Hard Hat Diving Oop North
22 February 2005
Trip report by Jamie Obern
First published in London Diver, April 2005
There is something about UK divers that makes the ultra-stylish Italians cringe. Maybe it is all the garishly coloured fleece and GORE-TEX® we insist on wrapping ourselves in. Maybe it is our insistence on functionality over elegance. Perhaps it is because the average BSAC male diver is a pasty white colour, of stocky build and has more hair on his bottom than his head (no guessing why I haven't described the average BSAC female—besides you are all gorgeous...). But if divers are on average a little odd then it is the nautical archaeologists who are helping to pull the average towards the weirder end of the scale.
For those of you that don't know, a few of us have been creeping off to do NAS courses since last year. We've been measuring boats and fixing lines, learning about protected wreck status and dendrochronology and trying not to laugh at some of the other students' dress sense. Just like the BSAC run courses, some of the NAS courses are more interesting than others—but when we first heard about the technical diving weekend we were unanimous in thinking that this would be one of the most interesting. It was a weekend playing with all the commercial diving equipment—hard hats and under water comms, surface supplied air and helmet mounted video cameras so that the dive supervisor can see whatever you see. As soon as the annual course dates were released Ricky, Mel, Dave "the Skid" and myself booked in.
It was based at TWI in Middlesborough, a purpose built commercial diver training and exam facility, complete with a 6 m deep tank containing an underwater structure resembling part of an oil rig. The facilities were excellent and if it wasn't so far away I'm sure that southern UK divers would be regularly trying to arrange weekend courses there. However, for those of you that don't like to venture much past the Watford Gap I am convinced that Middlesborough is the reason for the phrase "It's grim up north". It's not the people, well, it's not just the people, it is the landscape—a modern day equivalent of Dickens' Coketown. So to avoid the grimness of the city we were staying about 10 minutes drive away in the "sleepy and picturesque market town" of Guisborough.
As you might expect, nautical archaeologists are not well known for being party animals so when we arrived at our NAS recommended B&B, the Three Fiddles Public House, we were somewhat confused. It was heaving. Taxis bringing in the locals for their Friday night out on the town were arriving every 10 minutes, such was its popularity. The temperature may have been below zero, but the locals seemed immune. The 'blokes' were all in short sleeved shirts, un-tucked and with the top three buttons undone of course. The women all seemed to be in a competition to parade as much flesh as possible. And they weren't just skinny young things either—Hattie Jacques would have fitted in perfectly. I would have said that their mothers would not have approved—but I reckon the mothers were also in the competition. By stripping down to just jeans and a T-shirt I almost fitted in—but then Mel gave the game away with her big baggy jumper and complete lack of exposed flesh. We left to get some dinner as quickly as possible—our blatant open mouthed and amazed gaping was not going down well.
Just before we left we quickly scanned the pub for any other members of the NAS contingent. They were not hard to spot—oddly coloured fleece covered islands in a sea of lipstick, hair gel and cleavage. Now that we were in tune with the local tribal dress it was a relief that Dave and Ricky had not laughed louder on entering the pub. The sandal wearing, toe-ringed man by the door turned out to be their NAS room mate.
The actual diving was very interesting. After a very brief overview of the kit we were pretty much left to get on with it and learn as we went along. All of us got to dive twice in the full kit, plus the chance to dress the divers, act as tender, as comms supervisor and do a pot dive. Having the four of us in the same team was very reassuring, especially when the first diver of the other team was seen to be making frantic jelly-fish impressions immediately on having been clamped into her helmet. No one had turned on her air, or showed her where the bail out supply was located. Upon querying how this could happen, the answer was simple—well, she hadn't asked for her air to be turned on. Obviously an optional extra, then. Even by the last dive on the Sunday the same team still hadn't quite got it together—sending in their last diver without the bail out gas supply turned on.
