ULSAC Newsletter

Our single dive on the South Coast proceeded with military precision. A late start permitted our campers to be on top form (well as much as the rigours of the previous day would permit), and we went through the “Yay – go diving!” bit pretty much on automatic. After so many days, everyone knew everything that needed to be done, and it simply got done with minimal communication. The dog could have marshaled the day, and he would have been applauded as a resounding success, and signed up as an Advanced Diver (again).

Our dive on the South Coast was on section of reef with a sheer wall running from about 20 to 40 metres. We had been advised that the visibility on the South Coast isn’t generally as good as that in other areas, and so it proved to be. The Slack Fairy has warned that a little current might be present, and was again correct. The ultra-macro photographer however found the tiny current and imperceptible surge rather frustrating when trying to focus on subjects the size of a postage stamp with a slow camera. The Weather Fairy put in a tired, but highly competent performance, and Helen’s harmonic frequency of bounciness was not reached on either passage.

Once water was drunk, and Haribo consumed, the party returned to shore and got Scoundrel, who has worked as hard as any of us, out of the water and back onto her trailer for a well-earned rest from all that bobbing up and down. The rest of a languid afternoon was spent kit-washing and boat-fondling.

Once the dog had been walked, an end-of-term banquet in a comfy restaurant in town was the order of the evening and all divers, bar none, indulged in red meat and red wine. The predictable late finish occurred.

What will Saturday bring?

Mark Mumford

So, after the exertions of the skittles the night before, which obviously taxed many non-diving muscles, our divers woke to find a day of heavy rain and strong winds – we had broken our Weather Fairy – boo!

The nice thing about an island though is that there should be somewhere to dive, and so we departed as usual for the harbour with a Westerly Force 5 at our backs hoping to be able to dive on the protected east coast, or perhaps in one of the sheltered bays. Sadly we hadn’t counted on the swell from the Southerly Force 6 overnight, and all the local bays were cauldrons, and we came back home again to consider our options and revisit the situation in a few hours time.

A bit of breakfast saw the Weather Fairy perk up a bit, and it stopped raining soon after. An inspection of the coast just before lunch showed considerably reduced seas, and diving was deemed to be possible. A small handful of divers opted to have a day off to recover from the exertions of the skittles, but the girl superband and the photographic fantasy team were made of sterner stuff, and set off to see if it was possible to dive Les Vingt Clos again, despite it being over on Sark in an unprotected position.

While white horses were absent in open sea, the effect of a Force 3 in the areas of overfalls on the way to Sark was impressive, and we encountered some patches of very large and confused waves which stretched everyone’s boathandling and Klingon skills.

On the site, the breaking cloud, and short periods of sunshine assured us that the Weather Fairy was continuing to recover his full powers. Perhaps skittles act in a similar way to Green Kryptonite. The dive itself was at least as spectacular as the previous day, and everyone felt that the effort to make it there had been fully repaid.

Oddly, despite the state of the seas, Helen was no bouncier in the RIB than on the previous day, and we put this down to some sort of quantum bounciness effect, which we may develop later into a cosmic spring theory.

A late finish saw us back at the house at about 20:00 in time for Michelle to cook another brilliant meal, at which Helen experienced Bangers and Mash for the first time.

While the Weather Fairy and Slack Fairy seem to be back to full form, sadly tomorrow, on our last day, the Tide Fairy is against us, and we are planning a single dive on the mainly unexplored South Coast of the island.

Mark Mumford

After a refreshing day off, we were all looking forward to another excellent day’s diving. We were in for a real treat today! Not only did the day managers permit something of a lie-in (0845 leave, anyone?), the weather and tide fairies ensured glorious conditions.

Sardriere in distant Northern Sark was our first dive, with bouncy Helen demonstrating an alternative method for riding the RHIB on the journey over. During buddy checks, we all paid close attention to the precise location and nature of Michelle’s various cutting implements (“If you NEED to cut me out, my shears are located HERE, and HERE.”). The ‘known pair’ of Helen and Liam were sadly split up for this dive as Liam finally completed his depth progression to 35m with Mark M. Down there, they found rocks completely covered in sunset cup corals, only found in these fair isles. Helen and Junior developed a whole new vocabulary of underwater signals. These include “F**k Kelp!” and “OMFG that’s the biggest starfish I’ve ever seen.”

