Tuesday 23rd August

Got up at 5am to pack my bags – said my final good byes to Anwen (got a kiss and a hug this time) and Nette dropped me off at Keith’s house at the allotted away time of 07:30 only for us to find that Keith had
fibbed and our minibus to the airport wasn’t arriving until 08:00 so I said my goodbye to my heavily pregnant wife who was convinced that she was going to give birth the moment I took off from Heathrow.

The journey to the airport was uneventful apart from a bit of amazing timing to see Noe, Daf and Matt in the mini bus behind us on the queue into the departures bit. Once checked in, we headed straight for the
departure lounge, were after a brief spot of Gin buying, we all found each other in O’Neil’s bar – amazing that – of all the places we could have gone – we all went straight for the pub. Most started on the OJ –
but with Luke upping the stakes by starting on Guinness – one by one we were drawn to the call of the beer.

The flight to Oslo went without hitch – a very nice 737 – and we had managed to blag the Extra Leg Room seats – lovely. It all started to go a bit wrong though when we landed – even though we were just meeting our
connecting flights here, we had to collect our bags, clear customs and then re-check them onto the next flight to Kirkenes. All a bit of a rush in 45 mins. Near impossible if you have a very helpful Ian Davison pulling other people’s bags off the conveyor belt and then promptly walking off and leaving them unattended in the baggage collection hall…..

With much faffing around Noe finally found her bag and arrived with Daf and a very sheepish looking Ian on the plane – we were a few mins late for takeoff but no one felt brave enough to take the piss, as we have
all seen Noe when she is pissed off and I for one didn’t fancy spending the next flight bleeding from somewhere.

We had also collected Jeremy from Oslo, as he had extended his holiday a bit and gone and done some touristy stuff for a few days. It was good to have met up with him as now there was another person to take the piss out of Ian on the 2 hour flight up North. We started our descent and I looked up to see that the seatbelt light had come on – only then did I notice the ‘call’ button was a picture of a man balancing a glass on the back of his hand. Why on earth anyone would want a button that called a ‘Drunk Ian’ I would never know but I’m sure there is a time and a place.
Maybe if you were a teenage girl looking for an old man to come and fondle your boobs – then this would be the perfect button for you.

We started going though the clouds, and going, and going and then landed in the same cloud… Oh it’s raining then. Thank goodness I didn’t have a rain coat handy. After a quick dash from the plane to the arrivals shed we all got on a bus and drove through the rain to our hotel – ‘The Artic Rica’ for the evening with Keith laughing his head off as he couldn’t believe he had convinced 11 people to part with hard cash to come all the way up to the end of the Earth to come diving in the rain. He calmed our nerves by insisting it was OK because ‘it’s only rain – at least there isn’t any wind…..’

After check-in we met in the bar of the hotel and after much faffing, Daf, Noe Jerry and I all dived into the Hotel restaurant for dinner and the others headed out in the rain to eat at a Muslim pizza restaurant
that didn’t serve beer – but did have ham on the menu. Most came straight back to bed but Gerard, Luke and Ricky decided it would be a good thing to test the local night life.

Wednesday 24th August 2005

‘What’s that noise?’ I wonder to myself in my half awake / half asleep state. ‘Wind – and lots of it – bugger’

After a leisurely breakfast, Keith decided it was time to make a big effort to find Gordon and the lovely Jane R. He tried mobile numbers he had but to no avail. Gordon then rung Keith whilst he was having a poo –
does he ignore the call and risk not getting hold of Gordon again or does he just bite the bullet and take the call whilst mid poo… It was to risky not to take the call so Keith got directions to the boat and we checked out of the hotel and walked the 400m to where the boat was hidden. On getting to the boat I found Sloan & Beavis in the cabin I had bagzied some 18 months previously – made note to self to put them both
on reserve list when organising post lottery win trip to bikini atoll. At least I didn’t have the smelly toilet cabin…. as Ricky and Luke were still in bed in the hotel.

Gordon and Andy popped up from below and gave us a very warm welcome and got us very excited with stories of what we might get to dive over the following 10 days. Gordon looked less excited when we informed him that the kit we had already loaded on the boat was just our dry stuff and we would have to take the boat over to the other side of Kirkenes to pick up the rest of the kit. Keith got on the phone to the shipping agents and looked a bit worried when the first person he spoke to was convinced that there was no diving kit waiting for collection – but after speaking to some other people, found some one who knew all about it and if we waited a couple of hours we could go and collect it. Ricky and Luke turned up and Gordon looked happy again as his onboard IT Gimp was here at last.