Ear clearing turned out to be more complicated than expected. Encased in a 10 kg helmet with integrated comms and air supply meant that a simple nose pinch was impossible. The solution was a 'V' shaped neoprene covered prong which could be moved in and out or rotated through 360 degrees by the diver. With no clear explanation of how to use this devise everyone seemed to come up with different ways of wedging it against (or even up) their nose so that they could clear. Cleaning the helmets after each dive became very important.
We worked with one diver per team diving at a time. The plan was to spend some time getting used to the kit (no fins to aid movement and a natural tendency to topple over due to the weight of the helmet) and the rest of the time practicing survey work on two blue plastic boats that we purposely weighted down and tied to the bottom of the tank—it was an archaeology course after all. Some of us spent more time than others pretending to be spacemen, trying to do somersaults and generally giggling, shrieking, shouting and creating havoc (no difficulty guessing who...). Roger, a university lecturer and the most popular member of our team, was the opposite extreme. He only wanted to do the survey work and whilst the rest of us measured to an accuracy of 1–2 cm he insisted on measuring to the nearest millimetre. Not very successful when certain other members of our team were spending time deliberately hijacking the survey exercise by loosening the boats so that they were able to move about by about 20–30 cm. With the computer modelling afterwards proving difficult (unsurprisingly) Roger was spotted in the corridor re-measuring the boats that we had now recovered from the tank.
The other amusing game was to torment Dave "the Skid" whilst he was diving. Having settled him at the bottom of the tank with my reassuring tones coming through the comms system, he was less than amused to hear Mel's cackling and realised that 'the mad woman' now had control of his air supply. But it could have been worse – I had to deal with Roger as my comms supervisor.
Finally for those of you wondering why I keep referring to our current club president as Dave "the Skid" I will explain. It had nothing to do with the snow and ice that greeted us on the Sunday morning. On the Friday night, their toe-ring wearing room mate had gone to bed early and Dave and Ricky, being considerate chaps, decided not to switch the lights on and just got ready for bed nice and quietly. Unfortunately, an earlier occupant of the room had not been so considerate. Having had a nasty bowel accident, he had avoided the inevitable embarrassment by switching beds and making it look like the original bed was unused—hence the chamber maid had not changed the sheets. Dave woke to discover that he had spent the night lying in a rather large and ominous looking brown stain. Whilst he has our sincere sympathy for the mental trauma he must now suffer, we still struggled not to laugh—probably much like you will struggle not to laugh the next time you see Dave "the Skid" Marks.
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Labels: NAS, trip report
More Boat Handling
06 February 2005
Trip report by Morgan Peat
First published in London Diver, April 2005
February is generally a bit too cold and murky for a proper diving weekend, so a handful of London No 1-ers ventured off early this year on the next best thing: a boat handling course.
Megan, Alex, Jonny Wilmot (a.k.a. "Sicknote") and Jon Chapper (as an 'observer') signed up for the RYA Level II course, which covers boat handling up to a level equivalent to the BSAC boat-handling certificate. Joe, Tobias and I had already completed this course. We instead opted for the RYA Intermediate course combined with a BSAC Diver Coxswain assessment.
The weekend kicked off (as always) in the pub. Failing to find anywhere decent near our B&B in Selsey, we chose the nearest pub that had passable real ale. Unable to talk much over the pumping music we indulged in a pool competition, several pints, and a curry. Saturday morning took us to Wittering Divers, our base for the weekend. Taking a course run in a diving shop is definitely not to be recommended. Although the standard of tuition is high, the staff are all friendly and the tea and coffee flow like water, it is nigh-on impossible to walk past rows of shiny new dive kit several times a day without feeling at least tempted. I don't think anyone got away without buying something, and Sicknote walked out with several hundred pounds worth of new drysuit!
Our course kicked off with a few hours of theory. Since we had all completed our Day Skipper theory course (or were in the process of doing it) this was fairly straightforward. We went over our knowledge of collision regulations, lights, sounds, buoy shapes, etc. We did quite a bit of chartwork, calculating set and drift of tide, and depth of water.
