Diary of a Deckhand - December 2007

Driving onto the Hrossey i somehow feel that we are being swallowed by some giant sea creature. The yawning jaws agape, we drive into the cavernous interior filled with heavy freight and mooing cows in their transport trailers. We head up to the cabin we have booked and i climb wearily into bed.


The morning is signalled by the automated call over the ships tannoy system that we are nearly into Aberdeen and so we head to grab some breakfast, the idea being that i dont have to buy an overpriced meal on the train. A quick unintentional circuit of Aberdeen and we arrive at the railway station at dawn. Jumping onto the train soon i am zooming south past the incredible Aberdeenshire coastline, hundreds of majestic geo's cut deep into the rock looking as if the sea had gnawed at the cliffs.

Soon I am in Edinburgh and a mad dash over the station and i am on the home stretch, arriving in Alnmouth at midday. So....it took just over 12 hours to get from Orkney to my mums house. Eeek.

Parents are chuffed to bits with their christmas presents and i get a nights sleep before i have to leave for London on the Friday.

A packed train pulls into the station and i am very glad i have a seat booked. Sat just along the carriage is a lady with her family; granny a boy of about 8 and a young baby who i later found was 9 months old. They had travelled from Glasgow to London to see the Egyptian exhibits at the O2. On arriving into Kings Cross i ask if she would like a hand carrying anything, what with her having full hands with buggees, bags and children. Fully expecting to pick up a bag or similar i am handed the baby who gurgles, smiles and wriggles as small children do. I suspect i was off doing something else when the maternal instinct was handed out, possibly trying to find the bum queue and finding i was right at the back...... I always find small children reasonably fascinating, their wobbly movements and their amazement at the universe. However, i still have no desire to produce my own and prefer the definition of a digestive tract with a loud noise at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other. Once off the train i make sure they get to where they are going ok, the head over to Victoria by tube. The tube remains as noisy, smelly and crowded as i remember, and i constantly fight the feeling that everyone there wants to mug me. I guess thats what happens when you live somewhere so quiet for a while!

Once at Victoria i go for a quick bimble around and end up at Westminster Cathedral where I get into a tiny lift to the top of their tower. Once i have taken some snaps i go back down and head for the station once more, arriving at Janos's house in Hurst Green around an hour later.













Saturday dawns bright and cold, and we head into London for the BSAC (British Sub Aqua Club) Diving Officers Conference where i am to get a safety award. Scooting through the streets of London with Woz driving and Janos being the Sat Nav (yelling FATSO at the speed cameras) we eventually arrive.

The conference goes well, with it almost making me want to rejoin BSAC, however i think there is very little we can mutally do for eachother due to where i live.

We get to the awards section and the butterflies in my stomach have grown to have the wing span of a 747 and suddenly a short recount of my rescue was read out and i go up onto the stage to collect the scroll, somehow it reminds me of my graduation many moons ago.

Once the DOC is over i head back with Janos where we go for a fantastic curry with his lovely other half Pippa. Sunday comes around and i head back into London to do the tourist thing. The heavens were throwing all they had at the streets with huge puddles and umbrellas bobbing like corks on a sea of human lives. I decide to be a real fully fledged tourist and buy a ticket for one of the tour busses which circle the sights of the city. This turned out to be a really good choice as it meant i was dry, warm and actually got to hear a lot of the history of the city.













Once i have completed the tour i decide to get over to Oxford before it is too late, so get to Paddington via the circle line and get on a very quick train to the city where Rob picks me up at the station. A fantastic curry then follows, plus champagne to celebrate several things, not least his flatmate being on Top Gear.

And thats about it so far, a lovely day is planned, so i guess we will see.

Replacing the handset I am utterly impressed with GNER (the railway company), expecting an total faff, or possibly being told i was expecting a bit much i was pleasantly surprised to find that booking a seat reservation for my train tomorrow is only a five minute call! Maybe im a little cynical.....or a realist....but im pleased whatever i am.

On the whole i have been really pleased with public transport - all my rail connections have been on time, clean, efficient and warm. Even the tube was hassle free!

So tomorow i begin my gradual ascent back to the top of the world, back home to Orkney. A stop off at my parents house to take full advantage of the WiFi (muahahah) for a few days, and possibly go on a small shopping expedition to M&S and buy their entire stock of pants. I also plan a rather drunken night out in South Shields with a group of my friends, however we will see what happens with that as i have to travel the next day!

