UK cruising UK cruising

Live-aboard diving sounds great in the Red Sea, or touring Pacific islands, but does it have the same appeal when it's around the UK? Gavin Anderson, Mike Clark and Max McLeod all risk green gills, the company of strange divers and the trauma of the notorious dive T-shirt competition as they find out

Plain Jane R
The night before my trip on the Jane R, I'd been on the phone going over last-minute details with the skipper, Gordon Wadsworth.
"What sort of fins have you got?" he'd asked.
"Mares Quattro," I'd told him. Long free-diving fins had entered my mind, but I couldn't see a bunch of wreckies needing them.
"You'll need flexible fins to get up the ladder," he went on. "And you'll need extra weight, as we'll be diving negative. It's a case of jumping in and going straight down, 'cause of the tides and currents."
"I'll be okay, I'm fairly flexible," I said. "Will I need to bring anything else, like a sleeping bag?"
"Aye, you'll need a sleeping bag. There's space in the crew cabin for you. Oh... well there will be, it's not exactly finished yet but you can knock in a few nails when you get down here," came the blunt Yorkshire reply.
Jane R The next evening, after a 5 hour drive south to Scarborough, I found the Jane R firmly stuck in the muddy bottom of the harbour! The harbour bed was a little shallower than Gordon had expected; apparently it had silted up a lot since his last visit.
Eventually high tide came around and we managed to get on board. To my delight I found a spare bunk. Two members of the Servenside BSAC club I was joining for the week had pulled out. One had broken a leg, the other had had second thoughts! I could understand that - in just a few hours I was going to be 25 miles out in the middle of the North Sea, with a bunch of wreckies and a skipper I'd heard referred to as Black Jake!
At more than 70ft, the Jane R is one of the largest British live-aboards, with roomy cabins and loads of deck space. That said, there's some work to do before she becomes a luxury live-aboard!
It was 4am when we pulled out of the harbour and headed eastwards towards our first dive site. Our "shake-down dive", as Gordon described it, would be on a WWI U-boat, the UC-39, which was sunk in 1917 by HMS Thrasher.
"There's been lots of good finds on her, including a sextant and a pair of leather overalls," Gordon told us. "But you best dive without your camera on this one, so you can get yourself used to jumping in and coming back up the ladder."
We dived on the sub around mid-morning. I was impressed by Gordon's organisation: he made several passes over the wreck, ensuring we were bang in the right place, before shouting to deckhand Adam to throw the shot in.
When I went in, I went down like a stone. The extra weight I'd added worked rather too well and I shot past my buddies like a lead balloon!
The visibility on the sub wasn't great, and it was well-broken up and well- salvaged. A couple of the group did bring some bits and pieces up, but they looked like junk to me! The sub's propeller can be found in the Bridlington museum, to the south of Scarborough.
Our next dive was 6 hours later and several miles further to the south-east. The stories of this intact Trinity House Lightship sitting perfectly upright on the bottom in 34m had me raring to go. The Lightship, No 83, had just finished her duty as the Newarp Light vessel on the Outer Banks of the Norfolk coast and was being towed to South Shields for a refit. Quite how, on a perfect August morning in 1967, a Polish trawler managed to run straight into her is a mystery.
Gordon did another great job in targeting the wreck and we landed right on top of the ship's light tower, like commandos on a mission. Perfectly upright, and covered in orange and white plumose anemones, the tower was one of the most magnificent sights I've ever seen in UK waters. The light itself must have disintegrated as the ship sank but other than that it was complete and a marvellous sight.
Leaving the tower, we headed towards the bow past an impressive bridge which was also intact and covered in anemones. It made a perfect backdrop to photograph a huge shoal of bib and pollack, which jostled each other for position. The waters here must be very rich in nutrients, as although the visibility wasn't too bad there was a good deal of plankton and lion's mane jellyfish. After the dive, we were queuing for the vinegar bottle!