There was some trepidation prior to our second underwater excursion. Our second site, “Les Vingt Clos”, was perilously close to the Dive Of Terror as experienced on Day 7 (Eric and (Andy)). Chris and Mark M were the first pair in and we braced ourselves for the worst – the two experienced divers nervously explained that they would deploy an SMB if the currents were severe, if they could! This time, however, we paid close attention to the words of the Sage of Guernsey and conditions were perfect. Once down, the underwater geography was simply stunning with a sheer wall from 15-35m festooned with life of all varieties. The girls formed a kind of dive team superband together and found no less than seven lobsters. Mark M and Chris formed a photographic fantasy team and got some remarkable time out of their tanks to stay down as long as possible. Liam and Junior saw a conga at least a hundred feet long in one of the deep cracks in the wall. All in all, this dive was judged to be ‘amazing’.

We met up with the Blue Dolphins in the evening for a relaxing evening of pub grub, quality drinking and exchanging dive stories and photos. Little did we know how competitive skittles can be! Most of ULSAC were unfamiliar with this aggressive pub-based contact sport, but it was very much like Dodgeball whereby one team hurls heavy wooden balls at the opponents. After a number of broken legs, the rules were explained in more detail and boy, did we rack up the points (the team cry being “Average!!!”). It was a close battle with the natives (and clearly highly experienced players) narrowly won. The evening continued into the wee hours, promising many a sorry diver the next morning!

Mark L

We were all looking forward to Day 10 as our fantastic leader had decided it was to be a day of rest. The day began with being chucked out of the pub at midnight, with several people staggering a short distance home up a few narrow roads with shouts of ‘CAR’ every few paces, Ali playing hide-and-seek with Junior (Mark L) and the giggly one (Andy?? – not grumpy after 2 quality dives in one day?!), and Helen giving Liam a piggy-back ride. Apparently he doesn’t weigh much.

Followed by a mass collapse in the lounge, we enjoyed viewing Mumford’s underwater photos. Words can’t describe the jaw-dropping amazingness of these images, just see some of the previous images in the blog and imagine the quality transferred to multi-coloured nudibranchs and basking sharks. Every now and again Andy reminded Michelle of how she uses a Gok Wan ‘S’ signal for a safety stop, and during a kit check saying ‘if you NEED to cut me out of my kit, I have sheers HERE and HERE and a KNIFE here’ and he suggested she draw dotted lines along her kit for cutting purposes.

A few hours later at 8am, I awoke and let Breeze out to inspect the garden. I thought it unlikely that I would have human company for some hours yet, but it’s not necessary when you have the friendliest Aslan dog around who alternates between tap-dancing excitement and collapsing in a heap at your feet, asking to be stroked. He was looking forward to a day when we’d be around to play.

Whilst the others snoozed, I had time to wash down my kit and hang it on trees around the garden, as I’m flying back to London tomorrow. I was a last minute addition to this trip and I was looking forward to a holiday of relaxing, wandering, sunbathing and helping with the cooking. I had intended to be a non-diver given the awkward dates I could attend and since I haven’t dived for a while. The night before my flight Mumford and Ali suggested I think about getting back into diving whilst on the trip. Cue a quick phone call to Diving Officer Jer Bear, and a hunt for appropriate dive kit and clothing, whilst feeling nervous and excited.

I couldn’t have hoped for a warmer welcome from everyone, and for such a gentle re-introduction to diving. The boat was full on the first couple of days, so I chillaxed and took a bus around the beautiful island for the bargain price of £1. I hit the water again with Eric in St Peter Port harbour at the end of the second day. I thought it would be similar to Bovi harbour, but it was quite different with with many shoals of little fish, mini-kelp and empty scallop shells. This was followed by several beautiful scenic dives and a dive on the Cement wreck off Scoundrel with much marine life, buddied up with trip photographers, Mumford and Chris, and 2011 newbies Liam and Junior.

Late morning people started rising and Michelle coordinated the cooking of an immense fry-up breakfast, and some very strong coffee which helped to cure most (not Chris’) hangovers. After the feast it took some effort to persuade people to leave the house, as most were tempted to watch the England v India test cricket highlights on comfy sofas.

