When I was a New Diver.......

.......I did most of my diving with my friend Brian, an old hand, who has been diving for ever, and has forgotten more skills than I've learned.

Now Brian is a great collector when he’s diving and regularly brings up stuff from the sea bed, and his house is a treasure trove of cannon balls and the like.

This particular episode occured when we were diving the Wreck Rabat, in Arrecife harbour, Lanzarote. We had been deep for some time, and we had been amazed at how intact the wreck was. Brian had found a huge brass porthole and tried to open it. We were both amazed when it came away in his hands, falling to the seabed! It was a large square rectangle, with really thick glass and was extremely heavy. I could tell from his face that he really wanted this porthole for his collection, but we didn’t have any lifting bags, so I could see him thinking about finding a way to secure it for another visit, when we could raise it.

At this point our air supply was quite low, but if we just left it on the sea bed it would soon be covered in silt. Brian started pointing up to the buoy which marked the wreck, and it dawned on me that he wanted to secure the porthole to it. At his point we were at around 30 meters depth and the buoy was some 60 meters (the length of the vessel) away from us. We both grabbed the porthole and by gently inflating our jackets we managed to manhandle it onto the deck of the ship. Once there, we bounded along the deck, like men on the moon, and got to below the buoy. This was going to be the really tricky bit – controlling our ascent with this massive weight. We got onto the buoy’s rope and with little puffs of air, we made it to within 5 meters of the surface.

At that point, and with less air than I was happy with, we decided to tie the porthole onto the buoy – far enough down that other plunderers wouldn’t see it! This was a really tricky thing to do – we had to control our own buoyancy, whilst being prepared to dump air as soon as we let go, as bursting up to the surface with exploding lungs wasn't the plan! At the same time as thinking about this, we were desperately tying loads of knots in the rope to the porthole, and watching our contents gauges slip into the red. Having put enough knots in the rope, we looked at each other wide eyed, both understanding that we had to get our timing absolutely right. We each held the porthole in our right hands and our air dump valves in the left. I nodded my head once, twice and on the third we dumped all our air and let go of our massive burden. I looked first to make sure I wasn’t ascending and about to have a problem, and as soon as I realised I had remained at five meters I looked forward to make sure the knots had held. I was totally confused to see the rope, and no porthole, and then it dawned on me that the rope was moving……………fast! I looked down to see the porthole heading for the bottom, and then looked up to see to buoy coming straight down at me! I looked at Brian and saw recognition dawn on him and we both swam out of the way just in time for the buoy to come between us. Brian looked at me, removed his regulator and mouthed a single word – one that begins with “F”. The porthole hit the sea bed in a cloud of silt, and the buoy settled right between us! Needless to say, we separated porthole from buoy and headed for the surface, having given up on the whole idea of ever seeing it again. It took me three years and about another 150 dives, but I did find it last year, but that's a story for another post.

With no air left we broke surface to find that we were several hundred meters from the boat, and in the swell, it was unlikely that the boys aboard would see us. Brian said “Nothing else for it, Mike, snorkels in and a long swim.” I inflated my jacket with my last drop of air and got my head down. It was exhausting, but I kept going until I got to the boat, and looked round to see how far behind Brian was. He was nowhere to be seen! I clambered aboard, and urged to guys to get the motor going, keeping one eye on our previous bearing. We motored the distance in no time at all, and half way there I spotted Brian lying calmly in the water floating on his wing. Fuming, I shouted “What happened?”
“No point in both of us swimming all that way” Came the logical reply. As I said at the beginning, a very experienced diver!

Let's have your stories about funny things that happened "When I was a new diver" and the best ones will be published!

Read about diving the Rabat here

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Submitted by Scuba Mike on Sun, 18/01/2009 - 15:13.

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You’ve passed your initial qualifications, you’ve had a few dives and it’s time to buy your first piece of kit! Much as you’d like to go out and splash several thousands dollars, Euros or Pounds on a complete set of dive gear, you can’t afford to, so you’re going to gradually build up your own kit. Where do you start, assuming you already have your log book?

Dive Computer

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Scuba Mike's Red Sea Trip - Part One

Submitted by Scuba Mike on Sun, 18/01/2009 - 16:35.

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I was lucky enough to be invited by a UK dive club last year to join them on a liveaboard trip to The Red Sea. Termed a “wrecker’s tour” we would be diving most of the best known shipwrecks in the northern part of the sea, based on Tornado Marine Fleet's flag vessel Whirlwind.

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Diving - A Wife's Perspective!

Submitted by Julie on Sat, 24/01/2009 - 11:00.

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I don't dive, haven't even tried it, I tell myself I don't think I could cope with the ear pain which I think I would suffer with as when flying or in cold winds and that's enough of an excuse for now. Maybe one day I will be persuaded to stop snorkelling, which I love and head under water to join the boys and fish.

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