Adventures in Diving: Waves, Currents and Live Munitions
Last Saturday Susi and I went for the first diving trip after far too long a pause. The last time I was underwater was the Park Victory trip a month ago, but for Susi the pause was a little big longer. We’ve closing on to our trip to Narvik to check out some WWII hardware, including at least one Junkers airplane. Diving fever has been high for us and we’ll need to regain our sea… fins, so off we went to check out the well known locations around the Helsinki area. Turns out, we got a pretty interesting diving trip.
I checked out the weather forecast in the previous night, which promised a 8 m/s wind in the Helsinki area. I was half expecting for the boat trip to be cancelled, although I hadn’t any idea what kind of waves there would be in the sea. No such call came, so in the morning we dragged ourselves to the pier where the dive boat usually leaves.
The ordinary skipper of the boat was in some kind of a training, so we got an another guy at the helm. We were also in for a pleasant surprise – there were only four divers this time instead of the ten or so we usually have, us two and another couple. This promised some luxury, since there would be no need to try and handle the gear with someone’s elbow in your mouth – the whole dive deck would be ours. The reason for this was that a private group had cancelled their Park Victory trip, so the boat was basically idle for the day – no sense in not taking it out to the sea if someone was willing to go.
Wind and Waves
When we got out to the sea proper, the wind and the waves picked up. I think the waves were peaking at about two meters, which doesn’t sound like that much, but we started really feeling it. When we hit a big wave head on, it splashed right over the cabin and down to the dive deck. All of us were inside the cabin, hanging on to the handles on the ceiling. Our equipment was of course out in the open diving deck. We had to stop the boat for a moment and move them closer to the shelter provided by the cabin, since our diving boxes were starting to gather some water and we’d kinda want to use our dry suits dry.
The first location we reached was Coolaroo wreck. The boat kept swaying hard enough that walking without holding on to something felt a bit risky. 1,5-2 meter waves don’t sound that much, and you can handle them on board pretty well. Now then, imagine that you are lying on the floor with a 40kg backpack, and that you’ll have to climb on to a table. Then imagine the table, the floor and everything going up and down 1,5-2 meters and you can maybe see the problem.
There was a silent moment after the skipper asked if we’ll like to go to the water. Considering the pause in diving I said that I don’t feel absolutely comfortable hopping in there, but I’ll do it if everybody else is going. I guess that was a signal for everybody else to agree that let’s go to an another location, which would be a biosite next to a rocky skerry.
On our way there we passed another wreck and decided to stop there the check if the weather would be better. Surprisingly enough the waves actually were a bit softer in there. The waves were still high, but not scarily so. It took some time to maneuver the boat so that I could snatch the buoy from the waves and we could get the boat moored and start getting out our equipment.
…and just when we had done it, the skipper realized that the waves were still strong enough that the boat had ripped the buoy loose.
Mooring Trouble and Underwater Currents
Finally we got to the skerry we were aiming at and on its lee side the wind and waves were considerably more subdued than on the open sea. Nevertheless it took a lot of trouble to get the boat positioned correctly. It had to be moored on the shore, which required someone to hop off from the boat and fasten a rope on a ring attached to the rocks, and we also needed to set down the anchor, so the boat would be moored on boths sides and wouldn’t keep hitting against the rocks. The guy why jumped ashore slipped on the slimy rocks, but managed to only skin a knee. The worse thing was that he’d forgotten his undersuit, so the clothes he was wearing were supposed to keep him warm while diving – and they got somewhat wet.
Finally, after a lot of maneuvering, we got the boat settled down and finally managed to hit the water. The location is a place where we’ve gone diving a few times, a nice place for beginners and ok for those who want to go a bit deeper too. There’s also a lot of weird stuff to find, like shotgun shells and even intact cartridges, clay targets, boat batteries and so forth. Also, solefish, mudcrawlers and other random biostuff.
After we’d been diving for a moment, I realised that I was really feeling the waves rock us in a depth of 11 meters. Moreover, the rocking wasn’t steady. We’d go some distance in one direction and then just nudge a little bit back. I tried to keep tabs on where we were, right up to the point when we hit an area which makes the compass go a bit wonky. But well, it’s a familiar site, so we’d be able to go straight back to the boat, wouldn’t we?
