The problem with being an Engineer is that you can't help but fiddle with
things. Let's admit it that few things work the way I know they really ought to
work and I'm inclined to try to improve matters where ever possible. I did it
to the Inspiration Rebreather over about eight years so the sixteen month old
Sentinel is obviously just a work in progress. The only slight snag with doing
things like this is that there is nobody else to test things on but
yourself...
It wasn't the warmest weather but it was nice and sunny when I set off from
Brighton on the Friday morning. It was planned as 'the driving day' to cover
the bulk of the distance and, with over 620 miles from my home in Brighton to a
hotel in Inverness, it did just that. I left home at nine in the morning and,
with breaks on the way, I arrived at about nine at night which was pretty much
as planned. As I got further north first the temperature fell and then the
weather changed. By late afternoon and the Scottish Lowlands the sun had given
way to rain and in the Scottish highlands that had turned to snow. It looked
rather pretty but this just isn't too encouraging on your way to a scuba diving
holiday.
We started out just after nine for a dive on the Karlsruhe at 25m and it was
fun. OK, I know I only take the Vee-Cam along to prove that the VR3 isn't quite
the most perverse diving accessory ever and it somehow managed to delete the
last section of the dive but I'm used to that now. Of course the Sentinel on
Auto mode doesn't switch setpoint sensibly so I have to turn it to manual and
push buttons and I end up doing the dive on a 1.31bar set point. I did feel
that the work of breathing seemed a bit high and I couldn't seem to improve it
by tipping myself so the counterlung was more level with my own lungs. It was
diveable but the Sentinel has always been quite good on that front so I noted
it as strange.
On the surface, as I was looking round, another blob popped up next to me so,
since Hazel and Helen had divers in mid pickup, I finned away from it gently to
simplify things. Summary - A good dive.
We awoke to traditional Orkney rain but I didn't have to walk to work today so
who cares? I can suit up in the 'tunnel' and just walk out to kit up in the
full dry suit rig. I've never worked out why I don't like diving in the rain as
I'm aiming to go and jump in the sea but I suspect it's just my natural
aversion to having stuff fall out of the sky and onto my head.
The afternoon dive was 15m on the F2, a WW2 German destroyer that the Navy lost
in about 1946, and the barge they lost in 1968 trying to salvage it. I thought
that would be a nice dive and would at least keep the one-dive a day count up.
However if you modify diving gear then you are the crash test dummy. Firstly
the leak of yesterday returned and this time it was obviously the gas feed to
the BOV and although tightening it seemed to fix it it threw away a lot of gas
first. Far worse was my back. After the dive I worked out what it was: as I
strided in the rig must have ridden up on my back and the longer backplate
hooked behind my weightbelt as it came back down. The net result of this was
that the whole system went from being very comfortable and stable in the water
to trying to put a right-angle kink in my spine a few inches above my pelvis.
It hurt. It hurt a lot and it didn't change with my position in the water and
no amount of pushing and pulling seemed to make any difference. If I had known
exactly what the problem was slacking off my waist belt and probably letting go
the crotch strap would have fixed it very easily but that's hindsight and at
the time it just hurt.
It was a nice calm morning with only a little drizzle. A nice Orkadian spring
day.
We lay over at Lyness and some people walked over to the museum once we had
recovered from Helen's burgers. For the afternoon we dived the Brummer. I
confess I was getting cold and cranky. The new mask from my kit box probably
wasn't tight enough but wearing it under the hood makes it harder to tweak and
I generally gave up at the first opportunity and blobbed off.
When I went to bed I was hot so I kicked off the extra blanket I'd been using
but when I woke up at about four o'clock I was frozen. I didn't feel much
better after some breakfast so I elected to pass up on diving the König
and sat in the wheel house and asked Hazel dumb questions. I'm supposed to be
RYA2 and BSAC Diver Cox'n qualified but my chart work and buoyage knowledge is
pure book learning as the chart for Brighton is virtually a line, yellow on one
side and blue on the other. We have a very tolerant skipper. I was a bit
worried I was going down with something but chose 'denial' as the appropriate
way to handle being ill on holiday. It seemed to work.
After lunch I went out on deck to check the rebreather and got a "Cell mV
error" so I looked at the rather nice raw cell display handset and it showed
one cell giving 0.02bar ppO2 so I assumed it was klutzed. Adding it up on my
fingers it had done just over a year so I suppose I'd got my money's worth out
of it so it wasn't going to get a second chance. I had four cells in my spares
box so I kept the newest as a spare and unpacked the others.
This started with a repeat call on the Markgraf. Since my Velcro patch got lost
with my other mask Helen zip-tied the Vee-Cam head to my mask strap and I
actually recorded a full dive - a first. I didn't bother to go right down to
the sand but it was a good dive. I must have pushed the right buttons as it
key-locked itself on schedule then recorded everything, including the boring
bits, and finally stopped on cue back on the boat when I pushed the right
button.
We finished the afternoon with a drift over the dump in Gutta Sound. It was
just a point where the navy threw their rubbish over the side but decades down
the line what was once rubbish has now becomes interesting. It was about 20
meters with usual drift dive rules so I banged up the blob when I hit the
bottom and went into rummage mode. I picked up a couple of intact bottles from
the surface of the seabed but was running my fingers through the gravel and
facing the tide so the silt moved away behind me. I found a crab doing that and
he clearly didn't appreciate being dug up but waving your claws at me is just
posing little fellow. Then I found something rectangular and it turned out to
be a rather nice brass plate with instructions on it. I was really pleased. OK
it was a worthless piece of junk so they threw it overboard but now it's my
worthless piece of junk. A bit of vinegar will probably get the encrustations
off and a toothbrush will shine it up nicely.| 1 | GONG | STOP | I first assumed it was simple engine room signals |
| 2 | AHEAD | although EASE makes me unsure. | |
| 3 | EASE |
I woke up feeling generally grotty and decided that it was a one dive day.
First dive on offer was a repeat on the Brummer and although it's a nice dive
the possibility of finishing the trip with a second rummage dive made it worth
passing up on a Cruiser.
We had a bit of fun recovering a diver we had just dropped and substituting his
blown off dry glove with his wet gloves and then put him back in. Interestingly
Hazel commented that dry glove problems were the most common fault they see.
This just tends to confirm my bias against them. I haven't had cold hands all
week, cold head yes and I get generally cold after half an hour or so in
7°C water but my hands have been OK in tight 5mm wets with plastic
undergloves to help slide them on.
Well Saturday was driving south day so I was stupidly early for the 9am ferry,
drove 490 miles to the Wirral arriving at about 9pm. I stayed a night in a
hotel and visited the section of my family that lives up there on Sunday but
that's another story. However Jenny has shown her friends my web site and says
that it's cool. What higher accolade can a grandfather ever get?
So how was it? How did I rate it? As ever the Valkyrie team delivered Scapa
made easy. Hazel runs a good ship and a no-fuss operation. There is plenty of
room, the entry point is simple and the diver lift is simple even in big swell.
Problems, even when they were our fault, were managed simply, quickly and with
good humour. Helen's dive deck has little details like hot water in the dunk
bucket (a wet hood for a second dive has never felt so good). Having somebody
hovering looking to see if you need help with stages et al really adds to the
ease of diving.
by Nigel Hewitt