We all piled into the MPV and sang to tunes on Island FM, and the often repeated Bruno Mars. We exited the vehicle in slick synchronised formation at the start point of a cliff walk overlooking stunning, almost deserted, sandy bays. We stopped at Petit Bot bay and discussed burying Helen in the sand when she jumped in a hole on the beach. Michelle and Ali donned swimming gear to brave the cool sea. Junior soon joined them but took his time achieveing a full immersion, with much dancing around and exclamations before he manned up. Liam, Helen and Chris clambered up the surrounding cliffs. Andy found a little fishy in a rock pool, Mumford made a beeline for a cup of tea and I completed my Ocean diver panda drill under MK’s tuition (sun bathing). Later Michelle and Ali kindly headed back to pick up the MPV, while the rest of us took time over our milkshakes, ice-creams and cake in the cafe.

Next was a visit to the Occupation of Guernsey museum during the Second World War. The photographs and sad stories of the occupation of Guernsey were moving. Ali’s Nan remembers that the residents just got on with life as normally as they could, whilst coping with food rations, and sometimes almost starvation because of the limits on fishing (not more than 1.5 miles off-shore) that were imposed to stop spying. I have a far better understanding of the meaning of Liberation Day for the people of Guernsey on 9 May 1945.

Time to head for home for tea and biscuits. Helen and Liam whipped up a delicious meal of summer pasta with roasted vegetables, which went smoothly down with a glass or two of red. Time to give Breeze a quick walk, or rather be walked by him as he’s one strong dog. Then a few of us headed into town for drinks at the Cock and Bull pub where there was an open mic night, and some fantastic acts including Ali’s old violin teacher. Hurrah for a late start tomorrow!

Anjali

Today, being the First of August, while “pinches and punches” were omitted by most, Helen declared that this was her homeland’s (Switzerland) National Day. More power to her. Apparently one of the traditional celebrations of Switzerland Day involves throwing apple cores at passing motorists – we didn’t really understand the significance of this, but Helen participated enthusiastically.

The First of August also seeing a new billing month for the phone company, Chris’s 3G mojo was returned to him with an audible sigh of relief from the rest of us. It would appear that he had “spanked his data” just a little too enthusiastically the previous month, and his phone company has sent him to the sin-bin for the rest of July, rendering him 3G blind, so to speak.

Scoundrel had been misbehaving herself yesterday afternoon, and even (Andy)’s familiar touch on the throttles yesterday couldn’t evoke the superlative performance that we had seen in the previous days on the trip. Like Ali’s dog Breeze, a little bit of love and attention paid dividends. It appeared that she had been suffering from a bit of water retention, but after this was lovingly removed by (Andy) from her water-separating fuel filter, she returned to previous top form behaving on the first dive like a startled ferret, and plane-ing in no time flat. She even managed to exceed previous performance by reaching 27 knots on the return from the second dive, (although critics uncharitably suggested this may have been aided by a 6 knot following current).

The team are now operating like a well-oiled machine, although the odd spanner intrudes upon the works from time to time. A case of premature preparation this morning saw the two emergency boxes swept off by a rogue wave on the slipway, requiring a Water-Taxi rescue, and a slight blush to the already very tanned cheeks of one of the more senior diver present.

Our first dive today was a repeat of the Cement Wreck for the “juniors”, Mark M and Jelly. The Weather Fairy (Liam) and the Slack Fairy (Jo Mahy) worked hard this morning, and an enjoyable dive was had by all – many congers were seen, and we returned in time for the main event.

The main event was a dive by the “seniors” on a wreck of the P.S. Brighton, a paddle steamer built in 1857 and sank 30 years later sank in over 40 metres of water after striking the Brayes reef, North of Guernsey. Jelly’s post-dive Haribo box has taken a continuous beating, and the local shop has had to order additional supplies from the mainland.

A third dive nearby on Gabrielle Rock was a two wave affair, resulting in a late finish, and a hasty stop for Mark L to purchase fish and chips to save all that cooking malarkey. Helen bedecked each meal with little Swiss Flags to add a bit of red and white colour. My Fish Cake said “Medium Rare”.

Our respected and revered pack-leader has declared that Day 10 will be a day of rest and recuperation. We are all looking forward to a lie-in and a cooked breakfast. The girls are plotting a day on the beach to include walking and swimming, and the boys are fantasising about a day in a health spa. There will be a toe-nail polish inspection at the end of the day.

