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.
Posted byUnknown at 3:09 PM
Labels: NAS, trip report
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