ean_p
Well-known member
Interesting times indeed. I started with the local SAA club that had two reasonable ribs available when they were running but later formed part of a syndicate of six were we went on to buy a 6.5mtr Tornado with wide tubes and all the toys topped off with 175 Yamaha outboard. The mutts!
Days of gin and days of total blackout with most days somewhere in between as usual! On a good day the east coast takes some beating as it's wall to wall with wrecks of every description and technical ability. On a bad day its not a place for the unwary especially off the head which has its own tidal regime and can be as black as black while running through with suspended silt and endless drapes of micro filament net ! Remember one drop in the early days with one of the old hands, on what on the surface was slack but which when we hit the wreck was just starting to run! The black was total and even his torch which was the old Robin Hood type( a halogen car head light in a solid polyprop casing) was just sucked down to nothing. We hit the bottom and seeing/ feeling the way of things he shoved his face mask to mask with mine put the torch to the side of our heads and I could only just see his gloved thumb making signs to go up, the light having been swallowed up that much. So up we went, a dive lost but an experience won!
In terms of 'meets' (positions in the local tongue) most were down to Decca and then later GPS as it came on stream and often jealously guarded on the less well known wrecks! Admiralty charts were commonly well out and the data sheets for individual wrecks were by that time costing £3 or more per wreck and then only as good as the survey that located them which was often pre GPS and converted from either sightings or Decca. For the inclined to go exploring we preferred to scan the list of fastenings compiled and supplied by the Sea fish authority, which though never exhaustive always gave good food for thought when compared to a chart. If a trawl had snagged then there was something likely to be there especially if a wreck was also shown in the local! Later and towards the end of diving days we came across a survey report of 'obstructions' that probably came from the offshore industry which was prepping at the time to run a couple of pipelines to Norway. That made for some excitement plotting hundreds and hundreds of the obstructions to see if we had any trips into the unknown ! And we did but not that many! Strange but good dives in the area, an area where munitions etc are quite common place include the 1stWW sub laid on top and partially inside of a steamer. Yet the sub sank, if memory serves, about 18 months before the steamer! Another is a heap, a huge heap of cut and dressed stone blocks (harbour wall sized) about 3 miles offshore in about 15mtrs with no evidence of any wreckage of any kind . How or why there there we never found out but always good for a few crabs on the way home if passing! Biggest regret apart from giving the game up in any serious way was not to have dived one of the anomalies that we found by comparing the 'fastenings' to the charts and finding a wreck with no survey data from the admiralty and plotted about 3/4 of a mile from where it really was. Undived by anyone as far as we could find out and plotted by us after spending a day tolling around with the fish finder. sat in just over 50mtrs it had a very small footprint but rose up sharp, if memory serves, about 17mtrs off the sea bed. X1 we christened it but never had the opportunity to dive on it ! maybe still there untouched!
Good days!