Suits will be dried over a whole day and a half, and (Andy) has just admitted to washing his undersuit “spontaneously” (strongly hinting that he hadn’t actually “had an accident” in it this time).

Day 9 ended by us all being thrown out of the local pub at midnight – what will Day 10 bring?

Mark Mumford

Gouliot Caves

After several days of fantastic diving in considerably varying slack water from the sublime to something Alton Towers would be proud of, Ali, our illustrious trip leader, contacted the local dive club again and begged on bended mobile for more information until pity took the better of them. Jo Mahy, social secretary and one of their most experienced divers, was brilliantly helpful and gave a ton of the right stuff including slack times down to the nearest 10 minutes proving our previous calculations and advice from wizened old timers was a tad out. So with new hope, albeit also with slight trepidation, we set off back to the fantastic caves we had clawed ourselves through earlier in the week. The wind had decided to come back and the mirror calm waters we had enjoyed over the last few days had turned a touch bouncy. With orders to drop in at 09:59 we kitted up with an 8 minute countdown from Andy the boaty. A massed deployment of 6 divers entered bang on time and made their way to cave entrance and even with a bit of a current making the entry to the cave a bit of a crawl we were blessed with the most beautiful dive of the holiday so far.

It turns out that Jo is as much of a slack water god as Liam is a weather god. A few minutes after arriving at the part of the cave we were aiming for the current disappeared and we spent the best part of 30 minutes floating motionless among the most beautiful anemones I have ever seen. Words cannot describe the scene adequately, so check out the pictures.

At pretty much the same time as the photographers finished photographing every tentacle, the tide turned and we were gently ushered out of the cave exit passing, according to only one diver, a large conga. Back on the boat the praise to Ali was almost as high as the praise for the cave, but we were not finished with the entertainment. Mark Mumford, never missing an opportunity to teach, got Andy to teach our 3 Sports Divers part of the Advanced Lifesaver (or as Andy saw it part of the ancient Dive Leader course) in rescuing a casualty, Mr Mumford, into a boat. With Liam and Mark on an arm each and Helen in the water bringing up the rear, a 3-2-1 had our casualty successfully back in the water. Attempt two gained a bit more height, but it turns out you can’t recover a casualty into a boat if you’re laughing.

Attempt 3, and the casualty was recovered, albeit with a helpful fin kick from said casualty. It also turns out that an NI teaching you something is usually the NI getting you to help or do something for them. All happy and smiles we set of back home for lunch through the fairly bouncy waters, and then the fog set in. This happens around here apparently but even so, actually sailing through a Steven King novel is slightly unerving and Andy worked his proverbials off getting us safely back to port. Sad that, as he reported only having just found them again having lost them inside on the way over.

Les Banquiers de Fermain

Lunch time has been a case of eating what you can before you melt. Energy levels for going diving again are low, but today, to say thanks, Ali invited Jo to have an afternoon dive with us (and to show us all the good spots!) so the want was marginally higher than before. When you get a Jo you get a ‘mini me’, which is a video camera disguised as a DPV. We thought Mark had a big camera but Jo is in a completely different league! The dive site is a little reef near Anfre and was as good as Jo’s slack predictions. We were treated to an incredible abundance of life, wonderful topography, and again no raging currents. I was with Liam and he’s a photographer’s dream buddy, not getting bored waiting for the ‘perfect’ shot. Patience pays off, and among lots of other things we were treated to seeing a lobster making lunch of a crab, some really intrigued cuckoo wrasse, and the thickest body of a conga I’ve ever seen. Sadly we couldn’t find the head! Pushing all the details to the wire we ascended just on no stop, with just enough air, and with the thought that given more of both we could have happily stayed there!

Chris

Day 7 in Guernsey. Everyone was pretty tired and grumpy (well, especially Andy). Our first dive was a reef named l’Etac, just off Sark. I dived it with Liam, and while it didn’t seem like a great dive at the time, when we surfaced, we realized that we were pretty lucky. Ali declared that the dive “wasn’t worth getting out of bed for”, and Andy surfaced and said that he was “terrified”. We had some issues calculating slack, and the second wave (Eric and Andy) went in to a very strong current. At first, it seemed all right, but then they were “swept off the reef faster than I can remember in my life” (Eric). Liam and I did find some nice kelp blowing in every direction possible, a fair amount of jewel anemones, and a crab or two. We tried to get around a sharp corner on the wall, but couldn’t manage it without getting swept out to sea. That basically sums up the dive. Thank god for jelly babies when we got back on the rib.

