I still have the whole week ahead of me. As the diving yesterday was great fun, it also served me to work a bit on my skills and to trim my gear for the days to come. I feel more confident now, as not only know my buddies skills but also that my gear is 100% and I am “sort of” back in shape.
This came in time, because the targets of today are the James Barrie and the F2.
The James Barrie was a 666 ton Icelandic steam trawler that ran aground while passing one of Orkney’s access channels. Se started to take on water and was abandoned by her crew. This happened on 27th March 1969.
Two days later, the tide “freed” the James Barrie and it started to float on Pentland Firth Unmanned, like a ghost ship. Not bad for a 666 ton ship, huh?
One of Kirkwall’s lifeboats, the Grace Paterson Richie, tried to tow her back to port but unfortunately (or fortunately for us divers) she sunk in Hoxa Sound, off Widewall Bay about a mile south of Hoxa Gead.
The ship is 36 meter long and lies on her starboard side in about 43m of water. Her hull is about 35. It looks a lot like the “Pinguino”, a wreck in Angra dos Reis in Brazil. The sandy bottom and the constant current make the place a very interesting dive. There is almost no silt, and the visibility was around 15m when we went there. The bad side is that the current makes a requirement to dive on slack water, so we had to time our dive well.
I decided to approach this dive carefully, as I didn’t have any Trimix available the 43m seabed was below the reasonable limit. The currents would also require me to make a good effort to reach the bottom, consequently raising my CO2 level and increasing narcosis. I was also feeling seasick, which didn’t help at all!
Ian, the Skipper, dropped a piece of weight that would serve us as an “anchor” for the lifeline. Unfortunately the rope attached to it broke, and we had to also conduct a small “salvage operation”.
We went down slow on the lifeline, trying not to make too much effort. As I reached 40m I felt a little narked. I went up a bit as I looked Tom, one of my buddies, tying the lift bag on the weight and Kevin, my other buddy, floating around. After the dive he confessed he was completely narked… scary.
Tom managed to lift the weight and off we went to the wreck. No penetration, just a 25 min wand around and off I went to deco.
I was using EAN 27, and here is the deco I did:
27m – 18m – very slow ascent (around 3 min) 18m – 1 min 15m – 1 min 12m – 2 min 9m – 2 min 6m – 12 min
Since I set my computer to bottom time I had no problem running that deco. My buddies, because they were using Mosquitoes, preferred to go directly to 6m, so I had to run that by my own.
Didn’t like that of course, and decided to be better prepared for next time. Deco is not something you should do alone. Even not being DIR anymore, buddy dive is something I strongly believe in.
The dive finished without problems. I was the last on in the boat, but I don’t care as long I am comfortable with the procedures I am carrying on.
The second dive was the F2. She was a German destroyer that was scuttled with the fleet. Measuring 76m long, with a beam of almost 9m it displaced 790 tons. It was not a big ship, but indeed an interesting dive. Driven by two twin turbines and two propellers, she could reach 26 knots.
When being salvaged, a Barge (the YC 21) that was holding some of the metal taken from her sank, making a very interesting dive as well. Our plan was to start the dive in the barge and end it on the F2. She lies less than 18m of water and it is indeed an interesting second dive.
I asked Ian to “top up” my mix with air and I set my dive plan to 21%. This would make it safer. We had almost 2 hours of surface interval, but I wanted to take it easy. Besides, the water was cold and I didn’t want to make a bottom time longer than 30 minutes.
Off we went to the Barge. Soon after we went down, the two 20mm anti aircraft guns appeared pointing at us, just like the ship was defending itself from us. Impressive sight and we all approached to inspect that weapon that once was a demonstration of power, and now is just a base for sea life.
The wreck is looming with life. Loads of starfish and coral are all around. The F2 is a little beat broken up. The bow is fairly intact and you can distinguish the wreck until a little after the bridge. After that the vessel has been devastated by blasting and it is hardy recognisable. Only a mass of steel and cables lie all around.
The impressive part is the big 4.1 inch cannon in the front. The barrel is still intact and pointing toward the bow, defying the unknown. Impressive!
After a 34 min bottom time I began my slow ascent to the surface. No deco this time, but a 3 minute safety stop at 6m just for the record.
