It seems to get shorter, the journey to Scrabster. This was to be our third trip to Scapa Flow in as many years, but this visit was going to be very different from the previous visits, as we were about to embark on a journey, leading all the way to trimix diver. I don’t mind admitting I was apprehensive, curious and scared when Mark suggested we train to become mixed gas divers, although we had been advanced nitrox divers for some years, I still considered the void to large to cross. I gave the idea some thought over the coming week and agreed to accompany Mark on the course which was three weeks away.  We had not been in the water for over a month, so the next two weekends would see the pair of us waddling around inland sites wearing up to four cylinders about our persons in preparation for the course.

We had been to Scabster five months earlier in May with the club, but this time of the year the town was quieter and less appealing. The ferry crossing was uneventful and it was dark when we disembarked which was unusual for me because of the long daylight hours I am accustomed to on my summer visits. We stood on the docks waiting for our container of equipment to be unloaded, the sea was inky black and flat calm. I looked across at our boat we had shared on our last visit to the flow and hoped for weather we had enjoyed in the summer. Our mountain of gear arrived to interrupt these thoughts and we began focus on the task of  transporting  all our equipment to our vessel , the MV Karin, as we left the car on the mainland and the Karin is the farthest point from our gear. Help was on hand in the form of some divers with a van, who kindly assisted us with our gear and we were soon aboard the Karin and introducing ourselves to our shipmates for the week, Bruce and Anth.

We were under the impression there were only the two of us on the course, so we introduced ourselves to Bruce, who looked like a middle aged action man and came from Edinburgh and Anth, who never stopped talking and came from Teeside, as the week went on we all became good friends.

The Sunday saw us kitting up for a couple of shake down dives and John had invited the world and his dog along for the day, we however would be diving in full trimix kit. I found the dives remarkable easy considering the four cylinders I was wearing and as the week went on the whole kitting up process and the diving itself became second nature.

The four of us on the course naturally divided into pairs, which worked out well for Mark and myself, but under the water we dived as a buddy pair less and less, this was not a conscious decision, just a by product of the training as we began to become more self reliant. As the training progressed I realised what the aims of the course were all about and John tailored the training to suit our individual needs and abilities with strong emphasis on safety and redundancy of equipment. We all came to understand the importance of planning and preparation of all aspects of technical diving, which culminated on the final dive - the Strathgary at 60m.

The journey to the Strathgary from Stromness gave us plenty of time to make sure all our kit was correct and to have something to eat and drink. Upon reaching the site the routine was second nature, one of us would enter the water with the deco station and clip it to the line, Mark descended first followed by myself, Bruce, Anth and finally John.  When we reached the bottom of the shot line we were a little surprised to find no wreck.  However in our distant vision we could see the dark gloom of the wreck which was over 20m away but not fully visible.  Mark set off from the shot without reeling off and I knew why, this was not narcosis setting in or bad judgement, the bottom mix 20/30 gave us clear thought and allowed us to decide that the distance to the wreck was very manageable. Not something I would have done on previous air dives!

The strathgary welcomed us with shoals of fish and 15m vis. After a good look around the wreck we returned to our start point and headed back to the shot through judgement alone such was the clarity of thought. Then began the long ascent changing to 50% at 21m with the final stop on the decompression station at 6m which had been disconnected on our return. 

We had learn a lot of invaluable skills from John in a very hands on way, from fine tuning our equipment to mixing gases as well as the doing full trimix course.

At the end of week we looked to forward to our next return to Scapa and the possibility of training/diving again with John aboard the MV Karin and the next time we would see Bruce & Anth.

Dave Metcalf/Mark Knox