The pace of life on a live-aboard after diving is usually very relaxed and the Jane R was no exception. Writing up log-books, getting a tan or simply having a snooze was the order of the day. That was, of course, if we weren't on galley duty! With just Gordon, alias Black Jake, and 17-year-old Adam, as crew, we all took turns with the cooking, washing-up, and night-time watches.
Mucking in together helped break down barriers and we got to know each other well during the week. I have to admit to really liking this group of wreckies, even if I didn't agree with their habit of hammering at the wrecks! I like to photograph wrecks in their splendour - complete with portholes! But the wreckies felt if they didn't bring things up they might be lost forever.
We tied onto another wreck that night. It was the remains of a Polish liner, the Pilsudski, which sank in 1939 after striking a mine. It was under the control of the British Admiralty at the time so the Poles weren't to blame! The Pilsudski is a fraction under 500ft long and the largest known wreck off the Yorkshire coast. A few of our group made a night dive on her for lobsters but I decided to wait and dive her at dawn.
Like the lightship, the wreck rests in around 34m so it's another deep, dark dive. Her bow is the most intact part of the wreck, standing 9m up from the sea bottom, and we landed right beside one of her two enormous anchors.
We made our way over the deck past a huge winch and reached the front of the ship. Here my sleepy eyes focused on the anemone-encrusted hull and slowly I made out the most amazing decorative scroll. It was the fantastic circular motif that Gordon had told us to look out for.
The next morning we dived an even more outstanding wreck, an old Norwegian whaling ship, the Kos.
She was lying intact and upright on the seafloor in 40m and hardly an inch of metal remained visible, such were the concentrations of encrusting marine life. Fish swam everywhere, lobsters and crabs filling just about every hole and crack.
This old whaler sank in 1941, following a collision with another ship between an area known as Off-ground and Silverpit. An area, as Gordon pointed out, which has a wreck every half mile!
That afternoon we headed towards shore, as the weather was closing in and the sea was getting a little choppy. We made for Bridlington, stopping to dive the wreck of the Keynes on the way. The Keynes was a 1706 ton Stevenson Clark collier, sunk by a German bomber in 1940.
Bridlington harbour made a good place to overnight, visit the pub and catch up on some sleep (as we weren't required to do any watches). Unfortunately Dave, one of the least experienced divers in our group, decided to jump ship here. He hadn't taken too well to the Jane R and had spent most of his time throwing up over the side!
The next morning at dawn we were off again. The weather wasn't as bad as we'd expected but neither was it brilliant and it seemed I'd drawn the short straw as it was my turn in the kitchen! We motored steadily all the way back out to the Kos, just in time to dive her at slack water some time after midday. On the way I served porridge for breakfast, and pizza for lunch - low-flying ones which took off every time I opened the oven at the wrong time!
In the afternoon we dived another submarine, the UC-75, which was sunk by HMS Fairy, which also sank as a result of the damage she sustained when ramming the sub. It wasn't that bad a dive, but I think my mind was on how I was going to cook dinner. The boat was beginning to roll more and more and being on it was like being on a fairground ride.
Somehow I managed to serve up gammon steaks cooked in honey, with potatoes and two portions of vegetables. I felt I was taking part in It's a Knock Out, The Generation Game and completing my Duke Of Edinburgh Gold Award all at the same time! It was simply hell, but you know what? I really enjoyed it. I'll definitely be booking another trip out towards the Banks on Jane R. There is just so much I've yet to see.
  • Gavin Anderson was aboard the Jane R in the North Sea. This is a trip for advanced divers who are prepared to muck in and often involves diving on new wrecks. It costs £50 a day, which includes three meals and diving on every slack water. Contact Gordon Wadsworth on 01723 362085; mobile 0777 585 1150. He also operates a yearly trip to Norway.