Munitions and Ear Trouble
We were closing on to 45 minutes, which was our agreed on limit, when I spotted something curious on the sea floor. It looked like a half a meter long thermos bottle, mostly covered with small barnacles, but some detail was visible. Like the grooving on the top end and a certain cartridge like shape on the bottom. Now, I haven’t been hanging around heavy artillery, so I don’t really know how the artillery rounds look like, but I’d imagine it can’t be far from that. Also I remember someone else saying that they’d found something “a bit heftier than shotgun shells” around there, and there is a navy firing zone in the same map page…
We didn’t have a buoy with us and we were running out of gas, so it didn’t leave us any time to pinpoint the round’s location or mark it in any way – it was the time to head back. This is when Susi signalled that her ear was fucked up. I took to trying to navigate back to the boat, so I checked a direction and headed that way, although I had a distinct vibe that something is now wrong. The route I chose would have taken us deeper, but Susi’s ear trouble prevented that, and we didn’t want to swim in the mid water with no visibility to the sea bottom. We decided to surface – which, as it’ll turn out in a moment – was a good decision to make.
When we were doing our three minute safety stop in the depth of five meters, I got nauseous. The waves kept jostling us to-and-fro, we couldn’t see the sea bottom and obviously everything around us kept moving to the pace of the waves, so the only thing in me aware that we were moving was my inner ear. Luckily, before it got unbearable, we surfaced.
…200 meters away from the shore.
The Swim Back & Diving in Circles
So, it turned out the waves had created a current which had pushed us about 200 meters away from the skerry and on to the open sea. Because we were far further away from the shore than I had thought, the direction I had chosen underwater would have missed the skerry and lead us to the shores of Latvia.
Moreover, while we had been under, the waves and the wind had picked up. It took us a moment to see where the skerry and the ship was, and… weird, why is the boat sideways to us?
We didn’t think of the ship that much, but concentrated on swimming to the shore through the waves. It was hard going and the shore didn’t seem to get any closer, although for some reason the ship was. Susi suggested that we should swim underwater in about three meters, where the waves wouldn’d fuck with us that much. We went under, Susi fixed up a compass direction… and started swimming in a circle with a diameter of 6-7 meters or so. This made me a tad bit worried. Susi is kind of good with underwater navigation, and I kind of suck in it, and even I wouldn’t do that kind of a mistake. After a couple of loops we decided to resurface. Turned out her ear trouble threw her sense of direction and balance completely off and all the jostling in three meters didn’t really help it.
We continued swimming, vaguely aware of a smaller boat zapping around us somewhere. We had to stop quite often to regain our bearings, since the visibility amongst the waves was poor and they kept tossing us off the course. When we got within a shouting distance of the dive boat, the skipper shouted that the anchor got loose and he had to detach the ship from the shore. The ship was adrift, because you really couldn’t use the engine that much with divers in the water. Dicing your customers with a propeller is frowned upon in the diving circles. There was a rope in the water we could have used if we had missed the boat, but luckily we were able to intercept it with very little trouble.
When we had clambered on board and got our breath back, we realised that the skerry didn’t really seem to be that much closer than when we started swimming towards it.
The Endgame
The other couple got on board soon after us, having gotten caught in the same current as us. On our way back the waves shook loose one of the bottles, but luckily we managed to catch it and to stop the boat before it took an unannounced solo dive.
It turned out that the guy with the zodiac boat was a tech diver, who had been checking out some dive sites, but because of the weather he hadn’t gone under. He had arrived to meet with our skipper just as the anchor had slipped, which was a stroke of luck. I can only imagine how the skipper would have felt being on a boat that’s hammering itself against the shore, with four divers in the water and no help.
That said, althgouh the trip was a bit interesting in the Chinese sense of the word, it was fun and rewarding. There is a definite joy for me in getting to use my skills and managing to do well even in challenging circumstances. The situation was risky, but everybody acted sensibly and carefully and at least we had a refresher in the lesson of respecting the nature. Oh, a quick disclaimer, just to make sure: I’m in no way criticising the skipper or the dive center here, I don’t see any reason to do that. Quite the contrary, a difficult situation was handled as well as one could have in the circumstances.