I think i have eaten out more in the last few days than i have in the last 18 months. Indian twice, a really lovely place called The Living Room in Oxford, (a cheeky wine tasting evening in the middle) and then to Browns. I have also been to Waitrose which was really a nice shop. Not at all like other supermarkets where they have as many aisles as possible, this was really nice and relaxing to walk around. Plus they do fabby esspresso chocolate brownies hehe.

A visit to the Ashmolean Museum was very good, they have a lot of Egyptian items on display which made me remember the Hancock museum in Newcastle.

A quick faff with Robs laptop and these are the result with the image distort programme :o) hehehehe

Someone once asked me where i felt my home was and it really stumped me. He summed it up brilliantly with "home is where your fins are", which funnily enough is Orkney. The more i think about it, the more it is true.

Sitting here at my parents house is all very nice (mum has gone into overdrive with the fussing as i also have a killer sore throat and cold), but it is not home anymore. This is their home where they have retired and made it their own again, rather than mine. Its like pulling a spoon from a tin of golden syrup. Eventually the liquid settles back and you hardly notice it was taken away at all.

The other reason it is true is that without your fins, diving is pretty impossible. I seem to have several pairs of fins these days, my jetfins which are my everyday scuba fins, my long freediving fins and my monofin (a mermaid fin like Tanya Streeter wears). Diving for so many of us who do it, becomes so much more than simply a sport. It becomes a way of life, almost an addiction, an obsession. So wherever your fins are, is where you get your fix.



So on Thursday I will be heading back to my fins, back home to Orkney. I hope they have put the heating on....

One of the hardest things i have ever had to do was to leave my cats behind when i moved to Orkney. The legacy of working at the vets left me with two moggies, Greebo and Scuba. Because of where i was going i couldnt ever bring them with me, so my now ex-partner took care of them. He has since moved house, and this was the first time i have seen them in nearly 11 months.

Entering the living room Scuba immediatley goes and hides under the safety of the christmas tree, but after a few words she comes out - She remembers me! The one thing i was scared of was that she wouldnt remember who i was and would do her usual thing of hissing and being scared at people she doesnt know. Soon she was bouncing around the room, mostly trying to attack the many decorations on the tree which in her opinion were there solely for her amusement. The tinkling of bells was swiftly followed by an innocent looking cat emerging from the undergrowth "who me? noooo i would never try to eat a bauble"

Greebo is still fat, in fact, possibly fatter than when i last saw her. She goes off to explore behind the sofa and gets stuck in a gap far smaller than she is, whereupon the Scubacat goes in to stuff a paw into the fatcat filled space and take advantage of the fact she cannot fight back.

Oh deary me.

Greebo



Scuba

Alnmouth beach is a long expanse of golden sand framed with the buildings of Alnmouth village. Grassy dunes roll along, their marram grasses stirred to a gentle hiss by the cold but weak breeze. The north sea hardly ripples, waves of all of a foot high climb the sandy incline, only to sweep back again.

Alnmouth beach was an excellent place to come and play when i was a child. The great expanse of sand and numerous places to make dens, castles and all manner of things long forgotten now. Later it became a place for me to ride horses and find that hitting wet sand from a height of 6ft feels like hitting concrete! During my time at university it became somewhere that i could study the marine ecosystems and the numerous efforts to reduce the erosion which seems to plough on regardless of what we put in its path.

The final thing Alnmouth Beach did for me before i left for Orkney was to give me hope. Unemployed and unable to dive for medical reasons i suddenly found a passion for photography. Alnmouth Beach offered endless subjects and it kept me sane, getting me out of the house when all i wanted to do was hide under the duvet.

So here are a few pics of the beach.

The ferry seeming impossibly slow makes her way through the silent night. We pass the private galaxies of light indicating oil platforms out to the east. They somehow remind me of those deep sea jellyfish which glow when they sense water movement.
Approaching Orkney i go to the rear deck of the Hrossey and watch the blinking lights of the lighthouses, white and red. So soon we are back in Kirkwall and alongside at the pier, the journey seemed so long, and then so short. Arriving back onto the farm so late and still feeling the effects of the virus i am so utterly drained. How does sitting on your bum for more or less 13 hours make you so tired?

Flopping onto the sofa the welcoming silence of sleep soon takes me.

The ewe looks really rather uncomfortable, which is understandable when you consider that the vet is immersed up to the shoulder playing hunt the lamb. I swear you can see their eyes widen when you so much as pick up the bottle of lambing lube in the shed. However, this ewe had got dead lambs inside her, and so to save the ewe, we have to get the lambs out.