    Whey-hey Salutay
    The mv Salutay has been operating out of Portpatrick on Scotland's south-west coast for some 10 years now. The diving has mainly been along the rugged north coast of Ireland or the sheltered Belfast Lough through to Ardglass on the east coast if the weather is bad. Alan Wright, the owner of the Salutay, likes to claim that, "any destination around Ireland, the Isle of Man and western Scotland can be dived".
    mv Salutay The first impression of the Salutay was that she was smart and well looked after. Alan's technical diving skills have had their influence on the impressive range of electronic wizardry, all of which has its redundancy: there are twin 90hp Kelvin engines, two colour echo sounders, two radars, two VHF radios and two 7cfm compressors - get the picture? There is also a Haskel O2 booster pump which can mix nitrox and tri-mix. A Navtex weather fax keeps the crew on top of the weather situation and last but not least there is a super-accurate differential GPS which was very useful for diving those isolated wrecks.
    Originally a luxury yacht, this vessel was converted for diving in 1988. She is 60ft long and sleeps 10 - four in the bow, four in the stern and two in the waist of the ship. She has had stabilisers added and, even in rough weather, the sugar only left the table once!
    One problem with the boat was that the deck space at the bow was limited and obstructed by winches and things. It might be perfect for six mixed-gas technical divers, but for a group of 10, kitting up was uncomfortable.
    My group of 10 were divers from Hereford BSAC My group of 10 were divers from Hereford BSAC. They were a very experienced crowd. Not only when it came to diving, but also at clearing a dancefloor with some fancy footwork, and draining a distillery of its whisky on our breaks ashore.
    We relaxed in the large lounge area after each meal, and the banter flew between the upper and lower tables. The hot seat to be avoided was the one beside the toaster. Nothing to do with the heat but the fact that you constantly had to cook and hand out the toast at breakfast time. Phil cleverly managed to rid himself of this task by forgetting the burning bread one morning and filling the lounge with stinking black smoke. He was never asked to do it again!
    I think I put on weight on this trip. The menu was varied and exciting, ranging from quiche to peppered steak. For dessert Freda the cook prepared some fantastic cheesecakes, trifles and gateaux.
    The diving varied in depth and conditions. Mainly it was on broken wrecks, although in Lough Swilly we made a scenic dive on a cliff covered with orange dead men's fingers and yellow and white mating nudibranchs. At the base of the cliff, common shrimp and dragonets were feeding off the clean white sand.
    But everyone's favourites were the wreck dives.
    The Templemore was teeming with 20 or so very friendly conger eels which swam through our legs - quite an experience, even if a little unnerving.
    There were more and larger congers found on the 15,000 ton Laurentic, which was mined 2.5 miles out of Lough Swilly. She was carrying a fortune in gold when she went down, although all but a fraction has been recovered. Ling are found under the plates and large pollack are startled by your torch beam as you pass by the large boilers.
    I got a guided tour of HMS Drake from Alan. I don't know how he knows his way around as it was just a pile of armoured plating and kelp but he found the 6in guns (which blew me away!).
    Remarkably, the diving fell short of expectations for the Hereford branch. A microscopic algal bloom, the only one in living memory, had reduced the viz to under 6m, when usually it is over 12m. The last dive of the trip on the Lochgarry, however, did improve the diving score for everyone. It seemed to be a case of keeping the best for last.
    The Lochgarry hit the rocks on the Mull of Kintyre and sank on the east coast of Rathlin. It is intact, with some superstructure remaining and a shiny white toilet in the bows! The fish life was great on this dive too, a beautiful blue and gold male cuckoo wrasse flirting around us. All too soon, however, the computer was grumbling, the tide was tugging at our fins and it was time to say goodbye to Rathlin until the next time.
    Geoff from the Hereford branch commented on how easy it was to get back on the boat after dives. There were no straining tendons or gripping onto the ladder for dear life as the boat crashed down into the swell. Even in some fairly rough conditions the pick-ups were gentle and controlled. Ken Ward, the skipper, definitely used the electronics in the wheelhouse to their full potential.
