Diary of a Deckhand - may 2008

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.

Sometimes you feel the need to chill out, to hear nothing but the cries of the birds on the seashore. So off to Marwick Bay we go so i can play with the camera and chill out for half an hour. Marwick was somewhere i had never been and it is a lovely place. Not a whole lot to say really, i spent most of my time looking through a view finder....











And these are some pics from a dive on the Rodean which lies in Longhope bay. This was the first time i got my nice new camera in with me on a dive, so not many pics yet....

I love slugs. If i could hug one, i would, but these are no ordinary slugs - they are underwater slugs, otherwise known as nudibranches. Nudibranch means "naked lung", as these animals breathe through gills held on their backs wafted in the oxygen rich water. They come in every conceivable size and shape and colour, slowly munching their way over the algae covering of the huge artificial reefs in Scapa Flow. The largest found in UK waters is Tritonia hombergii (excuse the spelling) which can grow to around the size of a golf ball. More commonly they are tiny, anything from a speck you can barely see to a couple of centimeters long sometimes with fabby "dreadlocks" of all colours - these are the ones i like the best.

Anyhoo, i dived today on the wreck of the Coln which lies in 35m of water in the currently stunningly calm waters of Scapa Flow. These are my photos from the day...





This is right on top of the hull of the Coln and is a plumose anemone with his feeding arms more or less retracted. The anemone in the centre is about the size of your fist.



These ones have their feeding arms out


And this is a little fishie, i think its a goldsinny wrasse, but i best check and get back to you.

The bow of the boat surges through the turbulent waters, dipping the name boards some 10 feet up on the bow in the foaming angry water. Passing through the Pentland Firth always scares me, and this trip re-affirms quite why.

Leaving the mirror calm waters of Scapa Flow at 2am we aim to catch the tide through rather than fight it all the way. Cold sterile clean light begins in the east and soon shapes and islands loom from the inky blackness. Rounding the bottom of South Ronaldsay and the gentle swell lulls us into a false sense of security, but soon enough we are bouncing like a bucking bronco. Divers stagger out of their beds to feed the fish over the railings and i play catch in the galley as things go hurtling past.

Gradually the sea flattens and we cruise northwards towards Copinsay eventually dropping anchor in Holm Sound keeping us out of the worst of the swell. As we enter the bay beside the churchill barriers Hazel spots large dorsal fins break the surface. The unusual shaped heads and large fins have me scrambling for the identification sheet and find that they are a pod of Risso's Dolphins - three mature animals pootling around no doubt looking for something tasty to munch on.







All the gear for a 60m dive

There is a wonderful urban myth that Orkney has no trees, that seemingly every leafed plant other than grass is scoured from the face of the islands by the wind and ends up in Norway, or possibly Finland if its a really good blow.

Yesterday while in Kirkwall i noticed how beautiful a large horse chestnut tree actually was. A million shades of green as the shafts of sunlight filter down through the many layers of perfect fat new leaves.

There is a zen saying that just because something is rare, we shouldn't value it more. This stumped me for a while, but now I appreciate it. A horse chestnut tree is hardly rare, but not seeing one in full leaf for so long made me realise how beautiful they truly are. Its like ignoring the sparrows until you truly take a long look at them and see how pretty a little brown bird can be.

I like happy valley. There is something reassuring about the fact that somewhere like that is looked after by so many people and that it was allowed to develop without someone complaining about how they didnt like trees or something strange like that.

Little trout pootle around in the shallow cool water, darting between patches of sunlight and shade in the stillness. Trees stretch their green fingers towards the sun and swathes of bluebells carpet the woodland floor.

Anyhoo, here are my pics from the day :o)

I was informed the other day that "I didnt write enough" anymore, and not that they minded the pictures, but they missed the waffle too. So here is some waffle, to keep you waffle-ites happy :o)

There isnt much that seems to worry me....ok....maybe thats a lie, there are many things that worry me - if my hair is falling out, how the cats are doing, is it going to thunder etc etc. But at the moment there is one big thing worrying me - fuel. We have a big boat with a big engine and she is a thirsty girl. Over the course of such a short amount of time diesel has gone from 20 odd pence a litre to 60p a litre and we are being told to expect 80p a litre by the end of the year. Now this worries me because it is totally out of my control, i am helpless to prevent what could be the most damaging thing to ever happen to our business.

There is nothing, not a damned thing i can do to slap some sense into this government or the next one that will help where we are heading. And where are we heading? I dont know to be honest. Technology will come up with some sort of answer, quite what i have no idea.
I have always known since the days of my degree that consumer power is possibly the most influential power on the planet second to gravity. People cannot afford to drive their cars to work they will either a) find a cheaper way to get to work, or b) find a cheaper way to run their car. Modifying a car to run on a different fuel is do-able, bio diesel or LPG for instance.

However what do you do with a boat? Sooner rather than later it will be cheaper for us to leave her tied to the pier than to go out with divers, and what divers will want to pay hundreds of pounds to come to Orkney and dive when they can simply spend the same or less and go to Egypt for a week.

I'm looking to the future and i am scared, because where will this end?

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Anyhoo, if i end up being a photographer to feed the credit card, i better get better - here are some shots of dandylions and buttercups