In February 1999 Pete Young booked Taurus, a 33ft Blythe catamaran for a week's diving out of Dover, and advertised spare places on NDG. I'd never dived in that area before, so thought it would be interesting to try. All of my regular diving friends assured me that the viz would be utter crap, however none of them had actually dived there, so I sent Pete a deposit and forgot about it.
Come August, the team turned out to be:
John Cook and Ken Gould
Pete Young and Simon Keating
Jonathan Legh-Smith and Raj Mistry
Ian Gould and Jane Cannon
Helen Johnstone and Anke Otto
Callum Beveridge and me
I hadn't met any of these people in person before - all but myself, Callum (from Reading BSAC) and Anke (from Leeds) were from Ipswich and either members of BTRSAC or Ipswich SAA. But then that's the fun of going on these trips, you meet new people and get new ideas from them.
We were to meet at Dover marina at 11am on Monday 16th. At 7am I had all my kit packed and ready, and Callum arrived in his Frontera. The drive down was quite quick, and we were at the marina before 9:30, and soon spotted Taurus. We wandered on deck, but no-one seemed to be around. After a couple of minutes a sleepy looking skipper (Steve Howland) appeared and made some comments about how early we were... So he could go back and catch up on his beauty sleep, we went off for breakfast. On our return the BT crew were there, so we started loading our kit onto the boat.
Taurus is an excellent dive boat. There is enough room for 12 divers and their kit (including spare tanks) with plenty of room to kit up. A decent sized cabin for all the dry stuff. And a good loo. Steve has all the electronics including DGPS and shots wrecks very accurately every time. Being a catamaran it also seemed more stable than others I'd been on, and the fact that one day we were diving in a force 6 without much problem says it all.
First dive was to be the Anglia, a hospital ship sunk by a mine in 1915 and a war grave. We kitted up, and Callum and I familiarised ourselves with each other's kit. Callum had a serious amount of hardware on him. Two crowbars, a lump hammer and a selection of cold chisels and punches. I'm sure I counted at least 3 lift bags. All of this was to no avail though as the portholes on the Anglia are very distinctive with as vent, and we were not going to remove anything from a war grave anyhow.
Down the shot we found the wreck in about 4m viz in about 30m. The dive plan was to do 35mins bottom time, then deco according to Callum's homebrew Buhlmann tables. We found what appeared to be a bathroom, with a most impressive floor of black and white squared lino, clean of silt. Near to that was a hole and Callum spotted something interesting in it. We went out and down the hull and found an opening in the side that gained access - Callum disappeared inside while I waited outside as there wasn't enough room for two in there. While waiting I spotted a greenish circular thing through another hole - it looked like a circle of brass, but it was just out of reach as the hole was too small to get in to with a Callum already in it.
After 33mins Callum was still in the hole, and mindful of the dive plan (and the fact that I was already into stops) I pulled on Callum's fins a couple of times. A rather surprised Callum squeezed out of the hole. Up we went and did 1min at 9m, 6min at 6m (by which time my computer was clear), and after 4min at 3m I decided to go up and leave Callum to his deco, as he was on air and I was on 32%.
Back to port for a spot of lunch, then in the late afternoon we set off again, this time to do the Pomerania, a big liner sunk in 1878 when she was struck by the Moel Eilian. In 27m of water, it was past 7PM when we went down so it was dark below. Almost at once Callum spotted a porthole, and spent the next 20 minutes hammering away at it. Meanwhile I looked around in nooks and crannies at all the crabs and lobsters which had come out to play... It was easy to find my way back, just head towards the banging sound. Unfortunately Callum could not get the porthole off, so after about 30 mins we made our ascent, and caught a beautiful sunset at the surface. That night we headed into town for a good curry before retiring to bed.