Lunch time saw most of us napping, and Mark Mumford trying to motivate us to “kit up” and “get the charts”. Ham sandwiches were consumed, and Liam might even have gone sunglasses shopping. Ali decided she was too tired to dive, and Andy was too traumatized by his first dive to get back in the water. Eric had to dry all his kit before flying back to (amazing) Geneva on Sunday. This meant that only 3 buddy pairs were diving in the afternoon.

We motored off to a site just off the island of Herm named Parfonde. Kitting up, phrases such as “max dive time 8 minutes?” or “should we even go in?” were heard. Liam was almost asleep sitting on the rib. Controlling the weather takes a lot out of you. I went in with Chris, and it was a surprisingly good dive. He may have smashed into the reef a couple of times, but that was probably due to the insane amount of kit he had attached to his BCD. We found some beautiful jewel anemones, a spiny squat lobster, and were followed around by a cuckoo wrasse (stalker). Chris tried to juggle his SMB (tired diver crutch), camera, and torch. It was not very successful. Pictures may follow to counter this statement.

The day ended with Eric’s clothing hung all over the trees in Ali’s garden, Jelly cooking up a 3 (4, maybe even 5?) course meal, and Breeze the dog picking his route for a walk. A glass may or may not have been broken during dinner, and 4 different wines may or may not have been consumed at the same time. MK texted from London to say that she missed corned beef and Encona hot sauce sandwiches. Log books were signed, chicken was dropped onto clean clothes (Ali), and a debate about how to best eat the thai curry (cut noodles into squares?!) coincided with Jelly bringing out roughly 4 different kinds of desserts. There was talk of taking Sunday off, but Ali (big boss) made an executive decision. Tuesday will be our rest/touring Guernsey/writing dissertation/washing smelly thermals day. It happens to be the spring tide. No one wants to have to desperately hold on to kelp and rocks while the current rushed past. Oh wait, we’ve already done that.

Helen

The morning dive took in the Les Dents, which translates into English as “The Teeth”. A difficult site to navigate, but many interesting dives were had. At the most varied part of the area, the multiple gullies each acted as an individual wall covered in dead mens fingers and anenomes. One diver pair spent most of the dives exploring the boulders around the area rather than the reef itself, but very much enjoyed looking through the nooks and crannies. Some of the sports divers were on a quest for depth progression – this was achieved by reaching the base of the wall and then digging furiously.

Our second dive was to search for a mysterious beast lying northeast-southwest, appearing non-exisitent on the echo-sounder that we had deployed to probe its juicy goodness. We trusted in the local GPS co-ordinates and the inbuilt abilites of the Kim in the shot-dropping department. We swam down another frighteningly horizontal shot line and found a hull and boiler nobody expected to find, sadly lacking in congers – no doubt they have the sense not to mess around in these currents. Turns out the Forland was upside down and had smashed itself to pieces on the rock. “Funny that, given the current,” to quote Ali. However, a large section of the bow is still intact upturned forever flashing its keel to the surface, inviting divers to penetrate it. The more rusty of our number managed to pick out the finer details of this wreck and differentiate between a kelp-covered rock and a kelp-covered bit of metal. A very satisfying exploratory dive where we all felt like true pioneers. The moral of the story, given the absurd and unpredictable currents, is that you cannot trust the charts, the tides or the crusty old men with their wizzened advice.

To conclude a successful day’s survival, Jelly found herself set back into diving with a short dive in the harbour with Captain Spunky. She’s still with us.

Andy

Today was the day of two scenics and oh what quality scenics they were.The great thing about the currents in the Channel Islands is that they bring with them clear water. In the morning we dived a reef called Anfre. Dropping onto the reef to start our drift it was pleasant but wouldn’t be described as brilliant. However, afer 5 minutes or so the current took us down to between 30 and 35m to a sheer wall. It was absolutely covered with jewel and bead anemones, pink fan corals, dead men’s fingers and many more forms of coral and sponge life that I have yet to have the opportunity to look up and identify. We spent most of our drift dive staring absolutely gobsmacked at the beauty of this wall. Given it is less than a mile outside of St Peter Port Harbour it is with great jealousy that we dive this site knowing the ‘locals’ have it on their doorstep!

