Club News Story

A couple of days down south

Friday on the south coast was a little grey with winds blowing a steady 4 and a sea state of moderate, Andy and myself were not hopeful of getting out despite the 4 am start. Fortunately the conditions weren't getting any worse so the skipper made the call to head out on the 90 minute steam to the Warrior. We descended the shot in excellent 10m viz and made our way down to the wreck which sits in 53-57m of water. The Warrior was a private 1000 ton steamboat which boasted all the luxuries of the day, including a swimming pool. It's quite strange to be swimming along a swimming pool when your 55m down ! The wreck has collapsed in sections but the bow still stands proud, you could clearly see that it was built for speed as it was particularly sleek and the boiler was large given the size of the ship. Some portholes were still evident and would have taken more than our 25 minute bottom time to remove anyway so we concentrated on a full tour before heading back towards the surface and thirty odd minutes of deco. An excellent dive and one I'd like to do again. Saturday was calmer and sunnier so we headed out across the bay on a 2 hour steam to dive the Chateau Yquem which was a merchant ship that was sunk by U-40 in 1917. Viz again was excellent and we descended to the wreck at 47m. The wreck sits upright and 6m proud of the seabed with the bow fully intact, the wreckage from the torpedo starts from mid ships back with a large debris trail behind the ship. Large areas of the wreck were covered in netting so we were glad of the clear heads that helium brings, pity some of the losters and crabs caught in it weren't so lucky.The wreck seems to be the local reef so was teaming with fish life including pouting, cod and bass. Another excellent dive and great couple of days diving. Steve Mc