With high hopes for a great week 4 cars set off at completely random times in an attempt to get the ferry from Scrabster to Stomness. 650 miles later every body some how managed to arrive at roughly the same time, and few quick phone calls managed to get everybody on the same boat. The trip across promised at fine diving ahead. The infamous Pentland Firth was as flat as a pancake, the sun was shining and the dolphins leaping. The resident expert on Scapa, Megan gloomily looked at the sky and said "this will never last."

The next morning it turns out she was right, the weather returned to normal, wet and misty. Sleepily stuffing breakfast down ourselves we headed down to the boat the MV Adlergrund. We soon discovered the first problem of the trip. Somebody had sunk the dive boat. Upon further investigation it was soon established that the tide was out. The boat was soon loaded and we set out to do the first dive of the trip.

The Cast

Paul Merrick diving on a Buddy Inspiration rebreather with a side slung 3l bail out. Jo Marshall using a 15l with pony, Jo is our resident expert on all things fishy. Steve Plotkin diving twin 12ls with a 3l side slung (was due to be a 7l but it bubbled alarmingly), Steve was also chief bus driver to the pub. Emma Newton diving twin 10s with 3l pony. Kim Butler diving 15 and pony. Megan diving twin 7s was our resident expert as she has been three times before. Darren diving twin 10s was on his honeymoon, however he forgot to bring the wife so is possibly in trouble when he gets home. Emily Hove diving twin 10s and 3l pony was responsible for organizing the whole trip. Finally me the air barge diving twin 12s with 7l side slung who is notionally responsible for this drivel.

The Dresden

The Dresden is a light cruiser sitting on her port side at around 32 meters. Emily and I descended the shot to the bow of the wreck. The promised 15 meters of viz turned out to be around 5 at best. The wreck was dark and gloomy with a profusion of life. We found it hard to determine what was what and which way was up. Not a very impressive start.

F2 and Barge

The F2 is a WW1 German destroyer lying in about 20 meters of water, the barge is a salvage barge that sunk while salvaging the F2. We descended to the barge first of all, as I was diving with Steve we soon started to rummage around in holes. In the main hold of the barge there is a twin barrel anti aircraft gun, deeper in the hold there is an engine and a workshop room complete with vice on the worktop. Leaving the barge we followed the rope towards to stern of the F2. This is very broken and we soon left it to have a rummage around in the seabed. We soon found the intact bow of this ship which was very impressive and my first good look at an intact German wreck after the frankly disappointing dive on the Dresden. Sadly both our primary lights where low on battery so we did not attempt any penetration.

The Kronprinz Wilhelm

This was the largest wreck dived on the trip so far at 26,000 tons and 575 feet long. After a lot of discussion on which way the stern was we dropped down the shot. At about 25 metres the wreck loomed into being. Dropping all the way to the seabed gave a depth of 35 metres. The wreck was surprisingly badly broken when compared to the sketches in the books. Still I suppose that if the sketches were all of piles of junk we would not be up here diving. Swimming along the side with the wreck on our right we passed nothing of note until we came to the large mast heading out on the seabed. Passing this we came to the first of the side guns, again looking nothing like the pictures. Down a bit further we found the second smaller mast. Following this up we came to the armoured crows nest. It was home to some poor cod and a very angry squat lobster. Following the mast back to the main wreck we came across a huge round looking structure. Upon closer investigation this turned out to be the superimposed aft turret. It was huge. After following along it for a few minutes we found one of the 12 inch gun barrels lying half covered in silt. Above this was the back of the aft turret. Following this aft and starting to go under the main deck in attempt to see the barrels, Emily pointed to her computer which some how was showing 20 mins of stops. Having to make a choice between seeing the barrels or going up with Emily I decided to go up with Emily as it would involve far less nagging. We were at 34 meters when we started our ascent we followed the side of the wreck up to 20 metres where we did our first stop. Sitting on top of the hull we sent up both DSMB’s Ascending to first 15 then 12 then 9 then 6 we clipped the buoys on and had a quick drink of Ribena. After 10 mins my computer cleared and Em’s still showed 15 minutes. Bloody Air integrated rubbish I thought. We ascended to first 5 meters then 4 then 3 to clear the stops. The mix in Emily’s pony was going down as fast as the deco on her computer. Finally it cleared so we came up to the surface. Climbing back up the ladder the pony finally died. Shouting to every body that her pony was dead Emily promptly fell of the ladder and came up coughing. Safely back on the boat it quickly transpired that we had the only good dive of the group as nobody else got past the broken bit at the bow. It turns out that the shot was right at the bow. We had swum almost the whole length of the ship. 500 feet!!!

As only Emily and I had a good dive on this wreck the first time, we had another go this time dropping the shot at the stern guns. However we where unable to find the guns and ended up at the side guns. Never mind, at least the some of the others got to see the big guns. Oh and I managed to get my reel tangled and jammed so had to let go, managed to find the buoy on the surface later.