...
So been a month since I posted and that was kinda a boring entry, as might well be this one. Two reasons - one, no one reads this anyway, so I don't feel any great urgency to post. Two, and this is by far the bigger of the two, my diving has been very limited the last couple of months. After Scapa and diving the German fleet quickly came June and a number of family commitments as well as a non…
Dive manufacturers seem to have a relentless enthusiasm for making things hard to take apart to service. I assume this is so you'll pay the money to become a proper service tech and to protect the income of those that already are. For regulators and tanks I'm largely on-board. Give me someone who knows what they're doing and I'm happy to pay, but for so many other things that just need removing,…
In addition to the sunken German fleet capital ships like the Coln, Karlsruhe, KronPrinz and so on, there are other wrecks in Scapa Flow with their own stories to tell. One of my favourites is the UB-116. As the name suggests, she's was a WWI era UB class submarine. She was commissioned right at the end of the war in May 1918 launching from the Blohm and Voss yard in Hamburg. On 25 October 1918…
Diving Scapa Flow (Part 2) - SMS Karlsruhe This is a pretty regular 'shake out' dive in Scapa Flow as its shallow and more broken up than some of the bigger ships, despite that, it's still one of my favourites. The shallowness means better light and a longer dive (the cold really is my limiting factor) and as I'm normally pretty navigationally challenged, the layout helps me actually find and…
Diving Scapa (Part1) - getting there Almost any diver who loved wrecks should (if they don't already) consider Scapa Flow as a 'must do' destination. The sucken German Imperial fleet is the main attraction but given the Flows use in both World wars as a deep water anchorage for the British there are plenty of other things too. I've been lucky enough now to visit Scapa Flow on a few occasions but…
Having written back in Jan about the trials of owning a rebreather, I was finally glad about a month ago to get everything back in a fully working and tested condition, all I needed now was to go diving! As with last year, work continues to drive my stress levels to new heights and thus the responsibility for organising this trip largely fell to my lovely girlfriend to sort accommodation and drive…
I had a long standing project kicking about on my hard drive and work is allowing me and my team to burn some Claude code credits, so I decided to run my poor quality html and javascript through it and see if it could add some extra features I'd not gotten around to. The result is The Belemnite Divers Dive Calculator Now I'd say about 85% of this was my original work although the code got cleaned…
As a keen UK wreck diver, the last few days in between work and some BSAC pool training, I’ve been contemplating how badly the government will screw me again, but also coming to the conclusion that divers have screwed themselves. The BSAC article at https://www.bsac.com/news-and-blog/the-protection-of-military-remains-act-1986-and-the-armed/ lays out the basics and my own thoughts are below. It…
At the end of 2025 I was feeling a bit like the year had been pretty ok for diving, I'd done Orkney (bits of Scapa and some outlying islands). I'd done the Thistlegorm in Egypt which was well worth getting up and leaving my other half at 04:30am. I'd done my MOD2 in Malta, which while far from perfect, had really given me an even deeper appreciation of CCR diving and I'd had a few nice dives on…
I love CCR diving, but right now the entire loop hose and DSV is in pieces on my desk (inside, the garage workshop is too cold). I’m replacing the o-rings and the mushroom valves. Putting new o-rings where new o-rings need to be. Probably replacing the mouth piece. I’m also replacing one of the hose pieces as it has a slight knick/dent on it and I'm not risking it. The head unit is also open, I’ve…