After this day I was feeling very tired. Maybe I pushed too hard on the deco, maybe it was the seasickness or just the cold water was hitting me. I don’t know what happened, but I decided to eat and go to bed early. Wise decision as the next day we were planning to do the Dresden and the Tabaka again. Can’t wait to get there!
Here I am in “mighty” Stromness, at Orkney Islands! I’m so happy about being here and I can’t wait to dive!
A lot of stuff to sort out and I still have to get to know my buddies properly. Yeah… not very DIR, but what the hell… I’m almost convinced I am not DIR. I’m surely a big fan of Claire Gledders, a great diver and fantastic person, but I am very different from her. If she is the DIR role model I am sure I won’t be able to be like that. I have decided to forget some of the DIR premises for this trip as I think that if I would want to follow them I would not be able to come up here.
Never mind about that… a polemic topic that is being discussed all aver the diving world. I’m not here to talk about DIR or not DIR, just to say to my DIR friends that I will not be diving DIR in Scapa (maybe I am even not DIR anymore…) and I hope this disclaimer will help me to keep my credentials after this trip... ;)
Well, I have promised to say something about Kirkwall and the infrastructure. Here we go: my plane got 2 hours late because of problems in Glasgow, which made me arrive about 5:30pm in Orkney.
When I got to the airport I learned that the information that I got from the web was wrong, and on Sundays there are no buses from the airport to Kirkwall town centre. Also, the last bus from Kirkwall to Stromness would leave in 5 minutes from the town centre, making it impossible to me to catch it.
I managed to find a lady to share the cab with me up to Kirkwall and then paid the rest to Stromenss. The cost was £20, but if I had to pay for everything without sharing it would cost me £31. Please remember that it was a Sunday ride, thus more expensive.
I’m putting below the updated bus schedule for the main island; since I know the information available on the web at this time is not right (I based myself on it and had to take a cab). The information below is extracted from a small leaflet I got from the tourist centre on the Stromness pier: About the boat: The pier is very small and I had no difficulty to find the Invincible, the boat that I am going to spend these 7 days in. It has a load line of 24m, with all gear you can imagine. The owner, Ian Trumpess, is an ex-commercial diver who decided to take an “easier” life and run a charter. He managed to get a very decent structure, as the boat has everything one might need: comfortable cabins with wash-hand basin, nice galley with a brilliant breakfast made by Fiona (Ian’s wife), 2 bathrooms, a compressor with nitrox on board, loads of space to set up your gear and, of course, a BAR.. :) Yes, there is a bar on board where you can have a nice beer while watching some TV and having a chat with your dive buddies.
The M.V. Invincible is certified under category two as required by the "Code of Practice" and is licensed to carry up to 14 persons, 12 passengers and two crew. Access on to Invincible is via its own gang way leading you onto its shelter deck and down the stairs on to the main deck, no scrambling up and down the pier wall ladders on this one.
The first thing that strikes you with Invincible is her sheer size and the large open deck area with it's two large benches that run down each side of the boat and can comfortably accommodate a reasonably large group of Trimix divers.
The bridge is fully equipped with loads of “toys” and I have extracted a small list from the boat website:
H.P. marine P.C. with it Furno 19 inch monitor, interfaced with the Furuno G.P.S. navigator GP-80 which runs our Sea Map chart plotter. In the bridge at the chart table they also have an M.C.5 magnetometer which interfaces with the Furuno G.P. 500. Other electronics on the bridge include Icom 22 mile radar, Furuno colour video sounder, Wesmar SS390 forward looking drop sonar, ships watch, on board Nokia phone, Eagle intercom system. They also have four VHF radio set, Long Range Railor, Deburg Sailor, a Skanti and a Furuno D.M.G.S. Last, but not at least, a C.B. radio for “idle chatter among skippers”.
The Invincible is fully centrally heated with tons of piping hot water, thanks to the diesel burner located on the bridge in the chart room. I have to thank my hot showers to that… :D
They carry three oxygen kits, one located in the shelter deck and another two up on the bridge. And there's always plenty of O2 onboard, making Nitrox easily available. The Invincible also boasts 240 volt power through out, this is provided from its three phase 15kva generator which is hosed within the shelter deck that also works as a “work shop”, equipment storage and changing area. The nice thing about it is that it stays warm and is a good shelter from the waves while on surface interval.
