Stuff and nonsense

Last Sunday week we had a dive organised, and once again the night shift, henceforth known collectively as Melowen decided to move the dive to a 5.30am meet at Dover Marina Sunday morning. With part of the collective failing to turn up because of being on the razz the night before, we ended up with three divers who would have preferred to sleep in a bit, and one of the collective.

We went out to The Anglia, the first hospital ship to have sunk due to the mines planted by U-Boats in the 2WW (Chris’ll correct me if I got that wrong!). It was a nice day except for the wind, which was a bit blowy and gave us 2-3 foot waves, but The Anglia is on gravel sea bed, so we went down to have a look. At 30 metres the wreck was in beautifully calm water with up to 6meters visibility. Chris and I pootled away from the shot line (that runs from the wreck up to the surface), me having put some air in my jacket (BCD) to achieve neutral buoyancy. Quite quickly I noticed I was sinking. So I put some more in and was neutral again. But not for very long. Slightly concerned, I filled up my jacket with air until I could feel it pressing against my ribs, and holding onto a piece of the wreck felt the pressure leave along with all the air. Again.
So, signalling Chris that I wanted to return to the surface we headed back to the shot line. Chris finning lightly and gracefully as I trudged heavily, walking along the seabed. Knowing I was carrying too much lead weight in any case, and too heavy to get off the bottom without a lot of hard work, (not to mention unlikely to have held the decompression stop at 6 metres) but having the advantage of integrated weights that could be split into four separate sets, I took one set off and dumped them near the shot line. Now off balance I took its counterpart set out, intending to hold it in hand to maintain balance and control.

Unable to communicate my problem and solution to Chris, he thought he was suffering from Nitrogen Narcosis as from his point of view I was de-kitting for no apparent reason and started rescue procedures. With some wild gesticulation and a spectacular, if inadvertent shot-put style toss of the second lot of weights, I got the point over that I wasn’t narked. Fortunately Chris had presence of mind to pick up the second lot while I pootled to the shot line, and accompanied me up. When my buoyancy started to go positive, I took the weights from Chris and happily sat at 6 meters decompressing for three minutes before ascending to the surface where I gave the weights back to Chris and bobbed on the surface whilst the RIB came and picked us up.

While the other two divers went down, Chris and I handled the boat as the waves increased to three feet. Or rather, Chris handled the boat whilst I leaned over the side and kept a very close eye of the buoy at the top of the shot line. And I do mean a very, very close. The kind of close eye that involves ones breakfast returning to assist. Really, really not my day. The other divers retrieved my abandoned weight pouch, and back ashore we discovered that a valve had simply come loose; easily repaired.

At work, house moving lady who was on holiday advised that actually holiday involved tummy tuck op and she was now signed off for another couple of weeks –sigh-

Had hair done on Thursday. Should have taken a little over an hour and a half. Three and a half hours later… Ugh! Not even that good a a job. At least it was discounted and cheap.

Friday went to Chris’ cousin’s wedding. A two and a half hour journey for which we allowed three and a half hours. Four and a half hours, three accidents (other people), four sets of roadworks, two milk floats and an entire fleet of tourists doing 15 miles an hour later, we skidded sideways into the hotel car park and fell into the wedding service about thirty seconds before the bride arrived.

Lovely service, nice and short, bride and bridesmaids looked gorgeous, followed by champagne. Speeches followed by photo ops followed by food, then cutting cake, disco thingy, random tossing of bouquet from handy Romeo and Juliet balcony, and then it took us two and a hours on the nose to get back home. But then again, I was driving on the way back… :o)

Having rolled into bed at midnight we were up bright eyed and blurry tailed at 0700 Saturday morning to go and set up an exhibition at Chatham Library to promote our Dive Club. The heaving throngs we spent all day fielding consisted of one mentally disabled gentleman and one aqua-phobe who liked the videos and one elderly lady who thought BBC2 ought to do more programs like our video. On the positive side, the librarians were interested and we conned, er, invited them to come try dive. Other people are manning the exhibition for the rest of the week. We got home about 7pm.

Sunday at 7.30 saw us wide asleep and knackered, crawling down to Dover Marina for 0830 in order to get the RIB (henceforth known as Medsac) operational and take her around to St Margaret’s Bay for 0930, ready for the 10.00 dive BBQ. I took the car around to St Margs while Chris and Kev took Medsac around. The first of the divers rocked up around 10.30 and came in a steady flood from there. However, with 12 divers, we needed two RIBs and had arranged for the collective Melowen RIB to come around too. Of which there was no sign. With slack water (the only hour we can dive) at 1pm, we needed to be off the beach at 12. At 12 all the divers decided that they weren’t going to be left behind and piled lots kit plus themselves onto Medsac. At 6 meters long, Medsac is only built for 6 divers with kit. At 12.15 Melowen came sliding into the beach. Rafting up we transferred all the large personnel over to Melowen.

Due to visibility, we ended up back at The Anglia. Melowen by this time was showing signs of intermittently losing power. Had great dive, took pretty pictures which looked a lot better at 30 metres than on the surface, and headed back to St Margs with even loading this time. Medsac wanted very much to play with Norfolk Line ferry, racing to get in front of it.

However Melowen was left behind, stopping and wallowing, so Medsac had to go back for her. But by the time we reached her, Melowen was back underway again. This happened several times. We attempted to radio a couple of times, but Melowen didn’t seem to know what he radio was for. On eventually returning to St Marg’s, it transpired that Melowen’s radio wasn’t switched on, and that at least one of the stops had less to do with engine failure and more to do with a spot of fishing. Please note that we don’t use Melowen; Medsac is club’s boat and Medsac isn’t daft or dangerous.

Medsac anchored up bow onto and just a little out from the rocks off the beach. Melowen, (not asking for permission or anything) tied onto Medsac although stern on to the rocks.

Hungry starving divers went and had very nice BBQ thank you very much. Fully stuffed and busting out of all that tight neoprene we went to check on the RIBs. Laughed a lot at the sight of Melowen see sawing from side to side firmly on the rocks while Medsac bobbed gently slightly beyond them.

Discovered on closer inspection that at some point Melowen had managed to land on top of Medsac, shearing away some of the storage frame and leaving her in the process of slowly sinking. We spectators had much amusement as we watched Melowen being persuaded to come off the rocks while Chris and Kev bailed out Medsac. Soon both boats were ready to travel. Upon starting engines, Medsac purred happily. Melowen did not.

Fortunately, Melowen had an auxiliary engine that gave a whole ten horsepower. That didn’t work either. Eventually the ten horses woke up and the RIBs headed towards Dover. I met them there, and we laughed about the whole day, vowing revenge involving the Melowen collective and a variety of sharp pointy objects.

After a long day at work on Monday, Chris and I went to the leisure centre in Chatham for 8pm in order to spend an entertaining two hours partaking in the BSAC Lifesaver exam. After drowning Judith and Graham, mostly by accident, but maybe a bit on purpose, at 10.45 last night, we were both informed that we passed. Go us.

Now very knackered and looking forward to a good nights sleep.