The City of Waterford

I've just returned from a fantastic day's diving out of Brighton. The timing was not too pleasant, with ropes off at 7.30am however. To make that bearable we went down there the night before and camped nearby, only having to get up at 6am rather than 4.30am. When we arrived at Brighton marina it was already fairly busy with a group of Polish people getting ready to go on a fishing expedition and another dive boat already loading up.

The slack on our first dive, the City of Waterford, was at 8.30am and it was about an hour away so I had a pleasant snooze after a cup of tea and sorting out my kit. I was woken at 10 past eight and urged to get my dry suit on. This I duly did and we entered the water right on time. The skipper had put the shot on the stern of the wreck. The highest point at about 26m. The sandy bottom was at about 35m but we were keen to get a decent amount of time on the wreck, and not do any deco (we were both diving single 12s). We descended fairly quickly down the shot and found ourselves greeted by a massive shoal of dab that almost obscured the wreck itself - stunning. I had already studied the wreck drawings in the Dive magazine guide (link) and new that most of the interesting stuff was near the bows so we headed slowly that way taking in the sights as we went.

Almost every surface seemed to be covered with tompot blennies of various sizes. I had previously been told that some of them like to be strokes (at least they don't scarper when you reach out to them). I tried this on several of them with the usual result of them running for cover. Then I came across one which didn't! It just sat there and let me stroke its back! Great fun!.

We soon reached what is apparently the most appealing feature of the wreck, the toilet. Isn't it strange how amusing toilets at depth are? We proceeded onwards past the cranes and reached the foreword hold. This was very easy to penetrate and contained an enormous lobster. We came back out of the hold and carried on, finding a hatch and steps going down into the black. I started to descend into the unknown when an enormous elongate fish swam across my torch beam. I stopped. Then another one did the same thing. I was very narked at this point (my buddy and I had already been talking to fish - "ooh, aren't you a pretty fish... hello etc."). And I got the fear. They were probably congers, but not knowing how big the area was down there, and whether I'd be able to turn around easily, I decided to back out. Instead, we went up and over the side catching great views of a large conger in a pipe as we did so. The sides of the bows are very intact, and covered with soft coral like dead man's fingers. It was fantastic to hover there looking down on the anchors (still in their hawsers) amongst the coral and large shoals of dab. We spent about 5 minutes looking in the holes in the side of the bows and observing our diving compadres. Time was drawing close to ascend so we headed back onto the deck and spent some time looking at the fittings and the two massive cranes. Then with 3 minutes till deco I decided it was time to blob off. My buddy just popped into deco but we ascended slowly and by the time we were at 6m the computer had changed it's mind. The 3-minute safety stop passed quickly with a game of scissors paper stone and then we were back on the boat via the lift with a cup of tea and some biscuits waiting for me. This was a pleasure as my previous 20 or so dives had been on ribs: no lift, no tea! All in all, this was an amazing dive - a huge profusion of life, several large congers, lobsters, coral and an interesting and fairly intact wreck. It ranks as one of the best I've done in the UK.