I decide to keep well clear as the smell of a dead lamb is really quite nauseating, and toast is never so nice second time around. A lot of fishing around, and with the most undignified "schloooop" a tiny black shape is splatted onto the new straw. And moves. We all just stare at eachother in amazement, asking the unsaid question of "did you just see that?". Another kick and all hell breaks loose, the mental list of all the things i have just begun to get ready seems a mile long. The lamb is dried off, the snotty yuk cleared from its nose and mouth and it is soon breathing just fine.

The two dots on the ewes back tell us that when she was scanned two lambs were seen, so i brace the ewe against the wall and the vet has another look around inside and soon another "schloooooop" signalls the second lamb has been rather rudely brought into the world.

Born over a week early, never expected to be alive, then to survive a few minutes, hours, days. I need to go out and feed them in a minute.....

To me, life has always had a soundtrack. Wherever I am, whatever I am doing, if there is music playing then I am happier by far. My musical tastes are so wide ranging I sometimes wonder if I am normal, and then give myself a slap – of course I am not normal. The soundtrack to the current chapter of my life is an Icelandic band called Sigur Ros. Their best known song is called Hoppipolla, which translates as jumping in puddles. However, despite the strange subject matter it is the kind of music that makes the little hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Cruising down the flow on those calm summer days (there was the odd one), the stout bow pushing its way through the glass smooth water, this what was playing in my head. Seeing the sheer joy of the dolphins near Fair Isle when they chose to join us for that exquisite hour at 6am, it was this song that echoed around my exhausted but suddenly overjoyed cranium. Certain music download sites (the one run by that green fruity named company) should be outlawed as it seems to separate me from my cash so regularly. Currently it is a song called Von (from the album of the same name), once again by Sigur Ros which sums up these few pages of the chapter.

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There I was, dozing serenely in the spare bedroom at my parents house when I was rudely awoken by the bleeping of my phone. A call from Hazel telling me that the merry dancers were putting on the best display they had done in the last 5 years or so. I have spent the past few months building my courage, getting myself ready not to be scared witless at the green lights in the sky. I blame being bought up on TV that professed to the existence of alien beings for doing this to me. However, being several hundred miles south at the time of this display meant that all I could see was a dim green glow to the north, punctuated by the regular search light like flash from the Longstone Light on the Farne Islands some 10 miles away.
Somehow I see the irony in this. Maybe they saved themselves up for when I was away to tease me?

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Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat……or should that be worried? (no geese were harmed in the taking of this picture....honest!)



Its been a little bit cold out there too, so here are some pictures of the frost.








And finally, a rare photo of me with my mum on the beach.



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It suddenly struck me the other day, than in less than 9 days time, i will be able to say "Im 30 next year". Which will be technically true, since my birthday is on Hogmanay. Thats old. Thats so so old. Im only 18 in my head! Ok, thats a lie, I'm only 8 in my head! I guess that since I am yet to find where it is written that I have to grow up, as well as older, I'm pretty safe for now. I have to admit to not looking very hard for where it is written either.......

I can remember it being my 17th birthday, and someone (i dont remember who) telling me that I would never feel any older than i did then. In so many ways it is true. I think that by the time you get to 17 your emotional development has more of less stopped going at the same pace as "The Stig", and has slowed to a much more sedately "80 year old on her way to Tesco's". Ten years on from there I would say that it is true.

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One of the most wonderful people in my life was explaining to me his philosophies in life while we sat and watched the rain fall outside, drinking vanilla tea. He came to me as a light when the world was a dark place and sent me a simple gift, it cost only a few pounds. And yet without it i doubt i would be here now waffling on this blog. He sent me a book - The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff. Rob is a Taoist, and I wonder if someday I will be too. He told me the tale of chatting to a monk about some of the hard times in his sometimes brutal life. The monk replied that he should listen to the Gekkos that sat in the dark green recesses of the bushes all around them. Puzzled he asked what he meant, the monk explained that the gekko makes the noise "Gekko, Gekko". Let go. Let go.



Sometimes we all need to let go of the things that we carry with us. As a very wise man once said, clutching a burning coal to throw at someone else will burn us much more than it will burn them.



Orkney is a spiritual place. Not religious. But it has room for your soul to expand out. Sometimes I wonder if it is like a bird with its wings folded in tightly as not to damage them. Up here there is enough space for them to stretch out and test the air currents beneath their feathers.


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Righto, that was all rather deep for a Sunday night. I'm off for a pear cider and some rubbish on telly.