We pootled round to the shipping agents and once along side, Keith scurried off to find the kit, returning moments later with a big beaming smile and being followed by a fork lift truck carrying the first of the 6 pallets of dive kit we had. Gordon on the other hand looked less than impressed.

With the kit stowed away it was time for a spot of lunch, followed by much kit faffing and a slow drift toward the first dive site. We were diving the Peter Bonholm a German WWII cargo ship carrying amongst other things, thousands of horse shoes for the German army’s horses. I was diving with Alex – but had a lot of kit faff still to do so had to rush to kit up on time – this was a big mistake as I hit the water in not the best frame of mind and even though I enjoyed the dive I wasn’t particularly at one with the sea. The shot tied to the stern in 36m of water it was listed over at about 30 deg to port. The bow was at 48m just past the bridge structure. There was a lot to see on the wreck but the viz was only 2-3m on the wreck it then got up to about 10m on the shot – only to go back down to about 1m in the last 6m before we surfaced. There was a big halocline at about 8m but the water was sill shimmery in places down at 40m. Whilst we were on the dive I could hear
VERY LOUD engine noises – I knew this must have been coming from a very big boat going flat out – this lasted for an age but eventually moved away so I headed for the shotline. The ascent was a bit of a fist as the shot was about 20m too long and we had some divers that were positively buoyant and others that were negative. This lead to various divers getting tangled in line and all sorts of things – nightmare. Back on the
boat Jeremy revealed he had surfaced 10m away from a big factory fishing ship that was dragging its anchor and running past him at full tilt. Not only did Jeremy have a close call but we all would have been taken out if the ship had dragged it’s anchor across the wreck site.

It seamed that most people had had a mare of a dive – Tessa claiming it was her worst yet. We were all glad that our first shake down dive was over and we could concentrate on having fun rather than kit faff.

We pulled into a fish factory pier and had dinner and then chugged back to Kirkenes for the night. We found a nice but quiet bar in what looked like part of an office block with a lovely view over the fjord and a big
screen that projected a film of a log fire?? – still it managed to keep up with Norway prices – 2 Beers, 1 Bacardi Breezer, 1 small bottle of Diet Coke - £20.00. At about midnight I called it a night and left Gerard, Ricky, Gordon and Andy as they disappeared into the next pub.

Thursday 25th August 2005

Had usual porridge breakfast and headed back to yesterdays dive site – I was to dive with Luke – but he had electronics problems and binned it so I switched buddies and nabbed Ricky.

On the descent the viz seemed worse than the day before – I was right. We had a loose plan to check out the stern but when we got there the viz was appalling. We had a quick rummage around the rudder then headed for the deck. After a quick swim out to the bridge we turned round and headed back to the shot. This was a magnificent wreck but it was a shame about the viz. On surfacing, Gordon had a quick dip – and decided it was time to move on North rather than East as we had planned to do than quick spin back to port for water we started out travels North.

We travelled for 7 hours, mostly with captain Daf at the helm and arrived late in the night at Vardø. This was a very chilled out journey past some lovely scenery, slow rolling swell made for a fantastic setting for a fantastic sunset. With a quick pint of Diet Coke in the local hostelry I was ready for bed. Gordon asked for volunteers to help cast off at 6am as we had more chugging to do and Keith and Jeremy jumped at the chance.

Friday 26th August 2005

I woke about 6:30 to the gentle rock of the sea – fantastic – rolled over and had another hours sleep. Got up to see all the line on the boat had been tidied up – some of it into lovely cheese shapes. Keith informed me that it had been Gerard tiding up before he went to bed at 6:30… oh dear. Apparently there had been a bit of a session the previous night and Gerard, Ricky, Luke and Gordon had been up until 6 drinking. With that Gordon popped his head out of his little hole and announced – “Ricky’s not diving today and I think I’ve met my match in Gerard – God that boy comes out with some stories”. With that he decided he wasn’t going to be beaten so made Gerard a cup of tea and took it to him in bed – a first on the Jane R I’m sure. He came back into the saloon and announced “That Gerard is a Fooking Twat, he’s lying in bed pretending to be sober” – oh god I fear there may be more drinking contests later in the trip.

First stop of the day was to an unusual wreck – unusual because it was out of the sea. We donned Drysuits and snorkelling kit and swam to the shore where we made like seals and crawled our way up the slipperiest
rocks I have ever seen. A seal turned up to see what all the bother was but obviously didn’t fancy any of us so soon disappeared. Gordon wanted a group shot of us on the wreck with the Jane R in the background so
with much faff and much standing on very thin metal floors we managed to keep him happy. With a quick look around the rest of the wreck, including some way up the shore, it was time to head back to the boat
and this is where the fun really started. With people falling all over the place I decided I would be a proper seal and kitted up at the top of the rocks then slid quite quickly on my bum all the way down to the sea.

