Dacorum Sub Aqua Club

Going Down - July 2000 - Page 2 of 4

The night of Thursday 25th May saw a convoy of 6 DS-AC divers heading off for Mull. Driving through the night and stopping only for petrol, they finally ended up having breakfast in a Little Chef just outside Oban at 7am on Friday morning. Two and a half hours later, feeling slightly rejuvenated, they were diving the Falls of Lora. 

Everyone agreed that this was "a stonking drift drive"; in fact, the boys thought it was so stonking that they did it again. They entered the water near the rocks, got down to around 12 metres, and then literally got sucked into the void to around 30 metres. Ten minutes later they were spat out at the other end. Apart from 'stonking', this dive was also described as "definitely not a buddy dive" - after about 10 seconds you were on your own!

In the afternoon the gang dived The Breda, which lay at about 20 metres. Despite being a little silty, this was quite a good dive. At the bottom of one of the shot lines there was a plaque in memory of 2 divers who failed to surface a couple of years ago.

At the end of the first day's diving the convoy made its way back to Oban to find the Bed and Breakfast and a decent pub. It was here that Les earned himself the nickname Oliver, or Ollie for short. Everyone was a little tired after being in the saddle (so to speak) for over 36 hours, so it was decided that an early night was in order. Half way up the stairs Les suddenly did a 180 degree turn and said "it's no good, I haven't had enough, I need some more". 

On Saturday the boys made their way over to Mull. The house they had rented for the week was excellent. It had a double garage for storing kit and a big drive for the boat. There was plenty of room for 6 people and it offered wonderful views over the harbour and across the Sound of Mull. There was also a very large fridge, but as they had hauled their own freezer up with them, this was used mainly for storing refreshments (including some of the non-alcoholic variety).

Ollie provided the catering. He and his wife had prepared and frozen a different meal for every night of the trip - all the guys had to do was open the box and heat up the contents. There was always enough food, so no one - not even Ollie - needed to ask for more. After their first delicious evening meal they went off to explore Tobermory, and discovered the Mishnish pub. 

The forecast for Sunday was good so they headed for a wreck called The Tapti, which lay off the island of Coll, northwest of Mull. A brilliant dive, around 20 metres in depth with visibility of 15-20 metres. After lunch on Coll they headed back to Tobermory for a wall dive.

Monday morning saw them on The Hispania in the Sound of Mull, a brilliant wreck dive that deserved to be dived twice. Depth was about 22 metres and the visibility was excellent. The captain of the Hispania went down with his ship when it sank in 1959; he was last seen saluting from the bridge despite efforts from his crew to persuade him to jump. He refused to be rescued.

Upon surfacing from his second dive on The Hispania, and noticing a niggling pain in his right shoulder, Tony refused to accept even the remotest possibility that he might have a bend and, somewhat like the captain of the Hispania, refused to be rescued. Over the evening meal Tony attempted to re-hydrate on a bottle of wine and one of Ollie's feasts, having successfully convinced himself and everyone else that he had nothing more than a wrenched shoulder. However, after breakfast the next morning he decided to seek treatment for his wrenched shoulder at the nearest decompression chamber, and the coastguard was called.

Richard and Tony were collected by the Oban lifeguard and ferried to Dunstaffnage decompression chamber. The rest of the gang spent their time thinking of new nicknames for their buddies. They concluded that henceforth Tony should be known as Type 2 Tony or T2, and that his buddy Richard should be referred to as the Reaper.

Tony spent the next 7 hours in the pot suffering Richard's taunts and being forced to inspect profiles from his previous dives through the porthole. His suffering continued when the staff decided to provide him with some entertainment, in the form of Terry Wogan on Radio 2.

When T2's torture was finally over, he was despatched to Oban hospital for close observation. Doctor Wilson who had done an excellent job of treating him the previous day, brought T2 some useful printouts on decompression sickness. He also made it clear that he believed computers were the works of Satan and that they were best off left at the bottom of the sea. After giving Tony the all clear and discharging him from hospital, Doctor Wilson handed him a red card - no diving for one month. 

By Wednesday afternoon T2 and The Reaper were safely back on Mull with the others, who had whiled away their time by diving Fingals Cave.

Thursday morning and almost all the gang dived The Rondo whilst T2 was confined to boat handling duties. This was once an excellent wreck to dive, but time had taken its toll; those who dived it, described it as average.

Unfortunately that's about all the Mull Mole has to offer. There were a few miscellaneous funnies in an earlier draft copy of 'Going Down', but these have been mysteriously edited out. I'm not suggesting that the guest editor has been bought off, but I can reveal that several large Gin and Tonics were purchased for her one evening down the pub.

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Date last updated : 04/04/02