So, this diving trip was a nice way to end a one month plus hiatus. It was rewarding once again to see that even though the situation can go a bit antsy, neither of us seem to be prone to panicing. Of course the situation here wasn’t that dangerous, but it felt good flirting with danger a bit.
Also, as I said, it’s good to get a small reminder now and then from the nature concerning who’s the boss in the end.
Utö / Park Victory – Wrecks, Fortifications and Toads
Last weekend I and a number of people from our diving club went for a two day trip to Utö to check out the Park Victory shipwreck. Utö is the southernmost inhabited island in Finland, it has some military presence and a population of 50 or so. The island has been inhabited from the 16th century and in addition to a lighthouse, a radar station and a military watchtower there are some old fortifications in the southern tip of the place.
The main event of the trip was to go diving on Park Victory, a massive steam ship that sank in 1947. It’s the largest wreck in the Finnish national waters and a popular, although challenging dive location weatherwise. Additional challenge is provided by the fact that the ship is in military waters, so you need a permission for every person who dives there.
The history of the Park Victory’s sinking is quite a melancholy one. On the Christmas Eve of 1947 the 9000 ton ship was approaching Finland in a severe snowstorm. The ship’s crew had skipped the Christmas party, because the captain Zepp had arranged a money collection amongst the crew, and the money was to be used to buy socks filled with candy for twenty Finnish children (this was after the war and times were very lean). The children and their parents were expected to board the ship when it docked and join the crew for a Christmas dinner.
The winds were high, so the ship docked to wait for the weather to calm down. The anchors didn’t hold, and quarter to one in the night the ship drifted to underwater rocks. The crew managed to free it using the ship’s engines, but it drifted back on the rocks at 2:15 and got caught on the midship. The structure didn’t hold, so the ship broke in half and sank in twenty minutes. The rescue ships got on location in the morning, when out of the 48 crew members 10 had died.
For more information in Finnish, check out Hylyt.net.
As it happened, on Saturday the wind was too high to even think of diving. The waves were over two meters high and the wind was calming down, but not fast enough. I hadn’t been feeling that well during the morning and the day, so I went to sleep off the achy feelings. After we met at the boat in the late afternoon to decide that an evening dive was out of the question too, I went to explore the island.
All in all Utö is ridiculously idyllic. There are small red and white houses, boathouses all along the waterline, an old lighthouse and so on. In addition to that you have a couple of military structures, which break up the idyll a bit.
I had a fun afternoon jumping from boulder to boulder and photographing stuff. Of course my camera battery started running out right when I found the abandoned fortifications on the southern end of the island, and I didn’t have my flashlight with me. After a dinner and a sauna I simply had to go back properly equipped.
Yes. A stormy dark night on an island with an history of shipwrecks and drowned people, me alone exploring abandoned fortifications with the sea pounding the rocky shore nearby. No, I have never seen a horror movie, why?
On the next morning we got up before six and by the time the sun was rising, we were already on top of Park Victory wreck. The waves were still quite high and the only sensible way to get to the buyoy and the rope leading down to the wreck was to pull ourselves there with an another rope – swimming was too difficult. I almost fucked up and forgot to set my dive computer for nitrox (again). Luckily I caught the error when me and my two dive buddies were only five meters deep, so I could come back up to fix the situation. Unfortunately trying to set the computer with the waves rolling over me and my brain still foggy from too little sleep was too difficult, so I had to drag myself to the stern of the ship and back again, before diving down. How’s that for a morning exercise.
We did three dives around the wreck that day and it was worth every dime. The visibility was 10-15 meters, which was excellent because the sheer size of the ship is one of the attractions of the place. Lying on the sea floor, looking up at the bow of the ship you could only imagine the racket it made when it slid down the rock wall. You can still see the gouges it made.
All in all, an excellent weekend. There was good food, sea air, sauna, geocaching, light urban exploration and obviously diving. Right now that makes up at least 3/4 of my favourite activities in one weekend, so not bad at all!
Wreck Diving in Åland
In the end of the July Susi, Jukka, I and two other divers from Finland went to Åland for a four day wreck diving trip. This coincided with an American car show, which Gunnar – who had been our guide in our Red Sea trip earlier this year – was attending.
