Out of Weymouth With Woody
August/ September 2004

by Steve Jones

This Bank Holiday trip to Weymouth was “organised” by Alasdair Allan. I use this word in its loosest possible sense as the 12 of us were spread over 8 different B& Bs!  
A couple of us had cancelled the Thursday night booking as Friday had been blown out. However Adrian did not get the message and travelled down on the Thursday, and even went over to the boat on Friday expecting to dive. The inability of Al to tell Adrian shows that his cerebral functions had been severely affected by the bump on the head that he had. This was presumably caused by his girlfriend hitting him with a frying pan when he decided to go diving on their first anniversary. He denied this of course but it was a bit of a giveaway as the word “Tefal” was indented into his forehead.  So enough about Al’s organisational skills.....

Our 4 day weekend was reduced to 3 and the divers booked aboard Woody’s new boat (01963 370 597) were, Alasdair Allan, Ken Tomlinson, Pete Steggle, Steve Jones, Rich Meese, Chris Bell, Louise Cronin, Jason Poynting, Adrian Smith, Brod Mason, Megan Clark and Steve Chaplin.

Saturday
Al has been sorely missed on recent UKRS trips (no one to take the p*** out of), but true to form even before the first dive he announced that his torch was not working. Fortunately someone else managed to fix it. 

Dive 1: Aparima, Max depth 41.2 metres, Run time 59 minutes
The Aparima was a 5,704 ton liner, 430 feet long by 54 feet wide. She was torpedoed in 1917 by a German sub while travelling from London to Barry, in total 56 people were killed.
Went in with Rich Meese, (Rich was on an 18/40 mix due to previous trimix dives being cancelled) and parted soon after spotting a lobster at the bottom of the shot line, not that the 2 events were related. There were a couple of conger to been seen on the wreck, but not a lot of fish apart from the usual bib. I did manage to find the 3 boilers just before leaving the bottom at 32 minutes. 

Dive 2: Black Hawk (Bows), Max depth 17.4 metres, Run time 39 minutes
The Black Hawk was a 7,191 ton liberty ship that was torpedoed in 1944 by U-772. She was 441ft x 57ft. The stern of the wreck was towed away into deeper water and the bows have been blasted several times and the wreck is now quite broken up.  This turned out to be the only “second” dive that we managed during the weekend, and not everyone went in for this one. There was a reasonable current running so it was a matter of drifting from one lump of metal to another, then getting in the lee of this before moving on again. 

Sunday
Al had bent his Aladin computer on the first day so Megan lent him one of hers. It was suggested that she should have had a deposit prior to handing it over, given Al’s track record of destroying equipment. 

Dive 3: Everleigh, Max depth 42.1 metres, Run time 60 minutes
The Everleigh was 406 feet long and had a beam of 56 feet, she weighed in at 5,222 tons. She was sunk in 1945 by a torpedo fired by U-1017. At the time of the sinking she was travelling from London to New York.
Diving with Rich again, we soon parted when he decided to explore inside the wreck. I decided not to follow as my PPO2 was above 1.5 and preferred to be on the outside. I found it difficult to navigate around this large wreck, but eventually found the prop shaft running though a large tunnel which could easily have been swam along. I didn’t make it to the stern so I can’t say whether the prop was still attached. By the time we surfaced a considerable swell had developed and once everyone was safely aboard we headed back to Weymouth. This proved to be a very uncomfortable 3 hour ride in a force 7-8.
When we got back to the harbour Steve and Pete had a second dive to cut away some rope that had become wound around the props. 

Monday
Pete and Al had decided not to dive today so that left just 10 of us on the boat. 

Dive 4: Iolanthe, Max depth 44 metres, Run time 60 metres
The Iolanthe was an armed merchant ship weighing 3,081 tons, 325 feet long, and a beam of 49 feet. She was sunk in 1918 by a torpedo from UB-75. At the time of the sinking she was travelling from the Clyde to St Helens carrying a cargo of hay and trucks. 
Once again with Rich and we actually stayed together for a large portion of the dive. Well, by this I mean that we saw each other a couple of times during the dive, and then ascended together, and as this part constituted over half the dive then I suppose we were together for the majority of the dive.
Having switched to my 75% deco gas at 9 metres I continued on up, then when I got to my 6 metre deco stop I did a check to see how much back gas I had used. The pressure gauge showed 220 bar, great I hadn’t used any at all, well not until I opened the isolator on the manifold, then it dropped to 130 bar. Still not too bad as I effectively used 180 bar out of a 12 litre cylinder for a 30 minute dive at 42-44 metres plus a 12 minute ascent to 9 metres.
The swell had again built up while we were in the water and when I surfaced I was bobbing around for quite a while and could, every now and again, see the boat, and wondered why it wasn’t coming to pick me up. When it finally did, the reason was obvious, the platform for the lift had broken and I had to be lifted half way up by standing on the frame, then hauled onto the boat once I managed to get one knee up to deck level. A considerable current was now running and by the time the remaining 2 divers had been picked up the buoy was nowhere to be seen. We eventually found it, but it had been dragged under by the current, we made an attempt to recover it, but failed, so we headed back to Weymouth for another rather bumpy ride, but not as bad as the previous day. 