The galley is full equipped with gas oven, fridge freezer, microwave oven and electric toaster. To the rear of the galley is the mess area fitted with soft upholstery for comfort and large table, the galley also has a T.V. combi for breakfast T.V. or yesterday's video of the Kronprinze.
Below deck there is the accommodation area and the bar. Yes that's right, I said BAR !
The bar really is quite something: stocked with Orkney Ales and good range of optics they even have the pumps and coolers. At the bar there are also some books and printouts from the internet with loads of information about Scapa and the wrecks. While browsing over the printouts I came across the third edition of the Dive Scapa Flow book, by Rod Macdonald. Don’t get the wrong impression by the weird blue line and big flashlight of the fella on the cover. The author managed to do an excellent job by getting all relevant information about the Scapa Flow wrecks. There are some schematics of the ships, as drawings that give you a very good idea of what you will find underwater. 100% recommended and I have already ordered mine at Amazon.com About Stromness:
Stromness is a small lovely village that goes along the west part of the Orkney Mainland. It has a good pier that receives the ferry and most of the diving boats stay here. Near the pier you have the town centre, which hosts the Scapa Flow museum (a must see!) and a variety of small stores with groceries to Scapa stuff to buy. You won’t be in need of anything “downtown” Stromness. They have a good pub called The Ferry Inn, where good food is served at an honest price. They also have a good selection of ales and beer that can be drank along with locals and visitors that come to the place at night.
You can go down the road to find loads of B&B and some diving shops. Anything for the diver: from a place to sleep to a piece of equipment to replace a broken part of the kit. There is even a shop that does an overnight fix for dry suit seals! Below there is a list of B&BS and Hotels:
The Ferry Inn (Popular with divers) (01856) 850280 Royal Hotel Website (01856) 850342 Stromness Hotel (01856) 850298 The Orca Hotel (01856) 850447
The Hostel is a good option with rooms about £11 a night (self catering).
The place for overnight fix of your dry suit is Scapa Scuba: http://www.scapascuba.co.uk. They also sell “funny hoods” and “custom dry suits” with figures as Tiger and Spiderman. The hoods cost about £100 and I didn’t want to know how much for the Spiderman or Superman dry suit… Expensive but funny joke…: D
Well… we are here to talk about the diving, right? So let me tell you a little bit about my first dive. As all first dives you fell weird, trying to adjust your weight, trim, buoyancy and all that. The dive was the Kronprinz Wilhelm, or the “Crown Prince”, which was one of the biggest and most important ships of the old German Fleet. It is an almost 300 feet wreck, and you cannot have a full idea about it in one dive. As a matter of fact you could spend a whole week diving this wreck without getting to know it completely.
The Kronprinz was built in Kiel and finished in the end of 1914. It was part of an initiative of the Germans to make the Kriegsmarine sufficiently big to pose a threat to the Royal Navy and, together with other Battleships as the Koenig and the Markgraf, constituted the spine of the High Seas Fleet.
The ship is HUGE. It is so big that it is said that the Kiel Canal had to be specially widened to let her through after completion. She is around 175m long, has a beam of around 30m and a draught of over 9m! She displaced almost 26000 tons. The hull was almost 40cm thick in the thickest part. She also had 5 turrets with 12 inch guns and 14 casemates with 5.9 inch guns and 3.45 inch AA guns, along with five submerged torpedo tubes: one to the bow and for in the beam. The engine is impressive: three propellers that were powered by 46000 hp turbines that made this 26000 ton ship move over 21 knots. She was manned by 1136 crew and formed part of the Third Battleship Squadron of the Third High Seas Fleet.
She was part of the biggest naval encounter of the First World War: the Jutland battle and survived without a scratch, while severely damaging some of the British ships.
The ship is upside down, with its superstructure stuck in the silt at about 33m deep. The hull is about 20m and it is torn open in at least three places, result of the recovery that followed the scuttling of the German fleet. Our plan was to go down the hull down to 33m and take a look in the superstructure underneath it. After that, swim along it and reach the bow, where the rudder and the propellers are. Of course the propellers were not there anymore, but the rudders were a beautiful sight, followed by a big hole showing the inner workings of the wreck full of anemone. Loads of small spider crabs and some big crabs reminded me that it was time for breakfast.