Our dive center was Dive Åland, and although the first communications with the staff over the phone and email left a bit unclear vibe, after the four days I can heartily recommend it for everybody. The center is a ten minutes drive from the ferry terminal and it combines a dive shop and a small hostel. In practice there’s a big room with several bunk beds, a smaller private room, a sauna and a fully equipped kitchen. The pier where the boat left for the closer dives was right next to it. Extremely handy and comfortable. Additionally the staff were nice and helpful guys and the briefings & the logistics were top notch.
(See the full Flickr photoset)
In any case, we had four days of wrecks. Baltic sea is a good wreck diving location, because the low salinity of the water keeps the metal parts from corroding so fast, and the wooden parts can survive for centuries. All in all we visited five wrecks:
- Plus is a large 70m long sail ship built in 1885. It sank during a stormy December night a stone’s throw from the shore. The sailors who happened to swim in the right direction survived, the others drowned.
- Caskelot is a sailing boat that sank on 1970. You can find the nylon sails next to it and read the mileage and other information on the instruments.
- Nederland is a Dutch river barge that sank with a full cargo of street bricks in 1917.
- M/S Gävle is a Swedish marine research vessel that sank on 1975. It’s heavily listed, but in a very good condition. A lot of the rigging is still intact, which made this a very interesting diving experience. The visibility was ridiculously good, something like 15 meters, so navigating through the ropes and cables wasn’t that hard. There was an equipment locker someone had recently broken into, in spite of the key still being in a “break the glass in case of emeregency” box next to it. There was a lone gas mask hanging out the door.
- S/S Belliver was the true money shot of the trip. It’s a large steam ship, which was accidentally found by the same crew that found the Soviet submarine S-2. Since the wreck was found only in last winter, it’s still relatively unmolested by stupid fucks who steal stuff from wrecks. On the deck you could find the compass, the ship’s bell, a course corrector, some plates and of course the ornate captain’s toilet. If you went outside the wreck, you could peek in from the holes in the aft and see the bunk beds of the crew. S/S Belliver is about 300 meters away from the Soviet submarine S-2, which we didn’t get to visit, because of something about it being a wartime grave and containing live ammo. Pffsh.
Here’s somebody’s video from the wreck:
And this is someone else in Plus, with tech diving gear and a professional level video equipment.
Sail ship Plus from Slawek Packo on Vimeo.
Learning to Dive
There aren’t that many photos from under the sea. I seemed to have lost my underwater camera fu, so most of the photos came out pretty crappy. On the other hand the plateau effect of diving I’ve been struggling with this spring let go and I suddenly found out I had far better buoyancy control than earlier, plus I spontaneuosly learned how to do a helicopter turn. I guess I need a bit more XP to learn how to back up.
That doesn’t mean there weren’t mistakes, the most irritating being almost locking up my dive computer. The mysterious zoology of diving: an angry Gekko can mess up 48 hours of diving, so one should treat their Gekko right. I had set up the computer on 32% nitrox mix on the previous night, but this time there happened to be a long enough a pause in between the dives for it to reset itself for air. This meant that when I was in the ass end of S/S Belliver, furthest away from the buoy line and right at the bottom of the sea, I noticed the Gekko giving me six minutes to get back up. We started heading back for the buoy line, I got some extra deco minutes from the computer but a slow ascent kept the computer happy.
The other mistake was missing a MOD warning for the gas I was using, but since I had set the alarm on 1.4, it wasn’t that bad – I got maybe down to 1.5 and so I was still meters away from actual danger. For those whom which the previous was complete Hebrew: with enriched air you can go only so deep, depending on the percentage of oxygen in the air mix, because oxygen turns poisonous in certain dephs. MOD is the maximum depth for a given gas mix and the 1.4, 1.5 and 1.6 are partial pressures of oxygen. The higher it goes, the more certain you are to get oxygen toxicity and to start convulsing. 1.6 is considered the maximum safe limit, but those that play safe (like me) use 1.4.
In any case, the trip was really great, even with all the sunburns from falling asleep on the boat in direct sunshine, and the back muscles that are screaming bloody murder after lifting the tanks and kits for four days straight. If you are interested in wreck diving, Åland is well worth a visit.
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