Merry....well.....urm..... whatever you celebrate, enjoy it and if you dont celebrate anything at all, be glad of those who care about you.

The year started with me working on the farm, assisting many small woolly things into the world and being introduced to many new and occasionally rather slimy aspects of animal husbandry. There is something satisfying about seeing a pen full of small black lambs and knowing that some of them are there because you helped. Many nights were spent pacing the central corridor of the shed, the gentle breathing of the ewes and the blue green reflection of their eyes in your torch beam. Walking along through the loose straw a new sound caught my ear, something you wouldn't really expect to hear. One of the sheep was purring. Now I know I don't know a lot about sheep, but I’m pretty sure they don't purr. Peering over into the pen the noise gets louder, only for me to realise that the entire farm crop of cats are all unconscious in one of the hay racks in the pen – someone is obviously dreaming of something nice and has their feline engine running. Oh dear.

Brodgar


Small sheep in dog basket next to radiator.


One of the farm cats (Willow)


My broken arm....(i fell off a sheep hurdle at 4am)


My christmas present last year from a very special person (its a monofin used for freediving)


At the end of January Hazel heads off to Fraserburgh with the new boat to get it surveyed and painted in our new colours. After 10 days I fly down to go to join her and help bring it back to Orkney. Flying this short journey is great fun, and as the tiny plane soars over Scapa Flow and the southern isles I see places just crying out to be explored. The return journey doesn't really go to plan as we take on more water than we thought, which turned out to be an unforeseen problem with the caulking – best to find this out now than later. A few more days on the slip and several bales of caulk and we are ready to go again. This time Andy Cuthbertson joins us and we settle down to a long night heading north. Beatrice Oil Platform glints in the black like its own private constellation and the far distant lighthouses blink their identity to all at sea. The Pentland Firth is far less scary than i thought, although it was done at night so I do wonder if I could have seen what i would have thought! Passing the Nevi Skerry we are on home turf, and suddenly Andy and Hazel feel the weight of the previous hours passage on their shoulders. I take the wheel for the first time and pass through the flow towards the lights of home – Stromness.

Valkyrie up on the cradle at Fraserburgh.


The Stormdrift on the cradle at St Margrets Hope.


A cabin on the new boat.




Arriving back in Orkney and suddenly it is all very real. The boat is ours, the enormity of the task ahead of us seems daunting. The Stormdrift (the old boat) seemed so small and simple in comparison to this huge monster sat before us. Gradually we change all the things we wanted to change, the boat slowly becoming ours. We repair the deck where her winches wore the planks down, and most importantly added a diverlift. A lot of dive boats use a ladder to get divers back onto the boat, however we decided to try with a lift which presented us with many problems, the main one being no-one had done this before to an ex-trawler. All boats with lifts were flat transomed vessels. After much faffing with the design, a final one became reality and we used it for the first time in early April.

Repairs to the deck.


The birth of the diverlift.


Our stand at the London Dive Show


The start of the dive season was a steep learning curve for both of us. Learning what the boat did in different sea conditions, the best way to bring her alongside a pier in various wind and current conditions and how all her various systems work. My cooking ability went from a little bit haphazard to being able to put together a two course meal for 14 people in under 2 hours. No mean feat in a galley with a normal single oven cooker, a microwave and a space around 8ft by 8ft.

Hazel at the wheel


Out for a trip down the flow


The side scan sonar unit we used.


Shetland was a challenge to us. Somewhere i had longed to visit but as it drew closer the gap between north Ronaldsay and fair isle and then Sumburgh head seemed to grow. By the time it was upon us, it felt like we were about to venture halfway across the globe to reach our destination. A long swell from the East cast doubt in our minds as to whether we would be able to get to the Shetlands, however, we felt that it would be tolerable for the passengers to make it. Sailing through the gap between Auskerry and Stronsay it becomes real once again – we are heading for Shetland, Kirkwall and Orkney are soon left behind and we slip by Fair Isle in the early evening. Sumburgh head becomes a dark shape on the horizon and finally i take my final watch of the passage to the Lerwick harbour limits where I wake Hazel and we tie up in Lerwick at 3am.
The week is spent exploring the area to the south of the Harbour – Lerwick Harbour is HUGE, and is not characterised by a harbour wall as such. It is formed by Bressay and Mainland Shetland, the sheltered walls of the islands allowing safe anchorage, or not so safe as the many wrecks in the area are testament to. The easterly swell carries on throughout the week, with the winds peaking at around a force 7, more or less pinning us to Lerwick.
Our journey back is highlighted by a pod of dolphins joining us for over an hour, pity it was at 6.30am! This didn't stop anyone from getting up to see them however, and soon 10 people were stood at the bow armed with cameras. I got the feeling of who was watching who?