    Alan took care of all the diving needs. He put the shotlines over the side and hoisted them back up later. After the dive he was out at the stern of the boat filling cylinders with sweet air and providing nitrox mixes as requested.
    The Salutay is a registered IANTD training facility and Alan offers courses from basic to technical nitrox. I thought about it one day when the weather turned severely nasty and ruled diving out. In the end the allure of Bushmills Distillery and viewing the Giant's Causeway from shore was too great. But Alan would have been happy to teach me, even though I was the only student.
    One of the Hereford divers, another Ken, was a keen rebreather diver who was very grateful for Alan's extensive know-how. "Alan helped to fix a problem with my computer," he told me. "He even spent time on it while we were down at the pub. He took a keen, genuine interest in my needs and did his best to help me out."
    With two showers on the go, everyone was scrubbed up and ready for the pub by the time we reached port. Even Mike, despite taking half an hour each night to do his hair!
    In Port Rush we opted for the Harbour Bar over the Yacht Club, where apparently you run the risk of being beaten up by a pensioner if you sit in the wrong seat.
    The next night we dropped anchor off Culdaff and took the Avon in to the shore. It was a 2 mile hike from there to the pub. Well, some may have hiked, but Ken and I were straggling at the back of the line and were lucky enough to get a lift from a friendly local. We also received a lift home from the owner of the pub. I fell in love with this place!
  • Mike Clark was aboard the mv Salutay, which sails from Portpatrick to the north coast of Ireland, the west coast of Scotland and St Kilda. It costs £65 per day per person, including two dives. Contact Norsemaid Sea Enterprises, 01247 812081, fax 01247 820194, website www.echonet.co.uk/salutay.

    Brekky's on Maureen
    Nestled in the cleavage between Dartmouth and Kingswear, the River Dart curves calmly and casually to the English Channel. From this tranquil Devonian backdrop the 67ft mv Maureen departs to dive sites such as the Scilly Isles, the Channel Islands, the South-west coast and the north coast of France.
    It was to visit this last destination that I had joined the vessel for a diving trip. As with all diving from the UK, however, we were at the fickle beck and call of Mother Nature, who in fact didn't behave too badly, with just a couple of windy days.
    mv Maureen Joining the smart red and blue-liveried mv Maureen alone, I was, of course, interested in my fellow aquanauts: not least because one of them would become my buddy! Most had boarded before me, and I was left with the choice of either a large immediately attractive cabin or a smaller one where one of the bunks had no bedside light switch, and above which, at the time, there seemed to be a colossal din of deck noise. Naturally, I chose the latter. My rationale was that as there were going to be more bunks than divers to fill them, I would take the gamble of subsequent punters opting for a bunk in the larger, more comfortable cabin, thus leaving me the smaller cabin all to myself. My plan worked.
    There was an assortment of ages and accents on board, ranging from the wise old Californian PADI veteran, through the middle-aged BSAC pot-bellied pig - that was me - to the wide-eyed, effervescent SAA youths, whose energies wore out even the most casual observer.
    The first few hours of meeting fellow passengers is always a delight: all smiles, friendly greetings and offers of help. And then, of course, there is that age-old mariner practice of checking out the fellow passengers unlucky enough to arrive after you. Whether such behaviour is to assess their physical looks, or perhaps appraise their potential as divers, is a mystery to me. It's just something divers are compelled to do!
    Skipper Mike Rowley loosed moorings that night, after his guests had had a pleasant evening in the local hostelry, and set off to cross one of the world's busiest shipping channels in total darkness. Some of the company went out on deck to watch, while others opted for the less violent occupation of watching Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
    I overheard one diver talking about previous trips on the mv Maureen to Mike. As I wanted to know more about the boat and its skipper, I approached him to see what information I could gather.
    "Have you known Mike for long?" I enquired.
    "I suppose so," came the laconic reply. "He is my dad, after all!" I tiptoed back to my cabin.