The high point of the dive was a 12 inch cannon that is lying along port and half way into the silt and full of anemone. The cannon is an impressive weapon and I wouldn’t want to be in a boat that it’s targeted by that. I should always say that, since the wreck is HUGE, we covered just a small part of the hull on the back part of the port.
We did a 30m bottom time and did some safety stops starting from 18m. We used EAN30 as gas and all the divers were using doubles. The visibility was about 5m and the water temperature around 7oC.
The second dive of the day was the Tabaka. This is a 2624 ton. German steamer built in 1909 in Rotterdam. She was a single-crew steamer formerly known as the Pollux and was seized in July 1940 by the Royal Navy and taken to Scapa Flow for use as a block ship.
The idea was to sink some ships on the entrance of the port in order to prevent U-Boats from entering the area and sinking ships that were on the harbour. These, along with the Churchill Barrier, were part of the Scapa Flow defences on the Second World War. You can see here a photo of the block ships as one of the Churchill Barriers was being built.
The Tabaka was initially sunk in Kirk Sound (#1 barrier) where she laid until July 1944, when she was refloated and moved for her actual position in Burra Sound.
She lies upside down, just like the Kronprinz, and it is indeed an AMAZING dive. It is a full penetration wreck, as you cannot enjoy much the outside hull. But the large space inside makes the penetration safe, and the 12m average depth makes it even safer as you have sufficient gas for using the 1/3 rule. The dive needs careful planning tough, as it stays in the channel. This means great visibility and fast current. The skipper told me sometimes this comes up to 6 knots.
Our planning, as this was the second dive, included the use of EAN36 and a very short 30 min bottom time (because of the current). We went down sharply at 12:00 and straight to the bottom.
After a short get around at the hull, we managed to easily find one hole to get in. The visibility was around 12m and the water freezing 9oC. There are loads of portholes and entrances and the light gets in the wreck from all over the place. It is almost a religious experience, as your eyes adjust quickly to the darkness you see what looks like a small chapel. It is just like God is showing you how great architect he is. He managed to build a sanctuary out of a shipwreck, playing with the light that comes in from the portholes and the bars of a decayed bulkhead, all shaped by the strong current that comes in and out of the channel daily.
The dive went without any problems and I was so glad to see that Tom decided to bring his camera. I’m really looking forward seeing the video, especially on the boiler room. There you can see the three boilers on what once was the ceiling. As the ship is upside down, when it sank for the second time the boilers fell from the “floor” and are now a sight to see, as they protect the old steam triple-expansion engine.
In front of it you can still see the commands like pipes of an organ, and the ship’s telegraph is still identifiable, no matter the anemone that is growing all over the place. The front cover of Rod Macdonald’s book (the one with the fella with the blue rope and the one I am using as a source of information for this trip report) shows a picture of him in the Tabaka engine room.
We reached our 30 minute bottom time plan as we were arriving at the stern. Tom launched his SMB and up we went with the current. We had a small problem as we ascended, but this was sorted and nothing bad happened, especially because we were very shallow. Good learning experience, as always.
The Tabaka is a must on Scapa. Dive of the day and a strong candidate for dive of the week. Let’s see what happens as the week develops! :)
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The ship is 36 meter long and lies on her starboard side in about 43m of water. Her hull is about 35. It looks a lot like the “Pinguino”, a wreck in Angra dos Reis in Brazil. The sandy bottom and the constant current make the place a very interesting dive. There is almost no silt, and the visibility was around 15m when we went there. The bad side is that the current makes a requirement to dive on slack water, so we had to time our dive well.
The second dive was the F2. She was a German destroyer that was scuttled with the fleet. Measuring 76m long, with a beam of almost 9m it displaced 790 tons. It was not a big ship, but indeed an interesting dive. Driven by two twin turbines and two propellers, she could reach 26 knots.
The wreck is looming with life. Loads of starfish and coral are all around. The F2 is a little beat broken up. The bow is fairly intact and you can distinguish the wreck until a little after the bridge. After that the vessel has been devastated by blasting and it is hardy recognisable. Only a mass of steel and cables lie all around.
