Weathering Weymouth
By Mark Davies on 5 September 2008
Why do we do it?
It’s a question that must have passed the lips of every UK diver there has ever been. At the time I uttered them I was sat in my car in a huge traffic jam. I’d barely moved more than a mile in the previous hour, queueing up to get through a set of traffic lights near the end of the M67. I’d left home almost two hours previously and had travelled about 20 miles. It was the Friday of the late May Bank Holiday – reputedly the worst day of the year on Britain’s roads, and I could well believe it!
I was setting out for some diving on the south coast and I still had a very long way to go. The real question was not why we do it – we all know the answer to that. No, the question that really mattered was, “Will it be worth it?”
South Coast Tour
The plan had been formulated over the previous two weeks. Tim and I were going to do a diving tour of the south coast, starting in Weymouth and then heading along the coast to eventually finish in Eastbourne. Well, as they say, that had been the plan!
The weather in the week before the bank holiday had been simply atrocious! As the Friday approached we were getting news from those on the south coast that the weekend would probably be blown out, and even if it wasn’t after a week of storms the visibility was going to be very poor. All we could do was hope for the best. However, at work on the Friday morning I got a call from the organiser of the Eastbourne leg of the trip to say that the skipper was advising that we can the trip. A few phone calls followed and there were major changes to the shape of our weekend. By lunchtime our tour had been condensed to three day’s diving in Weymouth. We were told that conditions there had not been as bad as they were further east and there was also the advantage of the massive harbour at Portland that can be dived in almost any conditions. Thankfully the boat we were planning to use on the Saturday had room for us for all three days.
Briefly it was back on. But, UK diving being what it is, the weather hadn’t quite finished with us. By the time I was driving home, glad of an early finish from work so that I could get going on that mammoth trip south, I got a call from the organiser of the Weymouth leg. Given the poor conditions he considered we’d be struggling to get three good day’s diving from the available sites in shelter and in the harbour. Rather than repeat dives he thought it would be best to cut the weekend to two days. As the forecast for Saturday was the worst of the three days we decided to start the weekend a day late.
That turned out to be a fortuitous decision. I decided to make my way to Tim’s on the Friday evening anyway. That way if by morning the whole trip was abandoned we’d still be together and in a position to think of an alternative. However, the Friday evening traffic was beyond belief. After clearing that massive queue at the traffic lights it took me in all four hours to get to Tim’s house near Leicester – a trip that normally takes half the time. I shudder to think how long it would have taken us to get all the way to Weymouth!
Car Chaos!
So I spent the night at Tim’s. We got up late and were in no real hurry to get on the road, knowing we had all day to do the two hundred or so miles down to Weymouth. We loaded the car up. The plan for Saturday’s diving had been to do the Aeolian Sky – a wreck in around 40m of water. For that we had our twins and Tim had filled two stages with 80%. But we expected there would be little chance of a deep dive with the weather as it was, so the stages were left behind. I’d also brought two single 15’s with me, just in case we were relegated to shore diving somewhere, but they were also left behind in the boot of my car. We decided that the twins would do us and with Tim’s estate car loaded we set off at around noon.
Saturday’s traffic turned out to be little better than that of the day before. Hearing on the radio of a delay along our route we took a bit of a diversion which only led us into even more trouble. We spent a frustrating hour in a traffic jam near Oxford before we finally got something like free-flowing traffic. At times the rain was pouring down and we were looking at the bank holiday motorcycle tourers, looking absolutely miserable exposed to the elements. We had a giggle about it until Tim pointed out that what we were planning to do with our weekend was perhaps no less insane!
After six hours we finally made it to our destination. We found our boat moored in the marina. The Tango was not only to be our dive boat – it was also our accommodation for the weekend. A quick call to the weekend’s organiser and we discovered where we could find the key to the cabin. We let ourselves in and loaded up our kit.
