Scapa Flow, 2006
The Pre Trip Brief (7 days to go)
Pre trip dive brief (in the pub) - my closing point “Whatever you do make sure you don’t miss the ferry, it’s the last sailing of the day and if you miss it you’re stuffed for the evening”
We’re on Our Way
We're on our way, somewhere in Scotland, the excitement of the trip had filled the car for the last few hours and in true bloke fashion we were now talking about cars. As both occupants were Toyota drivers we discussed how street cred’ could easily be forgotten when balanced against the legendary reliability of our chosen vehicles (or maybe that is a sign of age). Either way almost in unison all eyes were instantly drawn to the temp’ gauge which was now showing no reading. Oh well at least the car was still running ok, isn’t it……. then in the seemingly endless period of 5 minutes the fuel gauge went to zero, rev’ counter stopped and the speed went to nil. Car still running so what the hell, oh dear now its not running and we're where???????
5 hours later and several hundred pounds lighter were off again (these diving trip really are relaxing). So 2 hours to get from Glasgow to Scrabster to catch the ferry, a dodgy alternator on the car and a spare piece of wire just in case we blow a fuse again,,,,, foot down (56mph) were off. Needless to say when we rolled into Scrabster at 10.45pm the ferry had long gone, but all is not lost as we’ve managed to book a room and breakfast in the sumptuous surroundings of the Hairy Sporran Hotel. Well at least we had a good excuse for missing the ferry which is more than can be said for some others???
A good nights sleep to be had at the Hairy Sporran Hotel
Are We Nearly There Yet Dad?
Next morning fuelled by our early breakfast fry up we catch the 9am ferry. 90 minutes latter and we’ re off the ferry in Stromness, loaded the dive gear onto the Karin and were off into the Flow with smiles and laughter by 10.30am, obviously the rest of the boat and skipper had been very concerned about our plight and had to comfort themselves in the pub the night before.
**** taking over it was time to get into some diving.
Day 1 sees the sun shining; our plan for the first dive is to do the German Cruiser, SMS Koln. 11.50 am and were all in the water heading down the shot line to the wreck below. Underwater viz is around 10m and as were the only boat out in the Flow we got the wreck to ourselves. We land on the topside of the hull around 26m and drop over the side for a look around the bridge area and superstructure. Moving forward the conical shape of the armoured control centre with its distinctive T-shaped range finder comes into view, I gesture to my buddy (Bill) the internationally known hand signal for range finder and he nods in realisation of what we are swimming around (he did, honest).
33m on the forward gun of the Brummer
Forward of the range finder the 5.9 inch guns are gone, a quick look around the voids where they once sat and then were moving forward to the bow. At this point were joined by a little friend, as to my amazement a bird swims by. Quick sanity check – 33m, am I seeing things – no he just swam past me again. Unfortunately my hand signals for birds swimming underwater are mainly made up of pointing and flapping motions, which gets a rather bewildered look from Bill. All too soon the NST is running down, but one of the advantages of the cruiser wrecks is that you can move up to shallower areas of the wreck and gain a bit more time while still having a rummage around the wreck. We move back up to the topside of the hull and can see large shoals of fish cruising around the wreck. Back to the shot line and its time to start our ascent back to the surface.
On board and its time to chill out and do some sun bathing in between dives on the Karin’s sun deck, we had forgotten to bring the factor 50, so had to use our down jackets for sun protection!
Dive 2, SMS Karlsruhe. This wreck is the shallowest of the German cruisers and the most heavily salvaged. However the shape of the bow and stern are relatively intact and easily recognisable. The bit in between stands about 4m off the bottom and provides a good area to rummage around.
3 pm and we’re stepping of the Karin and heading over to the two cans bobbing about on the surface. Strange two cans on the line? The rest of the group disappear down one of the cans while Bill and I reach the other, a quick glance at the skipper – no waving arms to suggest anything wrong, so both cans must be on the wreck – so down the line we go. At 25m we get to the seabed, viz is a good 10m and its pretty light as well. The only problem is, were looking at a lobster pot with no sign of a 5,000 tonne German cruiser anywhere and no lobsters in the pot either. Well we can’t be too far off so time to start a search. Thirty minutes of searching and we’ve managed to find another 4 lobster pots (all very much lobsterless), a bit of chain, but no German cruiser, hmm… the post dive conversation will be interesting. Back on the boat everyone’s discussing the dive on the Karlsruhe, “How was your dive Grey, we didn’t see you down there,” – “Well it went like this……….”
Over the next few days the weather turned from sunny to rainy, back to sunny, overcast, sunny and then a snow blizzard with usually a mixture of all these in one day. Despite the changeable weather we were out diving everyday and further dives were made on the,
- SMS Dresden (5,500 tn cruiser) F2 (ww2 corvette)
- SMS Brummer (5,500 tn cruiser) F2 (still a ww2 corvette)
- SMS Kronprinz Wilhelm (25,000 tn battleship) Tabarka (blockship)
Overall the sea temperatures were a cool 7 degrees, but easily bearable in a non-leaky drysuit. Viz on the German wrecks was a respectable 10m and even better on the blockships. The weather was generally ok and given the sheltered nature of Scapa Flow the sea conditions were fine all weekend.
So, Scapa Flow for a long weekend, crazy idea or cunning plan, well I suppose you got to make your own mind up on that one, but were booked in again for next year.
Some of the 2006 Trip Photies
Domestic bliss - can I bring a baby next time
Billy the Bull caught venting his drysuit. Unfortunately we didn’t have a lifting bag big enough to bring
after a particularly viscous bout of wind up the prop & screw – however we had been training to use the inflatable diver method, (as demonstrated below)
We tried to lift the whole of the F2 with our inflatable diver, but just couldn’t manage it – after this the prop & screw were a doddle