate

http://pets.webshots.com/video/3077457010040941110WVmffw

That is the usual cry heard around the farm at the moment - Hera, the new puppy has the attention span of a 5 year old on too many E numbers. Everything is there for her amusement, to be sniffed, chased, bounced on or chased (including the cats, geese, ducks and other dogs).

Buttons - lights are on but there is no-one at home.


Pete - current top dog.....not for long i suspect.


Pete and Hera "I'm just going to stuff my cold wet nose down your earole"


Hera - right, whats next i can bounce on?


Hera - pose for a picture? Moi? Noooo much more fun to never sit still!


Pete - "oh fer gawds sake will you SHUT UP!"


At last, a cute pic to put on the net Hurrah!

Hazel has just returned from the Faroes, a place we are planning to visit with the boat in 2009. Currently we have over 30 divers clamouring for a place on board, a chance to dive in the utterly unspoiled waters surrounding this tiny group of islands. Everything is very expensive out there, food is extortionate! Alcohol - dont even ask. I suggested filling the top water tank of the boat with beer, but i would probably forget and make tea with it.

So, look out Torshavn, here we come (in 18 months anyway).

Well, its that time of the week again, and we make our way through to Stromness to check the boat is ok, there is money in the electricity meter etc etc. Deciding to start the engine rains a shower of black soot over the back of the boat, but starting the generator, I am glad i wasnt anywhere near the exhaust on that! A jet of black yuck is sprayed over the side of the boat and I am sent to get a hose to clean it off before it dries.

Andy from the Jean Elaine takes our J cylinders away (the big cylinders of oxygen we use to make nitrox for divers) as he has still got divers and can use them up. No point in them sitting doing nothing really.

Once the boat is checked we mooch off back through and end up on a small trip down to South Ronaldsay where we visit East Side Beach. I nip out to take some piccies and then back to the farm.

Ok, this time its not from one end of Orkney to the other, but from one end of the country to the other. Tormorrow I set out to get to London for the British Sub Aqua Club Diving Officers Conference where I will collect a safety award for the rescue in the summer.
I ummed and ahhhd about going, but then all my friends rallied round and collected a large amount of cash to pay for the tickets.

So.....

6 hours on a ferry
7 hours on a train
20 minutes on the underground
40 minutes on another train
10 minutes walk....

And then, finally I get to my friends house where I have a space on a sofa. Hurrah!

I will be going armed with the camera, so expect some piccies after the weekend.