    I slept fitfully that first night. Not being a sailing vessel, our motor boat rolled and wallowed slowly with every wave. When I emerged from my cabin the following morning, I felt as if my 20-year seasickness drought might be coming to an end.
    I watched Cherbourg wobble into view at an agonisingly unhurried pace. The brochure stated that the boat moved at a relaxing speed of 8 knots, but I couldn't help thinking that the brochure writer, in a previous incarnation as an estate agent, might also have described a cardboard box as an ideal palatial under-bridge abode.
    Any misgivings I had about our boat's performance were washed aside at breakfast by copious amounts of orange juice and an avalanche of toast - not to mention a delicious English cooked breakfast. Toast rested for ages in the toaster, the plate of spare sausages was unmolested for ten minutes.
    Someone dared to broach the subject of seasickness at the breakfast table, and a few pasty faces glowered at the culprit.
    "I thought it was brill!" quipped Captain Keen - one of the more youthful, exuberant members of our group. "It was just like a 10 hour roller-coaster ride!"
    "Yes, but you don't have to eat your breakfast on a roller-coaster!" came one dry reply.
    The usual divers' T-shirt competition got off to an ugly start. For those new to the game, this is an unannounced and undiscussed battle to discover who on the boat can claim to have visited the most exotic and expensive dive destination. It is considered vulgar, and in fact makes no strategic sense, to appear on day one, in your pride-of-place apparel proclaiming some obscure PADI dive outfit you once visited in Sierra Leone. In one fell swoop you have probably blown away the opposition in the opening rounds, and have left no room for progression later.
    Ultimately you would merely be running the risk of being labelled "Sierra Leone boy" for the remainder of the trip. No, the opening rounds should consist of, say, a common Stoney Cove shark versus a Fort Bovisand sport diver.
    In a blatant display of arrogance, however, and with complete disregard for protocol, our circus of divers seemed to go straight for the throat. On just day two, there was a fleet of World War One battleships from Scapa Flow, and a brace of 19th century treasure galleons from the Scilly Isles.
    Kitting up on Maureen We buddied up more by who we were standing next to while we kitted up than by silly things like air consumption compatibility, or unity of desired underwater tasks. It became apparent that no one person was going to assume leadership of the group, which is fine for the buddy pairs who have joined the trip, but a little hard on the solo passengers.
    Being a BSAC National Instructor, Mike Rowley obviously felt a little guilty. But as he pointed out, he was being chartered as a skipper, not as a diving marshal. This appears to be a common problem on boats all around the UK. Warm-water live-aboards are generally keener to justify their usually more exorbitant rates, and will often provide some sort of dive marshalling service along the lines of: "All you lot follow me!"
    By day three conversations around the saloon table were getting more animated. The T-shirt competition had moved up a league to pit a Mediterranean ferry wreck against a relatively obscure Red Sea marine species, and the toast now had only a minute or so of peace in the toaster, before it was mercilessly pulled out. Meanwhile the plate of spare sausage and rashers of bacon was being politely offered around the table.
    Our dive sites got better and better, as did the viz, until we were enjoying around 8m. Our technical divers had begun to save their nitrox cylinders for a "special" dive, thus demoting themselves to the ranks of the common air divers. Two of us staged our own crusade against neoprene hoods and gloves. Our efforts went completely unheeded, despite a balmy sea temperature of 16 -17°C.
    The third night we put into another French port, which attracted the usual Gallic gathering of gabbling on-lookers, with not a single smile between them.
    "They still haven't forgiven us for Agincourt!" someone quipped.
    Later, sipping some insipid liquid passed - and I do mean passed - by some brewer probably called Getafix, we soon grasped why the French drink wine and not beer. Still, "Vive la France", as they say, or "Up the French" as we preferred to toast.
