Bicester Sub Aqua Club: First Dive of 2009: Saturday January 3rd. Chesil Cove, Portland, Dorset.
The Diving Officer's Tale
05:15 Raucous alarm sounds BU**ER I've only just got back to sleep, whose idea was this? Well I'm awake AGAIN now so might as well get up; (put note in diary: "Organise Witch Hunt ASAP") Next thirty minutes deleted as minors (or anyone else for that matter) may actually read this. Good job I packed all my kit in the car yesterday afternoon; just get in the car and go to pick up Rod. Look outside, bit of a frost, start car check air temp: MINUS FORTY! (all right four) don't you just hate Global Warming? Leave the car running with both windscreen defrost controls and the heated seats on MAX while I go in for a cup of tea. Preparation is the key to a good dive so I run over my well used mental checklist of kit and supplies once more; remember to pack energy drinks and bars plus spare pants (annoying leak in dry suit HONEST!)
06:00 Pick up Rod, load his kit in the car (TWO cylinders and a PONY!) have I misread the email from Steve? (Say nothing in case I look silly). Start the journey, beautiful black icy morning (night) lots of stars, outside temp a mere minus three. Ask Rod if he slept well, apparently not due to the noise caused by ice bergs forming in the Oxford Canal. Driving down A34 notice a shooting star, don't mention it in case it was an aeroplane strobe; two minutes later there goes another one mention it to Rod he saw it too, that's OK I'm not hallucinating unless it's mass hysteria. We both see lots more; now if there is any truth to the rumour that you can wish on a shooting star you had all better be nice Rod and me from now on because we will be seriously rich very soon and if you develop a nasty rash, you'll never know if it was him or me.
07:00 Gantry sign just before the A303 says M3 West blocked, I hate those gantry signs even more than Global Warming; do we go down the A303 or assume it is old information and carry on. Carry on; ten tense minutes later get onto M3 West just as they are clearing the bollards: Score one for our side! Call Steve to tell him to ignore the gantry sign thinking he is just behind us. He and Pete have only just got on the A34 at Bicester, might as well stop for a Cappuccino and Panini at the services (Ten Quid! That's almost a whole pint of beer in Norway)
07:50 Call Sharky to say we were running late and would pick him up at 08:30 not 08:00. "Wish you'd called ten minutes ago I could have stayed in bed for another half hour but don't feel too guilty at least I'll have time to cook breakfast." Cheeky B*******
09:00 Portland causeway; outside temperature is minus one and there are White Horses on the waves INSIDE the harbour; not a good sign. Check out Chesil Beach before going to wait for Steve at the Aqua Hotel. WOW! Never seen it so flat, definitely do-able. 09:05 Receive call from Steve "Where are we, they are waiting for us" Now I'm not normally a stool pigeon but if anyone wants to calculate their average speed from Bicester to Portland; enough said.
10:00 Parked in the pub car park and all kitted up ready to go. "BU**ER!" someone must have taken my fins out of my car and put them back in the filing cabinet while I wasn't looking. (Doesn't everyone keep their dive kit in a filing cabinet?) Anyway, Sharky calls his mate Jock who lives on Portland and he very graciously finds an old pair of fins in his garage. Better try them on before you go down the beach. BU**ER fin strap broke. Jock gets back in his car and goes to his office to collect his own fins for me. Meanwhile we decide that Steve, Rod and Pete should go in as a threesome and Sharky and I would follow when Jock gets back with the fins. The Plan: Enter the water, swim down to the end of the pebbles, lots of big rocks, depth about 15 metres, turn left and swim along until boredom or Hypothermia become unbearable, turn left again and swim up pebbles to six metres, surface and exit the water about 300 - 500 metres from the entry point. Surface conditions are as perfect as they get for Chesil.
11:00 Jock turns up trumps, Sharky and I go down the beach and get in the water just as Steve, Rod and Pete are about to submerge. Vis: two metres; water temperature seven degrees: Not a great advertisement for UK diving but we've all had worse. Sharky and I stay in contact for almost fifteen minutes, not bad for us. Sharky is navigating as I don't have a compass on this set of reg's; depth 17 metres bottom is sand, what happened to the pebbles? Lost contact with Sharky, swim to where I think I last saw him. BU**ER not there, no buddy, no compass, no vis. No problem; wave action causes ripples in the sand parallel with the shore, turn to where the shore ought to be; swim perpendicular to ripples and I'll hit pebbles. Count fifty fin strokes, depth is still 17 metres and the bottom is still sand. BU**ER I must have turned the wrong way; turn 180 degrees swim perpendicular to the ripples, count seventy fin strokes; you guessed it, depth is still 17 metres and the bottom is still sand. BU**ER. Dive time is now 24 minutes, I have 100 Bar of 32% Nitrox I can stay down here, reverse my course again and swim one hundred fin strokes or I can surface. Not being completely silly I chose to surface, after all honour had been satisfied I'd done my first dive of 2009. Performed a three minute safety stop at 6 metres with no visual reference, the profile of which is a closely guarded secret known only to me and my Vytec. I am the first to surface, bubbles ten metres to my right, too many for Sharky, must be the other group. Shore is 200 metres away, flop on my back surface swim 100 fin strokes, look to see how far I've gone, it still looks 200 metres but then it always does. Flop on my back started to swim another 100 fin strokes when Steve, Rod and Pete surface fifty metres behind me. Exchange OK signal and a gesture that I assumed meant "Where the F*** is your buddy?" Fortunately I was saved the effort of inventing a suitable response as Sharky popped up 300 metres to our left and closer inshore more or less exactly where the plan said we should all be. I arrive at the surf line, take off my fins, swim the last ten metres through the surf to the shore in my own stylish (NOT) breast stroke, I look up from my exertions to find Steve already ashore and de kitted, how did he do that? I manage to stagger above the first high water shelf line and collapse exhausted to de kit. When my heart rate dropped below two hundred I take my kit to the break water in two trips. Steve takes all his kit in one then goes back and helps his buddies, if he carries on like this I'm going to nominate him for DO.
12:00 All in the Cove Public House drinking beer or coffee in front of a really warm fire, exchanging merry quips about what a really interesting dive we thought we had.
17:00 Arrived home, unpacked the car and finally found the energy drinks, bars and spare pants.
As there seemed to be slightly different perceptions as to what we had each endured today I thought I'd publish this log to get my retaliation in first. ? Alan