The last task before lunch was to form a passage plan between two points in 'unfamiliar waters'. We were each given a start and end point on the chart. The job was to determine a route between the two, calculating tides, depths, etc. We had to write ourselves notes adequate to navigate the passage without resorting back to the chart. This was done by noting compass bearings, items of interest that we would see (slipways, buildings, etc), and the buoys and markers we would pass.
After lunch we went onto the water for an afternoon of practical skills. This started with a quick 'play' to get used to the boat, learning how she handled. We then completed the Level II assessment course (coming alongside, reversing, picking up buoys) to prove that we were competent enough for the rest of the weekend.
After that we took it in turns to follow our passage plans, one person behind the controls while someone else gave directions. I am pleased to report that we all successfully reached our destinations and all navigation (even mine!) was spot-on. The only slight incident was a minor argument with a sandbank, where our instructor's final directions, "You're getting too close. Turn to port. Turn to port. TURN TO PORT!!!!!!!!" were misconstrued as a turn to starboard. We got off the sandbank OK though thanks to a nifty bit of boat handling by the instructor, and the whole incident was watched with wry amusement by the twenty-or-so people racing dinghies nearby.
Saturday evening was a fairly muted affair. Everyone was so shattered from their day afloat that we were all in bed shortly after dinner.
Sunday took us straight back out onto the water to complete our BSAC Diver Coxswain assessment. This consisted of various tasks culminating in locating and shotting a dive site, putting divers into the water, then retrieving them. Joe went first, using transits to find a small WWII vessel just off the South coast. The transits were fairly dodgy to say the least. One was to line up a withy [local word for a wooden stake in the water, Ed] with a water tower, a task not helped when the withy is about two inches wide and half a mile away through haze. The second transit involved lining up a yellow buoy with a block of flats, only the buoy looked black on a grey sea, and was only visible every third or fourth wave.
Still, he found the wreck easily (as verified by sonar), threw in the shot and sent Tobias and I after it. That was probably not the best dive I have ever done. At two metres (never mind the bottom at 10m) visibility was down to zero. We could only communicate through touch. Luckily the only requirement for Diver Coxswain is that divers do actually submerge: no particular dive time is required. So we effectively 'bounced' off the bottom and back to the surface, thus ending Joe's exercise.
My dive site was somewhat easier, being a small drop-off in a channel near Itchenor. To find it was simply a matter of motoring out from the shore (after finding the correct point using the chart) and watching until the depth on the sonar dramatically increased.
One shot placement, however, had to be seen to be believed. Dropping a shot is quite a tricky task for the boat handler, really. You have to drive in on one transit while keeping your eyes on one or two others, watch the sonar and control the boat. It shouldn't be a surprise if at least one job gets forgotten about, so forgetting to slow the boat down and put the gears into neutral is entirely forgivable. Mind you, I wasn't the one who had to toss a large shot weight overboard while under way at 10 knots. I just wish I'd had a camera handy to capture the look on our instructor's face.
Once we had finished that exercise, had lunch, and the shotee's nerves had calmed down, we navigated some more complex passage plans. These required much more careful preparation since we journeyed up tributaries that dried out, and we were bang on low water. All went smoothly again, besides one minor surprise. The boat handling mantra of "always keep a good look-out" was forgotten by all (including the instructor). It does rather shock you when you turn around to see a vessel five times your size right behind you!
Despite our few minor mishaps, we all passed both our RYA Intermediate Powerboat certificate, and the BSAC Diver Coxswain award. Those on the Level II course all passed too. I have been assured there were no mistakes or mishaps on the other course – either they are all naturally gifted boat handlers or they have made a vow of silence to each other. I'm sure we will find out one day. You will also note that I have chosen not to name the high-speed shotters or boat grounders, in order to protect those who can't answer back for the next three months…
It was a thoroughly enjoyable weekend, for us at least – I'm not sure about our instructors. It was also very educational, and taught us a lot both about practical boat handling and general seamanship. I do however now realise why the club is not keen on us using Percy Too for boat handling courses!
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Labels: boat-handling, RYA, trip report, wittering
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