Macca, Alan, Antony, Paul and I met at Stoney Cove (Leicester) at around 8:30am on Sunday 6th July, the car park was already heaving and we got the last few spaces. Macca and Alan buddied up for their day of dives using twinset air supplies, whilst Paul, Anthony and I carried out our dives as a trio using single cylinder setup’s, Antony was elected to be our dive leader. My dive day was for fun and also to shakedown some new kit before a forthcoming trip to the Farne Islands.
After kitting up by the waterside, Alan and Paul went off on their first dive of the day, and we set off shortly after. We submerged and headed off for the Stanegarth, it was murky down there with about 3 metres of visibility, and as we progressed from the 7M deep ledge to the deeper 22M depth and further out from shore we eventually came across the anchor chain of our target. Turning right and following the chain brought us to the starboard side of the old Trawler. Rising up and over the side of the ship the wheelhouse was right in front of us, we moved around this looking inside and then made our way around the port side to peer in through a door hatch. We then went to the rear deck and inspected the winch gear and the hold. Time to go elsewhere, so we finned over the top of the wheelhouse and stopped to have a look at a large Perch who was happy to linger a foot or two away from our peering faces for a while before getting bored and moving off from us. Off we went to the Wessex helicopter appearing at the nose of the near skeletal remains of the old aircraft, we traversed up and over the cockpit and along its side and then over the tail fin section. Other people were busy below us having a good look at the tail section so we moved off and headed back to shore, a slow ascent and a cup of coffee, shortcake and a biscuit (cheers Antony).
An hour and a bit later, we set off again for dive 2. This time our first destination was the armoured personnel carrier, this had an old laptop sat on top of it, strangely it was not working so we could not check our email, disgruntled by this finding we then left to go to the submerged white van which was exactly where my brother said he had parked it. Moving along we came to the tug boat Defiant, but with air getting low we did not hang around too long here. We then ascended to the 7M ledge and did some mask clearing practice at the platform and then Paul added another kilo of weight to my kit (thanks Paul) as part of the new kit fine adjustments. Now approaching reserve air levels it was time to surface and end the days diving.
A good dive day had by our troupe, water visibility was not brilliant but it was busy at Stoney so nothing unexpected, and the predicted day of rain held off – Bonus!
Surface Marker Mark.