In the afternoon we headed over to the southern tip of Herm Island to dive the Lower Heads reef. Yet again this scenic was absolutely stunning. Pink fan corals shared the dive site with various species of anemones, flat fish, lobsters and for the first time this trip, squat lobsters! An absolutely quality day was completed by a suitably quality meal. Mark Mumford prepared for us a three course meal with wine to accompany each course – yes ULSACers that’s just how we roll, this is probably the best fed trip EVER!! By the time we reached the dessert wine it was difficult to tell where the diving ended and the eating/drinking began but it was definitely agreed that the day was a huge success!

Ali

The weather continues to be kind to us here in Guernsey, with another scorchio day leaving red faces. However, we are having a great time, and remain hydrated in body and mind. The day was expertly managed by Chris and the whole string of events linked together like an elegant dance, with the protagonists being slick and silk, driving and loading and kitting and dekitting like so many ninjas. This may be an overexaggeration. It’s not far from the truth though.

The launch site is great by the way. No one seems to have mentioned this yet. Other than the presence of an ice-cream shop and a shallow pool where people can play around with their remote-controlled sail boats, it has a view over a lovely harbour with frequent boat traffic of all sizes. So beautiful is this area of wonder that a local pass-time involves driving one’s car up to the harbourside and sitting inside it for hours while watching the shipping toing and froing in the harbour. There is a line of parking places reserved for this very purpose, and they are usually full. Each to their own.

For myself, the purpose of this day’s diving was to finally do my 40m depth progression. This was to be done on the Captain Nico, a 6680 ton cargo ship built in Belgium (no relation) in 1948. For comparison, the Aeolian Sky was 10000 ton, but was only 8m longer than the Nico. In 1973, she was caught in gale-force weather while heading to Guernsey, losing one man and the ship’s precious cargo of Ammonium Sulfate (old, salty sea-dogs still recall the great Ammonium Sulfate Shortage of ’74). Meanwhile, two waves were sent out to dive some of the region’s wonderful scenic pinnacles.

Wave 1 aimed to dive the Anfre, a rocky pinnacle apparently rich in sea-life. The current was unsuitable however, as it was at plan B, so plan C was St Martin’s point, a site described by some of the divers as “not fantastic” , “really boring” and “interesting geography”. It seems there wasn’t much there. That’s diving I guess.

That certainly wasn’t diving for myself and the others heading for the Captain Niko. I was only down there for about 15 minutes bottom time, but it was awesome. The main thing I remember was a collosal hull curving up on either side of us, with assorted wreckage at the bottom tragically out of my depth experience. We swam to a huge structure which could have been a house or something, and which Andy pointed to before engaging in a complex hand-opera in an attempt to communicate to me what it was. I didn’t get it, but discovered later that Andy’s opinion was that it was the (spare) anchor. It was [expletive deleted] enormous. Just awesome. Only dive of the day, but fully worth it. Other sound-bites obtained about this wreck from those that dived it: “sweet” (Ali), “awesome”(Michelle), “[expletive deleted] amazing” (Chris), “it was huge, it was bigger than anything I have ever seen in my entire life” (Andy).

For those who had not joined us, there was the opportunity for a second dive, which they did on a couple of rock pinnacles right next to the harbour. It was described by the same punters as above as “exploratory” “good explorsation” and “not particularly interesting”. However, a black-faced blenny may (or may not) have been seen.

After all this excitement, we returned to the harbour to get dry and changed, with the local aged harbour-watchers in their cars undisturbed by our intrusion and mentally giving us marks out of 10 as we stripped out of our wetsuits and presented them with unique views of our under-garments.

Most excitingly, at the end of the day we were blessed with the arrival of a new member of the expedition as Anjali (the “smut catalyst”) arrived and immediately set about helping make the food extra-delicious and the conversation extra-colourful. After a sumptuous dinner of fajitas (where Andy ordered Helen to get her hands off his juicy goodness), we were invited by the extremely friendly and helpful local dive club to share a drink with them at their local watering-hole. We left with new acquaintances and the maps and details of a series of dives sketched out on a handful of beer-mats. Ready for some more diving then.

Eric