The Phreatic Zone

Last night Rick and I enjoyed a nice dive on the Kintyre, here’s a few words about it. 

Entry
We wanted to get the dive out of the way this week but sadly that meant diving at low water. To compound the problem, we seem to be on a spring tide at the moment, which meant entry was difficult, especially due to the scooter and Al80 we each had.

However, with a bit of team work, we managed and I waited with all the gear in the water whilst Rick went back for his twinset.  We took 5 minutes to get our gear squared away, then dropped down and started the dive. 

The Dive
On the previous dive we had scootered out at about 45 degrees which put us on the pipe at ~10m; this gave us the impression the pipe was a lot further upstream from our entry point, but last night we kept the depth shallower, and almost immediately hit the pipe at 5m/6m. This helped a lot since there wasn’t anywhere we could tie off a reel.  Scootering down the pipe we were coming off the trigger occasionally to sort buoyancy (doing this on-the-fly needs more work). At 26m we found the jump line to the wreck, and without stopping we turned to the right and followed the line. Visibility was really poor at depth (like 1.5m), so we kept coming off the trigger and gliding for a bit in fear of approaching the wreck too fast! By minute 4 on our timers, we were at the bow at 30m. The scooters were locked and depitched, and we went for a swim. 

The bow is the most interesting area of the wreck with it’s attractive sprit, and ribbed structure (hull plates have fallen away). There’s not a great amount of standing super structure mid-ships, but parts of the engine and deck bollards, winches etc can be identified fairly easily.

Towards the stern the wreck ends except on the port side; we had planned to follow the port side of the hull down to the stern, but this is all but gone, so we turned at a max depth of 46m. Given better visibility we may have been able to see the stern area, but 1.5m really isn’t sufficient. 

We crossed from port to starboard and then came off the wreck for a moment. There was the odd bit of scrap lying around, but mainly squat lobsters! Turned left and the hull wall about mid-ships, then ascended to the deck level.  We slowly made our way back towards the bow crossing from port/starboard and back again taking in things we’d seen during the descent; given the very limited visibility and total lack of ambient light, even a small ship like the Kintyre needs close inspection. Arriving back at the bow I asked Rick to hold whilst I scooted round to the starboard side to take in the effect of him in backdrop to the ribbed bow, it was quite nice. Sadly the flood tide had started running so I immediately felt myself being drawn towards the wreck; it’s surprising how much cover is given by the wreck. Once back with Rick we signalled to ascent and begin deco.With the bow at 30m, we just did 3m/min to 21m for the switch to 50%. As mentioned the current was picking up and trying to keep position beside the pipe wasn’t comfortable during the switch. In hindsight, I think we should have drifted away from the pipe, switched, then scootered back at 21m. The rest of deco was uneventful, and we even had a little scoot during the 9m stop instead of using them to keep position.  Once back on the surface we chilled out for 5 minutes before moving our gear up the rocky shore.  In terms of life on the wreck there were quite a lot of small pollock, a few butter fish, scorpion fish or gurnards, an octopus and even a curious seal! As I said, lots of squat lobbies, and some large edible crabs. The area around the pipe has similar amounts of marine life, and lots of shellfish too. 

Thanks to Rick for a good dive but I wish the visibility could have been better and the current a little less, but it made the dive that little bit more challenging.

A good learning experience all round, and I got to do it after work on a Thursday  Stay tuned for more wreck shore diving madness…  Andy Bryson