We arrived at the next dive site just after lunch, the wreck of the Martha was a Cargo Ship built in 1886 by William Grays in Hartlepool. It sunk in 1909 after first running aground in the white sea and where temporary repairs were made. It then made it as far as Kongsfjord but, whilst waiting for a tow by the famous tow boat Parat (see Ferndale and Parat dive 2 years ago) it sank at anchor. Lying in 45m of water, she is upright with the deck about 40m. I was diving with Keith today and as we left the surface I got quite excited as I could see that we were in for some fantastic viz. With a bit of a slow decent due to ear issues we arrived on the bow to see divers below us in the forward hold. Keith and I chose to stay at deck level as there was so much to see. On the Bridge, the steering wheel and compass were still in place – there were port holes everywhere and even little brass deck fittings. The masts were still upright and still had big wooden booms in place. There was so much to see you didn’t know where to look next.

After the dive we pulled in at Kongsfjord and I thought it would be nice to have a little nap – I set my alarm to wake me up in an hour and when it went off I promptly tuned it of and went straight back to sleep.
I was woken by the call for dinner and rushed upstairs, then rushed my dinner then had to rush to kit up as we were late for the evening dive back on the Martha. We had 2 Norwegian divers join us for this next dive so we had better make a good impression. That is when things started to go wrong. Alex dropped his stage cylinder on to it’s pillar valve and sheared off his first stage, I then kitted up – then looked at my weight belt on the floor – so de-kitted and then re-kitted again – all the time Gordon reminding us we had minutes of daylight left. Again I was rushed into the water (I think Gordon gets a kick out of rushing us) started my descent and then realised I hadn’t turned my ADV on since my last dive – not a problem though and started to descend driving the unit manually – the problem came when I got to about 10m and tried to put some air in my drysuit and instead let in cold sea water. Keith then nicely connected my drysuit feed and we carried on the dive. As we passed the first hold I could see on of the Norwegian divers had a King Crab in his hands and it was a monster. He put it on the deck so we could have a good look but it soon got bored of us and went back into it’s hold. It had got quite dark down there and the light show from everyone’s torch was very cool. We swam the whole length and back of the ship and bumped into Andy who had placed torches all around the bridge trying to get an arty photo of the ships wheel. All too soon we were back at the bow and it was time to start the ascend, I could see lights and strobes disappearing off into the distance up the shot line, it was like something out of close encounters. The ascent was uneventful until Ian thought he would blow
some ‘smoke rings’ and took his mouthpiece out with out closing it off – he then reacted quickly as he saw a vast amount of sea water heading for his electronics. We also picked up Jeremy on the shot line – I thought
he had binned his dive through torch failure but he was swimming around on his own with Gordon’s big beasty torch that looked like a spotlight off the Jane R. He had had a lovely little dive on his own but had an
interesting descent when he realised his dil cylinder was turned off.

With the weather picking up we headed for Berlevåg for the evening.
Keith had hit the gin on the evening journey and with a top off at the pub, managed to get quite tipsy.

Saturday 27th August

Tempest Day

Woke to the boat rolling all over the place – and dive kit rolling all over the deck. Went up on deck and helped with the stashing of the kit and tying down of various bits and bobs. The seas were quite lumpy and
Gordon sent us all below to our bunks as it was too dangerous to be up on deck. Oh well – Reading and sleep it is then…..

Had a bit of a breather and stopped for lunch at Flintodden, Ian had been suffering from sea sickness and went for a lie down on the quayside – with in minutes he was fast asleep. All too soon it was time to get on
the go again – back out into the tempestuous sea.

We arrived at Honningsvåg and checked over the boat and kit for signs of damage, luckily we had got away very lightly. Again as it was Saturday night, we found ourselves in another pub – and we were in luck – it was
Disco Night!!!. I lasted until 12 o’clock and I headed for bed. I was woken at 4am by Gerard’s Tour of the Jane R.
“Oh it’s very large down here” called the Norwegian. – I think she was referring to the cabin space………..

Sunday 28th August 2005

Woke up and saw we were already underway it was still quite lumpy but Gordon reassured me it would settle down in an hour or two. Thirty minutes later, it was flat calm.

