Chesil Beach – Shore dives are easy?
by Bill Quinn

Monday 6th of September, I get a call from Tony, an instructor in my local BSAC Branch “Short notice, free Wednesday, down to Portland, dive the M2”. M2 was music to my ears, this was a submarine that I had wanted to dive for the last couple of years but never quiet got round to it.

Monday night we met up at Severnside Clubhouse (http://www.severnsidesac.com). Four of us were lined up. Checked the tides to figure out slack, weather was a bit risky but we decided to go for it.

7am Chris and rib pick me up from a lay by just off the M5 motorway. 2 hours later we were in Portland. Wind and weather didn’t look great. Started to deal with the rib, and Tony suggested shore diving. Spoke with some local skippers and there advice was that it was going to be rough. 5 minutes later, we decided stomachs would not survive the journey so shore diving it would be.

For me, this was not a major problem. We are always at the mercy of the elements but we were lucky to have an alternative option. I had never done a real shore dive, closest was training dives at Stoney or the NDC. I had heard shore dives were easy, and I was in a lazy mood. Launching a rib, being bounced around for 40 minutes out and 40 minutes back just sounded like too much hardwork!.

So we set off for Chesil Beach car park. The plan was to dive a World War Two landing craft. We parked at the furthest end of the car park. Car parking was reasonable, £ 2 for up to 4 hours. The transits to the landing craft were go to the top of the bank (more about this later) follow a transit from the boundary fence in the car park and move 12 yards to the right (with your back to the car park).

Now I’ll mention the shingle bank. To get to the waters edge you had to walk across a bit of grass, struggle up a loose shingle bank and then down a semi-steep side. Doing this with no kit would be a tough hike, but with a 15 ltr tank and 11 Kg of lead was going to be challenging! Kit was stripped back to a minimum (away went the pony, heavy reel, torches, anything that added unnecessary weight).

It was decided to do this in 3 hikes; weight belt to the top, back down, tank to the top, tank to waters edge, back up, weight belt down. Knackering wasn’t the word. What was this the dive manuals said about strenuous exercise before diving? All of a sudden those days of parking in the top car park at Stoney and struggling down with your kit seemed incredible easy.

In between the numerous hikes, Tony (a qualified surveyor) used peoples BCs, Weight Belts and Fins to mark the transit of the boundary fence. Then 12 yards over and fingers crossed it was straight out. It is useful to take a compass bearing here so that you can get a reciprocal to the “beach”. Tony advised that if you hit sand, you had gone too far. The landing craft was about 100 yards out from the beach. Finally, there was a bit of green netting discarded on the bank that we used to mark our entry point.

Tony and Peter were the first pair in. Chris and I set off shortly afterwards, at about 11.20. Entry was amusing, as it was quiet steep and slippery. We set off, but between currents and fish we seem to have drifted off to the right a little bit. After about 10 minutes we hit 16 metres, the rocky bottom was definitely turning to sand. I tried to communicate to Chris with hand signals that sand meant to far. Thankfully I remembered that I had a slate in my BC. We altered or course to the left a back up. Within about 5 minutes we started to see wreckage, this was at about 13 metres.

Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye I saw this strange thing. Was it a rock, no it moved. It looked like an Armadillo. I tapped Chris’s leg and signalled him over. We were both hovering about a meter above this thing. I was holding onto a bit of the wreck and pulling myself down. You could get quiet close and it just seemed to hover about. We took turns at having a good look at it. After 5 minutes or so it just seemed to float up, like a hovercraft, and hover away. I was told afterwards that this was a Cuttlefish.

Chris signalled running out of air. So we slowly headed for the beach. We did pass bits of the landing craft but not too much. After half an hour the dive was over. Chris had a leak somewhere, he thinks his pillar valve so his air was used up quicker than we had planned.

Getting out was a struggle. The waves were crashing against a steep bank. You seemed to get two steps forward and three steps back. Eventually like beached whales we pulled ourselves out. Five minutes or so later, Tony and Peter arrived back. As we knew what it was like we kindly offered them a hand.

Tony and Peter had managed to swim straight onto the landing craft. They enjoyed a reasonable dive and had a few pleasant encounters with lobsters and crabs. We on the other hand didn’t see much but for me it was worth it for those five minutes with a Cuttlefish. Great dive.

Now the hard bit. I decided to be brave and lumped all my kit up and over in one go. I was doing fine till my tank slipped out of the band about 100 yards from the car. I managed the rest of the kit to the car, and went back for the tank. We then went off for a well earned lunch.

Over lunch, we were discussing the options of what we could do. One option was Chesil Cove. So after a well earned rest we set off. However, there were a lot of divers there and we couldn’t get anywhere to park the car. So guess what, we went back to Chesil Beach.

The plan was to swim out to the Adelaide, about 120 yards from the beach. Then turn left and swim down to what was left of the Nore. The directions were park beside the café (right beside the entrance), then use the transit of the lamppost to the right of the entrance (as you look towards the sea), line this up against the prominent building behind you and you should have it. As this was a bit hit and miss, we all entered the water together. Formed a line holding an SMB string. Chris was on the left, reeling out, I was next to him, then there was Tony (who was driving us, that is using a compass to set direction) and finally Peter on the end. We went to the limit of the visibility, so that was about 24 metres from Chris to Peter.

After 15 minutes of bumbling along, not seeing anything and getting to about 15 metres. We got an excited tug from Chris’s end. We swam over, unfortunately a lot of sand had been kicked up but there was definitely a boiler. Tony signalled to me that we were going to swim together, while Chris and Peter did there own thing.

As we swam round the boiler, there were pipes running the length of it. Quizzically little fish were poking there heads out of the pipes. It was quiet funny. Tony and I swam away from there, parallel to the beach on our left hand side. We came across various bits of metal along the way. Under one lump were some crabs. The baby crab seemed to want to have a real go at me!

After 40 minutes, and a maximum depth of 17 metres we crawled out of the shingle; again! Then it was a hike up and over back to the car. Fortunately there were nice man holes along the way that you could sit down on and get your breath for 5 minutes or so.

We weren’t sure what we hit on the second dive, it was probably the Nore but we weren’t sure. It was fun though and a useful exercise in underwater search techniques.

The day was a good lesson that you needed a plan B. As Chris said, if we weren’t so desperate to go diving we would have called it off the previous day! The sites were easy dives, no deeper than 17 metres. However, you needed to be very fit to get there. Chris and Tony, nearly twice my age, put me to shame as to how unfit I was. I felt muscles the following day that I didn’t know existed!

Even though I didn’t the M2, or a good look at the landing craft the day was worth it for five minutes with the Cuttlefish. I also had a good lesson in underwater search techniques. And the weather was nice and hot. So all in all it was the best that we could get.


SW England Page
UK main page