    The following day at breakfast the T-shirt competition was overwhelmingly won by an obscure tramp steamer wreck site from the nether regions of Papua New Guinea; divers were practically giving themselves third-degree burns wrenching the toast from the toaster; the plate of spare sausages and bacon was plainly intercepted on its way to a table full of people it never reached; and our group had now got to know each other sufficiently well even to manage the odd difference of opinion.
    Whether Winston Churchill was in fact a homicidal psychopathic traitorous maniac or not remained undecided. What was beyond doubt was that a Force 7 was - even for the SAA kamikaze bandanna-toting few - a little too lumpy for comfortable diving. A democratic vote was taken, and everyone finally agreed with me. We would spend the day in St Vaast La Hougue as tourists.
    While the boys stomached more stony stares from the frigid French, and spent all morning getting drunk, followed by an afternoon sleeping it off, the men hired a car and made a tour of the beaches and museums of the Normandy landings 55 years ago.
    As the last clouds scudded over the horizon the following day, the breakfast table became a lethal battlefield. Penny Rowley's culinary skills had by now honed us all into a ravenous raging rabble.
    Meanwhile, life on deck consisted of frantic minutes of kitting-up time, and more leisurely, smiling, dripping wet minutes of de-kitting time. Outside of those times, life on board was typified by a snoring tolerance competition in the saloon, masquerading as a couple of games of patience on a gently see-sawing table either side of a somnophore sprawled across an entire bench. Alternatively, many divers simply retired to their bunks and read books, listened to music or just slept.
    Each evening we put into a French port, and each port greeted us with the same dour dreariness. Until, that is, we moored up alongside a cafe in Port en Bessin. We nearly fell over ourselves when our waves were answered by other friendly waves, and our smiles were returned. I was about to burst into my best French as I rushed up to our new-found friends, when I was greeted by a distinctly Brummie: "Yow oorl fromm lnggland too, arr yow?" as the English tourists came over for a chat.
    Our jubilation was short-lived. After showing them around the boat and explaining some of the dive kit, we were returned to the more customary French reception after one local warned us of the evil intentions of that group of British lads. Sure enough, in the early hours of the morning, our watchful skipper and Frank the Yank saw them return more furtively. As it happened, we had acted on our tip-off, and none of our kit was any longer on deck, but below in our cabins. "Vive La France!"
    The week's diving was excellent, and naturally, being a green-water dive charter, it was more challenging than those found in warmer climes.
    My abiding memories of this specific trip were the odd ways that divers from all walks of training, let alone life and ages, got on together, relaxed, and drank. The food was superb on board, and though the weather at times pushed us all into the saloon, or below decks, that is what a live-aboard is all about: green or blue water diving, you dive, you de-kit, and you drop into your bunk and wait to dine.
    Roll on the next live-aboard trip!
  • More on diving off Normandy from Max McLeod coming up soon. Max sailed with the mv Maureen out of Dartmouth . It costs £390 per week and there are at least two dives per day. Contact Mike Rowley on 01803 835449 or 0860 571012.

    LIVE-ABOARDS YOU CAN TRY

    Argyll, mv Unity, Green Pastures
    01880 820543
    Isle of Lewis, mv Cuma
    01851 672381
    Lymington, New Dawn Diver
    01483 211103 or 01425 616062
    Mallaig, mv Mary Doune
    01687 462667
    Oban, Dundarg
    01880 820720
    Oban, Gaelic Rose
    01967 421654
    Oban, mv Chalice
    01680 814260
    Oban, mv Kylebhan
    01389 877028
    Orkney, Karin
    01856 874761
    Orkney, mv Sunrise
    01856 874425
    Plymouth, UK National
    01752 863545
    Salcombe, mv Lodesman
    01548 843319
    Stromness, Jean Elaine
    01856 850879
    Stromness, mv Girl Mina
    01856 850227
    Tobermory, mv Amidas
    01688 302048
    Truro, Mentor
    01872 862080
    Weymouth, White Horse
    01305 789492
    Appeared in DIVER - September 1999