Lyme Regis
by John Rapley

Everybody has their own favourites, but Lyme Regis is, without doubt my personal favourite in the U.K. The whole ambience of the place is fantastic, and I've been on so many dive weekends there that it feels like my second home. So, with a great weather forecast and flat calm seas in prospect, it was with great anticipation that we set off for another Lyme weekend on Friday 20 th September.

Myself, Mark East, Brian Deluce, Chris Knight, Paul Eyden & Mike Sanderson were staying at the Cobb Arms pub - and Geoff Soul, Jonathan Markwell, Helen & Graham Evans, Brett Champion, Chris Chappell & his wife Kathy, were staying at a Guesthouse in town.
As usual we all arrived in dribs and drabs on the Friday evening. We had arranged to meet in the Cobb Arms for a beer. Most of us had arrived in time for a couple of pints, however Chris & Kathy did not set off until quite late, so had arrived just after last orders.
I always try to arrange my dive weekends with decent start times, there is nothing worse than having to get up at 6am to catch the tides......So, breakfast at 8.30, and and nice leisurely loading of the boat left us steaming away from the Cobb harbour at about 9.45.

Our first dive of the weekend was to be on the wreck of the Moidart, which is 11 miles from Lyme Regis. She was an armed merchant steamship that was torpedoed by UB -77 in 1918, and measured 244ft long with a 32ft beam and was 1,878 gross tons. Slack was due at 11:30, but had been arriving half hour early all week - we were on-site and shotted up at 11, and by the look of the buoy there wasn't much tide running, so it was time to kit up. Helen wasn't diving for health reasons and was our deputy dive marshall for the weekend, filling in the marshalling sheets and passing around the choccies & sweets.
So we had 11 divers, and 3 of them diving with twinsets. I put them in first, with the rest of us following in pairs. It was a pleasant surprise to arrive at the wreck and be confronted with 5 or 6 metres visability. The wreck was covered with fish, thousands of them, vast shoals of Pollack, massive Cod, the odd Bream, and of course you can al-ways rely on the sullen presence of at least one massive grey Conger eel, eyeballing you with complete noncha-lance. The wreck actually looked like a shipwreck, and its sides were covered in dead mens fingers.

Blue Turtle is a very relaxed dive boat, and Douglas is a great skipper and is becoming a good mate, we are always exchanging debatable (or is that debauchable) jokes via email, and share a similar sense of humour - continually winding each other up. On surfacing from the 1st dive, the sweets and choccies were handed around with cups of tea and coffee. This was followed by a large bowl of mixed salad, with ham, boiled eggs & cheese.

After lunch, we all lazed around for a couple of hours waiting for our second dive, which was to be on a site called the Saw Tooth Ledges - so named because of a series of 3mtr high ledges which must resemble a Saw. So, reminding everybody not to take this literally to mean a Saw Tooth dive profile! - we all got kitted up for this. The current was very strange on this dive, it seemed to have hardly any predictable direction, swirling in a kind of circular motion. It wasn't a bad dive, but the conditions meant that it was not as good as I've known it to be before. After the dive, and more Tea & Coffee - we got back into the Cobb marina at about 4pm. Whence I twisted everybody's arm to come and have a pint or two of Nigerian Lager up at O'Malleys Irish bar. Most of us went up for a shower and change (apart from the ex-submariner in our midst!) and walked up the steepest hill into town that you can imagine.
The Guinness went down well! - it was with some reluctance that we headed off back down to the Cobb Arms, where we had a table booked for dinner. Two of our party were so hungry that they couldn't wait, so vanished to eat earlier. The rest of us sat down and had a fairly sizeable meal, though the steaks were a bit chewy.
We were all quite tired after such a full day, and people started drifting off to bed, by 11.15 everybody had retired to their rooms for a well deserved sleep.

Breakfast was at the same time on Sunday, and the discussion in the Cobb Arms over our "Full Monty fry -up" was the great diving the day before and hoping for more of the same. Even more relaxed, we met the boat at 9.45 and headed off at 10.15 into a gloriously sunny day with flat calm seas. In fact all weekend the wind was a nice light North Easterly 2 to 3 which makes for perfect diving conditions.
Our first dive was to be on the wreck of the Ailsa Craig, a British steamship carrying a cargo of coal, when she was torpedoed by UB-80 in 1918. She was sunk just 4 miles due west of the Pomeranian, and the vessels may have been in convoy. We found her sitting more or less upright, with her impressive bows twisted to starboard. Her stern is intact with the boiler and engine at aft clearly and plainly exposed. The viz, at around 1 to 3 mtrs, was not as good as that on the Moidart for some reason, even though they are only a half mile or so apart. Still, it was another good dive, again there were thousands of fish, absolutely amazing - don't believe anybody that says there is no life in British waters, this was like an aquarium. I stuck a couple of pieces of coal from one of the holds in my BC pocket as a souvenir and we made the slow ascent back to the Blue Turtle. Chocolate biscuits were handed around with our Tea & Coffee, and I was made to wait till last so that everybody was assured some.. Lunch today was Hot dogs with onions, mustard & ketchup - they went down well and the seagulls never got a look in.

We had a debate on what to do for our last dive, and it went to a vote - scolly bashing, flatty bashing or a wreck? - half wanted a wreck and half wanted scolly or flatty bashing - so we settled on the wreck of the Baygitano with the surrounding seabed containing scallops for those who wanted them. This is a wreck of a well-flattened steamer, lying approx 1.5 miles due South of the Cobb at Lyme Regis, in approx 20 metres of water. The only parts of the wreck which stand up are the boilers, engine and the bow section. She was torpedoed by UC77 at 11:45 on the 18th March 1918 whilst on voyage from Le Havre to Cardiff in ballast, it had a crew of 37 with 2 of them lost - the 4th Engineer and Chief Engineer.
She can best be described as a good 'rummage' dive, it is well flattened with loads to see, including massive boil-ers etc. The visability was an incredible 15mtrs on this dive!, it was as clear as a bell and once again masses of fish life on and around the wreck.
I was 20 minutes into the dive with my buddy Brett, when somebody turned on the cold tap!, it literally felt like somebody was pouring cups of freezing cold water into my Drysuit.
I had sprung a serious leak - but from where? - I signalled for Brett to come over and take a look, pressed the inflate valve on my suit and could feel air gushing out somewhere around the top, he nodded and gave me the OK signal that he could see where the air was gushing out from, then I gave the "brrrrrr, I'm freezing cold" signal! and that we should deploy my delayed smb and begin our ascent. We made a normal (though very cold) ascent to the surface, very briefly making an uncomfortable one minute safety stop at 6 metres.
As soon as I was back onboard the Blue Turtle, I ripped off my dry suit, sodden woolly bear & socks, and went into the cabin for a hot cup of tea! - Helen kindly dug out Grahams jacket and a pair of his clean woolly socks for me to put on (I will wash them for you Graham don't worry!). However, all I had was my soggy underpants on my bottom half!. You can imagine the sight that met the rest of our dive party on their return to the boat - doesn't bear thinking about does it.....
My neck seal had almost completely come away from the compressed neoprene of my suit due to the contact adhesive giving up the ghost....This is a very unusual problem, especially as it happened underwater. Oh well, I just got wet - I can live with that. Lucky it happened almost at the end of what was a really fantastic weekend - in fact it was my BESTIST LYME WEEKEND - EVER!.

Kingston & Elmbridge Branch

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