The Tango
I’d not dived from this boat before but did remember seeing it in the harbour during my previous trip to Weymouth. It’s a cracker! It has a wide berth and a triple hull which makes it a very stable dive platform. The deck is huge giving plenty of room to kit up and like the majority of boats on the south coast these days it has a lift. The cabin is also very spacious with enough bunks available to sleep upto 10 people. There are not many dive boats that can also double as accommodation and this was a real bonus as I’d found it all but impossible to find a vacant room in Weymouth at short notice. Fair enough, with 10 sleeping on board it is a little ‘friendly’ but it is very cheap at £9 a night and there are very good free toilets, showers and laundry facilities at the Harbour Master’s office just a few yards away from Tango’s mooring. We didn’t really want for anything.
Phil the skipper proved to be every bit as capable as his boat; he got us onto the sites at slack water, dropped the shot in exactly the right place and competently and safely put us into the water and got us out again. What more can you ask of a skipper? As much tea and coffee as you can drink? Well, we got that too!
In short, I’d be more than happy to book this boat for our next trip.
For this occasion we were tagging along on someone else’s trip. We had been very kindly invited to join a university dive club from Southampton. They had a much shorter journey than us and while some were making the trip on Saturday and staying over, with a late start on Sunday morning most wouldn’t be joining us until then.
Rude Awakening
We had some other friends diving from a different boat in Weymouth so we met up with them for the evening. It was unusual for us to be on different boats and we joked about diving’s unwritten rule number 1 – that any group diving from another boat are automatically muppets. Clearly that was going to have to apply to one of our boats, but which one?
We returned back to Tango before the others of our party who were staying the night. We’d had a very long day of travelling and were soon in our beds – we didn’t hear the others turning in. All too soon dawn broke and we were awoken by the remainder of the group arriving with the giddy and noisey enthusiasm of youth that you might associate with a student dive club! To be fair, we had been warned. As compensation the weather at least looked decent.
It was almost another two hours before the boat set sail, which made the early morning wake up call just a little over enthusiastic. As we headed out of the marina the sea was looking relatively calm.
Brail Diving
The sea wasn’t exactly flat – there was a bit of a swell but I’ve certainly dived in worse. Our friends’ boat headed out of the harbour ahead of us, destined for a different site, and we waved them off as we went our separate ways.
Our target for the morning’s dive was the Brandyke (?) – a Dutch cargo ship sunk by a mine in 1939. It took us about 40 minutes to reach her and the skipper had timed our arrival to perfection. Tim had run a few dive plans through his VR3 and we settled on a planned 25 minute bottom time. If the visibility was going to be as poor as we had been led to expect we didn’t imagine we’d want to spend more time down there, and the plan would leave us with plenty of air for the second dive of the day.
We were one of the last pairs to jump in and we made our way to the shotline. Ever hopeful we had both brought our cameras but in truth our expectations were low. As we descended down the line it was getting very dark indeed. I was only aware of the bottom approaching at 27m because the shotline began to flatten out. I felt the seabed with my fins before I actually saw it. I turned my torch on and checking that Tim was still with me continued along the line. I didn’t see the diving pair ahead of us until we were literally on top of them.
Such poor visibility was disappointing but not really a problem – we are both well experienced in diving in such conditions. We started to make a circuit around the wreckage, which was very much broken up. As we moved away from the shotline and the other divers the visibility cleared a little, until we had a cloudy 2m – certainly enough for us to avoid getting separated.
Tim was on the hunt for nudibranch. In conditions like these macro photography was the only genuine option, but we couldn’t find any of the colourful slugs and came by little except a hell of a lot of spider crabs. There were a few small bib, the odd wrasse and a ling about but otherwise the dive was about non-descript bits of rusty metal.
As our planned 25 minutes came to an end neither of us felt much inclined to extend our stay. Tim deployed his SMB and we started our ascent – our cameras had been completely untroubled. Still, with our short bottom time we were surprised to find we were the last pair back on the boat. Clearly the rest of the crew had not been all that keen on the conditions.