Team Shetland


The boat in Lerwick Harbour


An urchin on the Lunokhods 1


Dolphins near Fair Isle


Our next adventure was our northern isles trip where the weather once again put a damper on things. Just to confirm it was summer, the Orcadian weather supplied a wonderful severe gale 9 on the Sunday of the week, confining us to port for 24 hours. After this we head out and try to dive as many of the local wrecks as we can, with anything that can go wrong, going wrong! One wreck we had planned had to be aborted as a cruise liner was due to pass over the site right on slack water! Bloody inconvenient! Another was the previous day we had dived the same wreck with plenty of slack, the next day it didn't go slack at all. Don't you just love tides?

Hazel checking our propeller


Lots of fishies


Me about to jump off the roof.


Stronsay


Stronsay Sunset


A trip to Stronsay overnight seemed to settle the karma of everything, and a couple of really nice dives were had up there, followed by an evening in the local pub. A final dive on the Cotavia, a WWII casualty where the visibility was incredible and there were lobsters like a single decker bus with claws (apparently).

Oh deary me - what happens when you let me loose with a slice of melon.....


The summer also brought us our first major incident. A French diver had run out of gas and made a rapid ascent to the surface where she was unable to make herself buoyant and therefore began to drown. Many idle hours had been spent in the wheelhouse the previous season chatting over what we would do if and when this kind of thing happened to us. This was how i found myself stood on the tyre hanging over the side of the boat above the 12 degree water. It all turned out well in the end, and i was glad of my many years spent as a watersports instructor making me used to jumping into cold water.

I also did my trimix course over the summer with Mark Powell. Trimix allows you to dive deeper than you could with other gasses such as air or nitrox as below certain depths the amount of nitrogen becomes dangerous, as does the amount of oxygen. Nitrogen makes you feel drunk, and oxygen can cause you to have a seizure if too higher concentration of it is breathed too deep. Replacing some of the nitrogen and oxygen with helium allows us to dive deeper much more safely. However, it is considered by many to be a technical course and because of this I almost dreaded the course beginning. Mark is an excellent instructor, but i was very nervous despite this. Over the period Mark was with us we did lots of dives together, including one where I worked with line (string to everyone else) and without a mask to simulate zero visibility. At one point i had no mask, no regulator (the thing you breathe from) and had to swim 10m. Mark commented that he had never seen anyone do the swim quite as slowly as I did. I passed the course, allowing me to dive to 60m (200ft).

A visit to the final resting place of the Irene. A tragic story indeed.


The end of the season seemed to arrive so quickly, suddenly that was it, the end of the groups and we both flopped. Several months with no days off, being on call 24/7 for all problems be it problems with the boat or our guests had taken its toll. A week was spent doing very very little.

Hazel visited the Faeroe Islands in preparation for our 2009 expedition and Hera the new puppy was bought back from Southern England by Carolyn.

A Faroese Lighthouse


A Typical Faroes scene


Arty shot of the buoys on the farm wall.


Finally I got a chance to go back south and visit my parents, but also by popular demand to go to London and pick up an award from the British Sub Aqua Club at their annual diving officers conference. I then spent five days in Oxford with a very good friend, before leaving to make my way back north to my parents house for a further five days.

Hera the Leonberger (aka small wooly dog, fuzzball, oi)


Now lambing has begun, and the paranoia of last lambing season is back in full force. The looking at a ewe and trying to decide if she is looking sheepish, even for a sheep. They like to be alone when they give birth, hence they keep their back legs crossed while you are around.

Small wooly thing


Lambing kit


Giles always ready to help...as long as that involves getting a cuddle and eating something.


First winter storm of 2007


In less than a week I will be 28 years old and the world will rumble its way into 2008. I hope that it brings many more challenges for us to overcome and that all our diving groups go without a hitch (wishful thinking!).

An Autumn Stromness Sunrise


We are chartered to visit the northern isles of Orkney for three weeks, and Shetland for four, so if anyone from IB (or anywhere else for that matter) wishes to come aboard for a cuppa, please just let me know! We may also call into Fair Isle on the way past, as it is somewhere I have always wanted to visit.

So that's it really. 2007 has been a mad year, a year when plans became reality, when we were tested to the limit and passed.

Be happy and safe in 2008.