St Dunstan - my favourite shallow wreck dive to date.
Here's the report from my blog....
Thoroughly boring day out...
Well you know that we DIR divers only train, we don't do proper dives, and we are miserable buggers who never have any fun... so there's nothing to report from our day out on Wey Chieftain from Weymouth.
Any guesses who is on the boat? 
The first dive was the St Dunstan, a rather uninspiring wreck on paper, in just under 30 meters.
The huge shoals of fish on the wreck really got in the way of our doing s drills, the excellent vis we enjoyed as we swam round it meant there was little chance of practicing our light signals and trying to catch lobsters buggered the trim so frankly we gave up the dive as a bit of a waste of time...
Andy Carroll (And), John Kendall and Bob Cooper had real trouble squaring away their trim and kicks... so gave up and scootered around instead...
OK - I can't keep it up.
What a brilliant day out
Mark Powell joined an otherewise GUE affair on Wey Chieftain III today - our team's last day of frivolity before Tech 1 starts. In addition to the scooter boys above we were also joined by Frank (e-aquanauts) and JustinF.
The first dive, Mark came in with Al, Frase and I, and led us on a pootle round the wreck as he had dived it several times before.
I totally destroyed any reputation I have (which is none) as a wreck diver by missing the boilers (they were apparently the biggest thing on the wreck) the engine room (we swam through it) the rudder - I swam over it - and two congers which were pointed out to me with swimmy hand signals and lights...
I did manage to spot a lobster - although dismayed Fraser by christening it "dinner" - Frank and Justin were busy fighting other crustaceans in an effort to take them home to mum - but today they left empty handed. Well actually that's not strictly true - one edible crab attached itself literally to Frank and had to be shaken off - shame it landed on Justin's manifold
Here's the team - with special guest Mark Powell
A huge shoal of fish greeted us on the exit from one swim through and just as I thought the dive could not get any more cool - And, Bob and JK scootered past - JK doing a barrel roll (he owned up afterwards that he was actually only trying to turn right but it did look great
)
Back on the boat after total overkill on the deco (slight mix up on the gases) Andy started to take the mick about our impending course. "
Tech 1 tomorrow isn't it.... it's hard, that Tech 1" 
And finds it a bit hard going being pulled round the wreck on a scooter - imagine what he'd have been like if he'd had to swim...
Dive 2 was to be the Bomdardon Unit - and the reason why I first booked the boat today. Having dismissed it as the most boring dive ever Frank had told me that it was great fun as a penetration dive - and that was what we had come back to do. Slight problem is that the skipper thought we meant the one in Weymouth bay - not Portland harbour and when we got to it - it was about two meteres high and inpenetrateable. So we had a long flat shape to swim around for a dive - with not much to see - and a large fishing net to one side.
We hung around for a while as we figured that if one of the scooter divers made a mistake we could watch them scoring an own goal in the net... but it wasn't to be. I finally saw a conger in a hole - there was one free swimming too - but I missed that one - what a surprise
Frank then gestured to Justin to tie off and we swam off from the wreck with Justin and Frank laying line for almost the full length of Justin's reel - over a flat sea bed. Pretty good job that there was not much to see as on the way back, you guessed it, I joined the Frank Bruce "mask is an optional extra" school of diving again. A nice touch this time was when I got back to the wreck he hit me with a stream of bubbles in a simulated failure too. Well I suppose it made the dive interesting
Justin and I both bagged off (don't quite know why we sent up two but there you go) the bags were caught by the drifting boat above and pulled up. We let go and sat quite happily at 6 before ascending - the bags had been picked up on the surface. Another good day done- on an excellent boat with a great bunch of people.
Justin and Frank
Dinner and drinks for the whole team at Portland where we got to meet Howard, Jen and Davey Willo who had travelled down for diving tomorrow. Jen gave me her phone number to call her during Tech 1 (I don't mind tears she said
) and And continued with the spirit of the day...
"Tech 1 - it's bloody hard that is"
Thanks Andy - we feel so much better now
My best days diving to date...