Buy one get one free - Fell Divers BSAC 1858

So our intrepid explorer Chris Hackers has demonstrated how to bargain hunt his diving. Thursday evening he completed a rib dive on the Chandris and then followed by a shore dive on Sunday morning at St Mary’s Lighthouse. Here is his Dive blogs on these 2 dives.

Thursday Evening Chandris Rib Dive

We the brave and the bold, the fast and the furious, the entripid explorers that are the dippy divers of felldivers decided to go out exploring one Thursday night. I don’t know if you normally would name a rhib but it said Yamaha 114 on the outboard motor which is coincidental to one of our partner clubs. Anyway we took our borrowed vessel out on to the Tyne in search of adventure to look for the ancient gallon with all of the sunken treasure at South Shields Ocean pleasure beach.

We arrived at the dual shipwreck site of Eugena Chandress and Oslo Fjord only to find that the dreaded Pirate Roberts aka Alan Lopez had beaten us there. His ship the Spellbinder was already in position over the site and his crew already at plunder. So we decided to make-peace-not war and pulled up alongside him to ask if we could use his shot line. In the end we didn’t use it and positioned the boat west of the wreck site to drop in.

After getting ready we hopped in the water in our pairs. The descent seemed rather gloomy as the report from Pathfinder was 5m of visibility but it felt quite dark. On arrival at the bottom we took a moment to compose ourselves then progressed around the wreckage. The wreckage is spread over a large area of sandy of seabed, some of it is enormous making this a very curious dive. There was a surprising amount of light at 15m depth and the viz did clear up. We saw some sea life as the day was ending and the sea nightshift was just coming out. There were Lobsters in the open although we could get one big enough, velvet swimming crabs and quite good sized edible crabs. Pausing a moment to take in the view of Nudibranch Sea Slugs which although tiny enjoyable to watch. We came across some munitions that was Chandress cargo, and pebbles that had collected in the corners of the hull fragments. With the ship boilers coming in view in the dimming light the boat engine could be heard passing overhead which gave the dive a quite alien feeling. Towards the end we seen a lot of dead mens fingers, urchins, some shrimp and squat lobtsers darting about.

We left the final frontier with a sense of awe as we popped up the dsmb’s. A large red jelly fish seemed to be following us on the way up but I think it was chasing the three minnow pilot fish hiding above it. We were reunited with our ride at the surface and helped back aboard but our trusty first mate. We felt elated from the dive and on the return passed a celebratory party boat and exchanged greetings.

We put out trusty hire vessel to bed at a secret location guarded by Godzilla himself. Although we didn’t find any treasure I think the real treasure here is in the setting and uniqueness of the scene of wreckage formation from the two ships resting spot. Many thanks to Dave T for the use of the boat and Dave M for cox.

& Dive No 2.

Sunday Morning St Mary’s Lighthouse

We the intrepid Felldivers, well two of us decided on a shore dive mission, the mysterious skunked island of St Mary’s Lighthouse. With adventure under the high sea in mind we set to task of checking the conditions which were perfect. The sea was flat calm with a tiny breeze and it was a gorgeous sunny day. We eagerly donned our sub aqua survival gear and with slight adjustments were underway.

We walked across the causeway flooded tide on the way in as the plan was to return at highwater for easiest effort. It is quite a march in full kit to the entry point. There was a nice little spot southeast of the lighthouse that was used to access the water. We entered the water from a seated position to done our fins, hoods, masks, gloves and gently floated in. We swam a little way before descending the massive drop of 2m. There is a nice canyon which shows in the video that we followed tracking the reef wall on the left. We then turned left out of the canyon into open sea.

At was at this point we noticed a small grey seal investigating us, it kept distance but every so often was coming into view. There was other unusual north sea inhabitants; shore, edible and velvet swimming crabs which were spawning, tiny sqaut lobsters, large adult lobbys, prawns, sea urchins, wrasse and lion fish. We pushed on further and came across an active lobster pot with several quarry already in. There was also a discarded lobster pot containing a trapped fish which Graham was able to free.

On the return the drift was more noticeable and we positioned ourselves to swim slightly at angles. We had reached a max depth of 13m which is not bad for inshore diving. The viz was excellent at around 5m in the deeper water and it was noticeably much better in the shallows. There was quite a lot of kelp followed by smooth yellow bear rocks which become exposed at low tide. A thoroughly enjoyable dive we headed for our exit by a short surface swim, followed by a little aerial drone footage to finish the morning off.