Portland Dredger
At least the sun was out as we cruised back towards Portland harbour – the site of our second dive. This was not to be in the harbour itself, but was the wreck of a dredger to the outside of the harbour wall, just near the entrance that is blocked by the Hood. In fact this dredger was rather close to the famous block-ship, so any diver who fancied diving the Hood despite the current ban could get conveniently ‘lost’ and stumble across her. Once we dropped down on the dredger’s remains it was clear that getting ‘lost’ was probably the only reason for coming to this site. There wasn’t much of the wreck left, but at least the visibility was much better and there was plenty of ambient light with a depth of just 10m.
I put my camera to use but the only subjects we could find were the prolific population of spider crabs. Before long we had exhausted the attraction of the site and decided to head along the harbour wall to see if we could find anything else. By the time we had been swimming 20 minutes we’d found little except more crabs and a few wrasse. Approaching the open entrance we could feel the current really picking up and were not tempted to give the Hood a visit. We turned and made our way back, working against the current. On the way I did at least see quite a large squid but it was jetting off long before I’d even thought of reaching for my camera. Tim was lagging beind so he didn’t even get to see it, let alone take a shot.
Back at the dredger’s remains we surfaced and waited our turn to be picked up. Once on the boat it was only a short trip back to the marina.
Oyster Festival
It just so happened that over the bank holiday Weymouth was hosting its annual Oyster Festival. This turned out to be a two edged sword. In the first instance it made getting our tanks filled a logistical nightmare. The road leading along the harbour side to the dive shop was closed off and crowded with stalls for a sort of farmer’s market. That meant we had to drop our cylinders off on a pontoon, load them all up onto a trolley and then weave the unwieldy contraption through the crowds to the shop. We then had the long walk around the harbour to get back to the boat.
The advantage was we had the market to browse, with all kinds of fantastic food on offer.
As we were settling down for the evening the crews of the fishing trawlers moored around us were getting busy decorating their vessels. Monday was to see a trawler race and clearly each boat was required to do itself up much like a carnival float. We popped off for dinner and a few drinks before returning to the boat for a much needed night’s sleep. It was a little more crowded in the cabin for the second night with all the bunks occupied but we managed just fine.
The morning raised its own problems for us. We woke to find food stalls being erected beside our boat. While the previous day the market had been confined to the far side of the harbour it became apparent that it was expanding all around us. The road had been closed off and that caused us some concerns. We made some enquiries and it became clear that when we were due to return from our day’s diving at about 4.00 pm we were not going to be able to get a car in to off-load our kit. That left us with two options; either carry our kit a good half mile to where our car was parked or wait until late evening when the road was re-opened. While the latter option was fine for the rest of the boat who only had a short journey back to Southampton, neither were any good for Tim and I. Looking at the wind snapping the flags and bunting on the trawlers around us it also seemed likely that diving conditions would not be too good. After a brief discussion we decided that it all mounted up to sufficient reason to can the diving for the weekend.
So, we offloaded our kit and filled up the boot of the car. We said our goodbyes and headed off on the long journey home. Going early helped and it was nowhere near as bad as the journey down but still took us most of the day. We were happy we’d made the right choice.
Worth it?
Well, it was a long way to go and a lot of effort for what were two very mediocre dives. However, diving is not entirely what these weekends are about. I dive because it is a social activity – it is something we always do with other people. On this occasion we had taken an opportunity (and a chance) to dive with a group of people who were an unknown quantity. As it turned out they were a decent bunch to get on with and we had a good laugh. It was an enjoyable weekend away whether we had a decent dive or not. And for me that is the answer to the question that I opened with – we do it for the fun of it.
And to answer the other question, I think just this once I’d have to conceed that for this weekend only we were on ‘the other boat’!
Contact
Author: Mark Davies
Email: info@travel-dive.com
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