As a final event for the weekend Woody exercised his vocabulary somewhat upon arrival at his berth in Weymouth when he saw that someone else was moored there.

Weymouth 4th & 5th Sept 2004
Somehow we had managed to get Weymouth trips on 2 consecutive weeks. This one was organised by Rich Meese, and apart from him, included, Steve Jones, Jason Poynting, Louise Cronin, Chris Bell, Digs Somogyi, Rob Hampton, Pete Steggle, Al Allan, Frank Bruce and Zak Shirlock. 
Once again we were booked onto Woody’s new boat, still with teething troubles, but at least the lift wouldn’t break down again!!!
Some of the problems that Woody has had are:
* The winch motor has burnt out twice.
* The previous day 45 gallons of diesel had leaked into the bilges.
* The wrong size props had been supplied.
We were split over a couple of B&Bs, myself and several others were booked into the Redcliff who seem to have this quaint notion that it is OK to charge £28 per night for accommodation that is not en suite, in fact there is only one bathroom for everyone to share.
We had already had one drop out when Craig had to cancel, but we almost had 2 more when Rob and Digs phoned to say they had been delayed, fortunately they arrived minutes before our 12 noon “ropes off”. 

Saturday
Dive One: Salsette, Max depth 44.5 metres, Run time 64 minutes
The Salsette was 440 feet long, a beam of 53 feet and weighed in at 5,842 tons. She was traveling from London to Bombay in 1917 when torpedoed by UB-40. She sank very quickly in about 28 minutes
I was diving with Rich and Jason as we had elected to do the dive on trimix. They used relatively rich mixes, while I had the p*** taken out of me for choosing the (cheaper) 24/12 mix. We had planned to get inside the wreck, but as soon as we started to descend the viz was bad, on the wreck itself it was probably just over 2 metres, so penetration was not on. We made our way to the bows where Rich found a lobster and waved it in our faces, before throwing it at Jason and me. I don’t know what our faces looked like but the lobster didn’t look too happy. From here we made our way from the bows and sometime later Jason and I realised that we were inside the wreck. We carried on for a while then came out at the first convenient exit. At this point we became separated and after a few more minutes I bagged off after just over 30 minutes bottom time.
It is customary in these trip reports to mention any faux pas that anyone makes. Frank and Zak had apparently been planning a 2 hour dive, however when I got back to the surface after just over an hour Frank was already on the boat. Apparently he had missed the wreck completely. Of course we were all too diplomatic to mention this again!!! 

Dive 2: Gertrude, Max depth 17.7 metres, Run time 38 minutes
This wreck is close to the site of the James Fennel, and was sunk when it ran aground in fog in 1894.
Only Chris, Lou and myself went back in for this second dive. It is well spread out with some big lumps of metal, including the prop shaft and a boiler. This gave us quite a late finish as we got out of the water at 6:10pm. From here we got back to the mooring and got our cylinders to the shop by approx 7:15. Then we went back to the B&B for a quick shower, back to pick up the cylinders, then get to the pub by 9pm. 

Sunday
Frank and Zak decided not to dive today so there were only 9 of us on the boat.

Dive 1: Pomeranian, Max depth 37.2 metres, Run time 58 minutes
Another flat calm day saw us once again going round The Bill to the Pomeranian. She was  a large ship, weighing in at 4,241 tons. She was traveling from London to Newfoundland in 1918 when she was torpedoed by UB-77.
The viz was a little better than the previous day, probably about 4 metres. Another large wreck with lots of poor cod. I did find a conger in one pipe which I pointed out to Rich, he then poked his head right inside for a closer look. Most of this dive was accompanied by the sound of Rich coughing, he had a contaminated air fill which was in his back gas and deco gas.
On getting back to the surface we had a feeling of déjà vu, people were being hauled aboard the boat. It was immediately obvious that the lift had broken again. This time the winch was unable to hoist and so the platform was tied in place and so we had to completely de-kit in the water, prior to climbing on board.
Woody is now getting totally fed up with the situation with the new boat, and is in fact threatening to pack it all in. Hopefully everything will improve and it won’t come to this.

Steve Jones

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