kicked our fins and moved up the side of the hull, dumping excess air from our ABLJ’s. As we reached the top of the side of the hull, the gunwale, we were at a depth of about 10 metres. Moving over the side of the hull onto the deck, there were a few feet of deck space - before a large open cargo hold, which beckoned me inside. Pushing myself forward from the rim of the hatch I moved out into open water in the middle of the hatch opening.
Exhaling to make myself slightly negatively buoyant, I started to drop down into the hold. I could see a uniformly flat covering of silt beneath me - but couldn’t tell if that was simply the bottom of the hold or a layer of silt covering a small cargo. I wanted to find out what if any cargo this vessel had been carrying.
I continued to drop downwards and soon landed on what turned out to be a flat silty but unyielding Hold bottom. The Hold was disappointingly empty - but as I kicked to move forward, first one small Queenie scallop, a clam shaped shell about three inches across, opened and snapped shut propelling itself upwards from the silt into the water in front of me. It continued to open and close as it made off comically like an outsized pair of false teeth. As it did so, a cloud of perhaps ten or twenty Queenies in turn rose up from the silt in a confusion of opening and closing false teeth as they tried to make good their escape.
We swam down the inside of the hull passing from one hold to the next through what would once have been a bulkhead - but which was now largely corroded away. We arrived abruptly at the furthermost end of the next hold. This was a solid wall of steel - and we couldn’t go any further. We kicked our fins and moved up out of the holds and onto the deck. Here I found that other than a small deck winch and a hatch down into some storage spaces, there was very little deck space before the sides of the vessel swept round to a very blunt bow. With no prop at the other end of the hull, and no superstructure at all, it was now clear that this was a small barge we had been diving, some 95 feet long with a beam of approximately 25 feet. Not the greatest of shipwrecks - but still exciting, and another wreck for my logbook.
Back in our boats we chatted about what we had found and promptly christened the unknown barge, the Power Cable barge because of the large armoured power cable that lay right over and across the wreck amidships. To this day this wreck is still known simply as the Power Cable Barge.
The weekend’s diving finished, we made our way back across the Loch to Kyle to retrieve the boats, stack the cars and head off for the long 5-hour drive back to the east coast. The world of wreck diving and the thrill of finding and diving virgin wrecks had been revealed to me. I would no longer be content, shore diving on reefs and rocks. The wrecks themselves were full of interest and challenges - and attracted more sea life than elsewhere. I would now focus on wreck diving – and I vowed after the cold of this weekend to get myself one of the new dry suits. I had just grown out of Scottish wet suit diving.
Circles within Circles
‘BOND-LIKE BOAT CHASE’
Sunday Post, June 15 1986
From initial training in 1982 onwards I had been spending progressively more time out at sea, diving. Other than a panic attack on my first deep boat dive and a few other minor mishaps I had not managed to get myself into any particularly dangerous or life threatening situations. That was about to change on 14 June 1986 in a way that would have been comical - had it not been so deadly serious. Curiously the incident was in no way connected to diving.
Since purchasing my Aberglen Gordon 5 metre inflatable dive boat in 1984 I had learned quickly how to handle it, how to launch and retrieve it, how to drop divers in the right place and how to recover them safely from the water. But with hindsight my sea-craft was still in its infancy and I had had no formal training. None is legally required in the UK although the Royal Yachting Association does offer very good courses.
I bought a pair of second hand wooden water skis and soon found that learning to water ski was hard work, but exhilarating. At first I spent a lot of time floating in the water – being pulled up eventually to last upright for only a second or two, before crashing back down into the water in an explosion of froth and foam.
The theory was simple enough. Float in a sitting position, knees up at chest and get the tips of the skis out of the water. The boat should circle towing the water ski rope, which would gradually close in. Grabbing the rope it could be flicked over a ski until it was in a comfortable central position between the skis. The boat would move forward slowly until the slack was taken up – then a lusty cry of “Hit it!” was the signal for the cox to gun the throttle. The boat would surge through the water, pulling at the skier. The effect of the skis pushing against the oncoming water would start to raise the skier out of the water.
Once I got to this point, I would push down hard with my legs - thrusting upwards and lifting my body into a standing position. More often than not however, this standing position lasted for only a few seconds before I leant back and fell in – or fell forward – or fell to the side - or pulled the rope handle too close to me, losing speed before wiping out in a white explosion of spray. Evolution is a slow process as the saying goes but eventually my style did evolve and I began to master the art of staying upright.
Before long I could stay upright indefinitely and started learning how to turn way out to one side before swinging backwards across the wake of the boat - sometimes getting airborne as I took off from the wake. Emboldened I then tried mono skiing. I found it impossible to get up on just one ski – and even though I tried getting up on both skis before kicking one off, as soon as I was on one ski, the water would inexplicably rise up to engulf me. But at least I had mastered two skis.
On a sunny Saturday morning, the 14 June 1986 I telephoned my friend and former flat mate Derek Sangster, who had expressed an interest in getting out to try learning to water ski. We arranged to meet down at Stonehaven harbour around 12 noon. My wife Claire and Derek’s girlfriend decided to come down to the harbour to do a bit of sun bathing on the sand in the shelter of the harbour wall. As Derek and I launched the boat, Claire went into the Ship Inn and came out with a couple of drinks for the girls.
Once we had my Aberglen launched, as we slowly motored out of the harbour to sea, I ran over the procedure with Derek. I agreed with him that I would drive the boat first to let him have go skiing - and then after that, he could do a bit of driving for me in the boat. There was no one else in the boat with us.
Once we got about half a mile to a mile offshore, I took the boat down off the plane and we slewed to a halt. Derek was in a full wet suit and before long was sitting on the side of the boat pulling on the water skis over his wet suit boots. He slipped into the water and got into the start position.
I motored round him and played out the water ski rope. Once he had grabbed it I took up the slack - until the rope was taught. At his shouted command, I gunned the outboard engine and the boat surged forward. Although he clung on manfully he didn’t get up. Of all the times I had taken first time water skiers out I had never seen anyone learn to get up and going very quickly.
After a few more attempts, he started to get up and then was trying to master the art of staying up. Having found this hard to do myself I realised how tough he would be finding it.
Bravely he persevered and after a while was able to stay up for longer and longer periods. After about 45 minutes of this rather arduous work he signalled that he had had enough. I pulled in the water ski rope and came alongside him. He pulled off the skis and handed them up to me and then pulled himself up over the tube into the boat.
The wind by now had picked up a bit and there