Today we were to dive the Northern Cape – just a bimble but it would be the most north any of us had dived before (and would for some time I think). I jumped in with Matt – we were so close to the cliff face it
was quite dark as most of the sun had been blocked out by the Cape. We had a good rummage around and found a massive swim through. There was a lot of life on this dive and just after I bagged off we were surrounded by a huge shoal of what I think were Pollock. Keith & Tess had had their most northerly underwater snog and back on the boat we all had a list of ‘Most Northerly’ things – Most Northerly Poo, Most Northerly Cup of Tea etc etc…Then Ian, Alex and I were dangling over the northern side of the boat trying to see who could be the most northerly…….

Lunch was spent at Gyestvear a small little port that was probably the quietest place I have ever visited. After lunch we went for a bit of a walk about and found a wild reindeer stag wandering around someone’s garden. Gordon kindly informed us it was a male because ‘it had big hairy nuts on it’

We then spent the rest of the day cursing though the fjords having a very very chilled and sunny Sunday. We arrived very late at night in Hammerfest with Captain Ryan at the Helm. As it was so late most of us headed for bed but again the usual suspects struck out into the wilderness in the name of Anglo-Norwegian relations.

Monday 29th August 2005

The plan was to leave Hammerfest and dive a wreck a few miles outside the harbour in 55m – an unknown wreck so we were all quite excited. As we were kitting up Harbour control called Gordon up and told him that we were not allowed to dive the wreck because they suspected there may be unexploded mines in the area!! Oh well with that plan scuppered Gordon suggested a wall dive on an island about a mile further on. There was a lot of fresh water at the surface and this had reduced the viz to a couple of meters but once below this we got about 20m viz. Most people dived to about the 50m’ish mark and had a lovely time.

We, yet again, had many miles to cover to get to our next site so we cracked on down south going through some of the most picturesque scenery I had ever seen. Dotted along the fjord were little houses that seemed
so isolated I wondered how the owners even got to them. With more and more snow appearing on the hillsides Daf mentioned he had never had a snowball fight in August before – all we needed to do is convince Ian or Gerard it was a mad enough thing to do and send them scurrying up the hill to get us buckets of snow – unfortunately they were too sober to fall for it, maybe tomorrow…….

‘I can see it, I can see it’ called Keith. He was of course referring to the wreck of the Murmansk – a Russian Cruiser built in 1953 and broke loose whilst being towed to the breakers. It now sits in 10m of water which means most of her upper superstructure is clear of the water. As we got closer the cameras came out and I’m sure we have over 100 pictures of this wreck between us. With carefully placement of fenders we pulled up along side and kitted up for what must be the shallowest dive on a wreck of this type anywhere in the world.

I was on Ricky duty again but he got too excited and couldn’t wait for me – (I knew he was on the dive because I saw peoples photos later). I finished my pre-breathe and jumped in. I swam to the stern and took some shots of the big guns then had a little rummage around, looking into some of the open holes. I then swam up the starboard side of the ship bumping into Tess and Ian on the way. All along the sea bed there were large bits of superstructure that were home to lots of marine life. As the foredeck approached I could see Gerard swimming towards me, he had been filming the front guns but a few waves were washing over the deck so as we passed each other I was staring to get pushed about in the surge. With a few more photos and a little route around my dive was all to quickly over and I climbed back aboard the Jane R. After dekitting we all had a clamber over the ‘dry’ part of the wreck, again lots more photos plus Gordon had a chance to go shopping for some spares.

The 5 min journey into Soelvuhamn had us all in a frenzy – not because of the post dive excitement but because of the smell of the roast beef dinner Andy had prepared for us. Gordon had checked the weather and it wasn’t looking good. It was suggested that we make a run for it that evening. Even though we all
wanted to do a couple more dives on the Murmansk, there was a risk that a big gale would mean that we were stuck in harbour for a couple of days so we prepped the kit for a rough crossing (just in case) and headed out into the night.

First on Watch were Ricky and myself from 10:30 – 00:00 and we had the open sea bit. We decided to split the driving and I went first. As it was the ‘open sea’ bit of the journey I was having to steer by compass
alone as we could not yet make out the lights from the edge of the next fjord – something I hadn’t done for years. Lots of fun but with only 1 other ship that came within 2 miles from us, it was quite a quiet run.
We then handed over to Jeremy and Luke, Gerard and Matt took over from then and then Gerard gave a 10 min official hand over to Keith and Tess. Noe and Daf were up next but as they were climbing out of bed we came along side for the night at Lauksundskuret a very sheltered spot between 2 islands.