Baltimore U260 and Kowloon Bridge

A number of "Pirates" naaahh, divers!!! visited Baltimore over the weekend to dive with AquaAdventures to dive " The Kowloon Bridge and the U260 Submarine. This was virgin dive terrority for some of the group. Some members of the Club have not had opportunity to dive wrecks as yet.

 

 Colum (thanks) sorted arrangements with the Dive Centre.

Visibility was not as good as was hoped, but, in saying that, considering earlier weather conditions, It was not half bad.

So Club members have been getting dived up handle the 42M dive on the Sub. 13 of us filled the boat and but fortune shined as Oisin joined us for the Dives(Lucky number 13 :-) )

Looking back on the weekend,  overall, all went well, I think, while the U260 Dive was a daunting dive as it pushes into the realm of Decompression diving which is not advocated with normal CFT diving unless qualified to do so. Dives passed off and thanks to Aughinish Dive Club, yet again who kindly lent the use of the Decompression Station to support the dive on the Sub. I note the Station was widely used was our own group and a group of visiting Polish divers. The station @6M also reinforced safety by providing a 12lt light nitrox mix for anyone who needed it. I think there was a bit of fascination of sitting or hanging off the the bar and breathing of the bottle.

Matt and myself spent 28 minutes on the bottom, which penalized us in decompression requirments, 40 minutes for matt and 26minutes for me. We planned for a 25minute dive,  but over ran getting the most out of the wreck. The shot line was at acute angle to the sub and we had to come up off it. In saying that fortunately, conditions were in our favour. I came up to do Pyle stops at 18meters and changed over to my 40% mix to take 8minutes off my decompression schedule. Total dive length was 63minutes,while I was clear at 59minutes.

The dive was good to do, reinforced some lessons I should learn ahead future similar dives in the future.

The Sub has degraded even from last year's visit. I focused on looking into the conning tower, persiscope, time around the propellor and alot of time around the bow section and port side of the sub. Myself and matt were the last to leave.

Certainly, the main talking point over the weekend is how the Kowloon had disintegrated. The wreck is still vast and perhaps a repeat visit will warrant 2 dives on it.  It now ranges from 17M to 35M. I think Eimhear enjoyed the visit. She has made great progress on her diving. 2 Dives off her Club Diver requirments. Great progress!!

Hopefully, the diver group enjoyed the visit. 

The Dive centre was great, good fills, On site support, great help dropping Divers, Deco Station and recovering divers. I'd like to find alternate dive spots out there, maybe another time.