Tuesday saw the weather turning worse. Our first dive was the Monarch, a cable layer sunk by a mine in 1915. Dive Kent says she is in 24m, but I managed 26m and could probably have got another four on the seabed. As it was, the current was fairly strong and picking up, so we stayed inside the shelter of the holds. Callum found another porthole and spent the whole dive hammering away at it. In fact he only gave up when his lump hammer broke. He was a bit upset as I did not carry one myself, but then I'm not a real rufty tufty wrekkie. Meanwhile I was searching around other holes in the holds and found a nice pair of shoes, unfortunately they disintegrated as I washed the silt off... Later in a rather tight hole I spotted something green-blue and circular... Could it be?... Nope, it was some garden hose, damn. After 40mins it was time to come up, this time I stayed with Callum while he completed his 20 mins of stops.
We decided to abandon the second dive of the day, as we would not get into the water until after 8PM, so we would be surfacing in the dark, and the weather was not looking great. Instead we headed back and went out for a nice Chinese in Folkstone.
Wednesday saw a lot of wind and a very early start to catch the slack. It was about force 5-6, southwesterly, so we headed out to the Loanda, east of Dover and a bit sheltered from the west. She was sunk while travelling from Hamburg to South Africa in 1908 after hitting a Russian steamer. Down the shot we went, and the lights rapidly went out - pitch dark past 10m due to fine silt in suspension. We hit the wreck somewhere near the bows and immediately in the open holds found lots of decorative glazed beads, clay pipes and bottles. After a 40 minute rummage in about 24m we came up, total runtime 60mins. On the surface the wind was picking up and the forecast was for 40 know gusts (force 8) in the afternoon. So we called the afternoon dive, and had a wander round Folkstone instead.
Thursday was again rather rough, force 6ish, so by popular vote we decided to do the Loanda again. Down the shot the viz was somewhat poorer than yesterday, 1m in the good bits, and in that viz and in total darkness not surprisingly I managed to lose Callum quite early in the dive. While grovelling around in a hold I discovered metal above me and to both sides, and discovered I was stuck in a dead end, so had to shuffle backwards and around, trying to find an exit. Fortunately the bit of the wreck I was in was fairly broken and a hole big enough to get out of soon appeared. After about 40mins during which I found what appeared to be the engines I decided to reel up for a total runtime of 50mins.
In the afternoon the weather was no better, in fact worse, so we did the same wreck yet again. This time down Callum disappeared over the side of the hull to bag the shot and that was the last I saw of him, with viz less than 1m. I found my way to the bows and had a root around for more goodies but couldn't spot anything too interesting, and with the bad viz and increasing current called it a day at 22mins and sent my blob up. As I started to wind up, the handle came off the reel and disappeared into the depths :( Fortunately the small McMahon reels aren't too difficult to wind just by turning the reel, so no big problem. Just for the record, when I got back I called McMahon and they sent me a new handle FOC by return of post!
Friday morning dawned bright and sunny with a pleasant force 3. So we headed out to the Pomerania. Callum spotted a porthole (not the same one he'd tried to remove on Monday) and 5 minutes later he had it out and on his lift bag. Meanwhile I went off looking at some of the enormous shoals of fish - brill, pollack and cod - on the wreck. Viz was about 4m. Total dive time 48mins, max depth 26m.
Friday afternoon we did the Lusitania, a steamer sunk by a mine in 1915 while trying to assist the stricken Anglia, which had hit the same minefield. Again reasonably good viz, 4-5m. We swam down around to the stern, which appears to have been blown off, then followed back to the bows, where with missing decking it is possible to get inside and get to 33m or more. Total run time 44 mins, my max depth was 31m.
So after a week's good diving we unloaded and prepared to make our ways back. In the car park, Pete Young's Range Rover had been clamped, which did not amuse him one bit. Fortunately the port authorities agreed to unclamp him, since he did have a permit, but had just forgotten to display it. While we were waiting a couple came up and asked if we could help with their boat. They had something stuck on the prop. Callum being a fine gentleman volunteered immediately and with the help of a tank on the walkway and a 2m long hose was able to duck down and cut free a mail bag (or so it appeared) that had got caught up in their prop. What a hero!