Club Life Blog

Dive trip report – by Reg S

We'd been watching the weather all week - and of course the models had disagreed down to that very last moment - and then suddenly - Calm.  For once, this year, we were going to have a calm day for diving!

So, we set off well before dawn to make Dover for our 8:00am arrival time.  Cat, Andy, Sam P and I were going to investigate HMS Flirt, a destroyer sunk in 1916 in one of Britain's least finest hours of naval warfare.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Flirt_(1897)  (worth a read - quite astonishing how many things went wrong!).  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zvg8jkBExPU

For me, particularly, the excitement was running high.  Although I've done some deco dives, and completed my ADP training last year, I hadn't practiced them in anger in the sea - and this was going to be a 38m (actually 40m!) mid-channel dive!

(Renegade - our dive boat)

(There goes the neighbourhood!)

The trip out was fine and as calm as promised, and cool enough that getting into a dry suit was quite pleasant.  The sea was black, promising great viz.  Container ships passed left and right and our phones connected to French 5G towers, as Tom, our skipper, carefully negotiated his way to the assigned spot and expertly dropped a shot onto the wreck - or perhaps wreckage is a bit more accurate as the Flirt is quite broken up from the battering of German munitions and more than a hundred years of being on the seafloor.

Before we got there though, we had a visit from this curious little fellow:

Finally, we arrived and got about the business of getting into the water.  Some rebreather divers first, with their pre-breathe checks, then us OC folk.  Doubles of 28% strapped on and our deco bottles of 80% ready to speed us back to the surface when our jaunt was up.

I'd like to say we hit the slack window - we certainly had by the tide atlas - but it seems that no-one had mentioned that to the actual tides and we found ourselves rappelling down the shot line... and it was a long, long way down into the dark.

Finally my torch revealed the bottom.  There she was - just as Tom had said - boilers and broken hull, fittings, debris and captured trawler nets - giant crabs and fish everywhere.   Everything was a twilight monochrome - only the silver fish truly reflecting our harsh dive lights, everything else was the grey-brown of barnacled steel and netting - everywhere crying out for a splash of colour.  And the stubborn tide was still running, even down here, so we took shelter along the hull and I pulled myself along - being careful to avoid the holes that might be hiding Conger Eels and their finger-chomping ilk.  This was truly a different world.  The viz was out to maybe 8m, but so dark and so different.

Rather than continuing to fight the current, Cat and I turned and made our way back toward the stern and quickly ran out of ship - so we turned again, ducking low, trimmed as best we could and returned to the Flirt.  This time we were a little better at staying out of the current.  We spotted the others coming the other way and gave a cheerful salute.  

We didn't quite make it all the way to the bow before we hit our minimum gas and pre-agreed deco limit.  I fumbled a little with my DSMB - unused to having the deco-bottle to worry about as well, but I kept calm and up it went, the spool spinning and spinning in my hand, and then up we went following the bag at a much more sedate pace.  A gas switch at 9m for 2 minutes, with Cat putting up her DSMB as well to ensure that the skipper knew that we were all present and accounted for, and up to 6m for 9 more minutes of O2 and our adventure was at an end.  

Apart from biscuits and hot chocolate – OBVIOUSLY

Great fun, good experience and great company!  Looking forward to the next one!