Diving with White Horse Charters, skipper Jon Ayling

Keith's trip report, with amendments from James.

Friday

Got to Weymouth Friday afternoon far too early. The expected traffic jams did not materialise.

Got on board the White Horse. Was told we were leaving at 5am Saturday morning (why did we need to get there by 19:30 Fri, Chris?) so we went for beer and food. No floor show on in the curry house this time.

Saturday

5am. Left Weymouth for France. No action necessary (or possible) on our part.

15:00 arrive at the Strathalbyn, just out of Cherbourg Harbour. It was their equivalent of the Luis. Had to shout at a bunch of yotties desperate to get to port and tried to run down James and Ali (to their credit they did react VERY quickly once shouted at).

Dinner in Cherbourg. V. nice.

Sunday

Did another dive out of Cherbourg, on the Ussa. Another ok wreck - again very Luis-esque.

Drove East around Barfleur lighthouse to do a "drift" dive. Should have been suspicious when Jon (skipper) said we'd get about 0.5 knot current. He exaggerated. There was no current. There was no visibility either. And no point as well. Aborted dive after 7 minutes.

Into St Vaast for late afternoon - wandered round (that doesn't take long in St Vaast) and ended up in a bar (what a surprise!). Met up with the Mother-in-Law for a drink and then went for dinner (again v. nice).

Monday

Boat left St Vaast at 3 am. We were up at 4 and Floss and I hit the water at 5, to supposedly dive the Turquoise. This was very close to being a night dive! Good viz going down the shot line although very black. Hit the sea bed at 43m only to find no wreck. As we were obviously in a scour I carried the shot up current to the top of the scour. Still no wreck. Floss stayed at shot while I swam further, still found no wreck. Aborted dive in bad mood.

Mood was made even worse after we hurried our ascent in order to be able to tell the others there was no wreck, only to find that Jon had re-shotted it as soon as we'd hit the water having realised it was off the wreck. Half the other divers were already going down that shot (and had a good dive).

pm: dived the LST 523. Managed to hit the wreck this time, but the viz was absolutely pants. Spent 30 minutes closely examining the wreck, bit by bit. I was quite surprised that Floss didn't abort the dive early, but we didn't bother to go into the huge stops we had planned.

I was highly amused when Alex lifted the skipper's shot weight off the wreck (as instructed) and the line got tangled in wreckage and hence could not be recovered. Jon was fuming and barely contained his anger. Maybe if he hadn't had twice as much line out as he needed then it wouldn't have happened. Or maybe if he hadn't stuck us on wrecks with zero viz someone could have seen it and cleared it. I couldn't help contrasting Jon's reaction to this compared to his very philosophical "oh well, shit happens" after he screwed up mine and Floss' dive earlier in the day.

Everyone surfaced covered in Krill. Yuk.

Back to St. Vaast. More beer. Had tea (v. nice).

Tuesday

Left St Vaast at 4am. We were up at about 5, and dived at 5.45 on the Juno. Jon tangled a fishing buoy around his boat and I had to clear it before the dive. Good dive. Good viz. Even some fish to look at for those weird fish-lovers. Best dive of the weekend (although the others ranged from OK to appalling so that's not saying much :o)

Steam back to Weymouth. Jon refused to refill our cylinders, unless we paid him £2 a go. Curiously, no-one took him up on that offer.

Summary

A excellent weekend away. Everyone (I think) had a great time. Thank you very much to Chris and Tess (again).

The Boat...

Barely space on deck for twinsets; with sidemounts you were struggling big time. Badly laid out so that people had to kit up separate from their buddies - at least two pairs swapped buddies at the last moment due to not knowing when their buddies were ready. The ladder is bad (a sideways one that you fall off as the boat rolls). Below decks is extremely cramped and stuffy. You sleep in coffins rather than bunks. Food is cheap and cheerful - fine for a day boat, but not for a liveaboard.

The skipper... (now here's the REAL problem)

He is tedious in the extreme. He lectures constantly about just about anything. It gets extremely boring - he is continually trying to prove how great he is and how stupid all his customers are. He'll shout at you if you help, but shouts less if you don't so you soon learn to not help.

I did compare him to Gordon once or twice over the weekend. Gordon too will let you know exactly what he thinks of you. The difference is that
Gordon is pleasant about it - I would never mind Gordon telling me what to do. There really is no comparison between them - Gordon knows where his money comes from and is nice to his customers; Jon looks on his customers as an inconvenience that get in the way of the smooth running of his boat.

I will not be diving off White Horse again.

Johnny-Boy's Addendum

Saturday - evening - Dinner in Cherbourg

However much we tried to persuade him of his silly ways, James decided a meal of raw mince shaped like an upturned bowl topped with a raw egg would be great sustenance for a dive trip. Alas revenge of salmonella was inveitable... and the pump 'a' dump residents Ricky and Ade had to make way for a new pretender in the leaky bottom department.

Monday 11:00am - LST

With the low viz one had to be a tad cautious not to swim too far into the wreck... had a few occasions where we had to back out. Spent a fine 40mins with Al exploring determined to find a tank... which was accomplished when Al spotted the tracks of the upturned Sherman. Admired it in all its glory...well as much as you can by piecing together all of the mental images that you've observed from a foot or so away. All in all a nice fun dive.

Tuesday - am

Free swimming conger spotted by everyone (except Al... who was convinced it was a Ling... time for Al to get an education I think!). Very Abyss like with torches and strobes in the excellent viz. Also saw the biggest lobster I've ever seen. Decided I need a new undersuit as I shivered out the stops observing all of the other divers and teaching Flossy a thing or two in the tactics of Paper, scissors, stones (buck up Floss!)

Keith's post-addendum to J-B's addendum

I hate fish, unless they are deep-fried in batter. However even I knew that the silvery-swimmy-around-fish-type-thing was not a conger. Sorry.

The Juno dive was no where near as Abyss-like as when we were all in the lorry deck of the Zenobia. Oh sorry John, I forgot you weren't on that trip hahahaha :o)

I know, I know, I don't usually go in for pointless graphics, animations, flashing lights and so on. Black text on a grey background, that's what I like. Here's the exception, and it won't mean a thing to anyone who was not on the trip :o) You will need audio hardware on your pooter and a driver capable of playing basic midi. That is, I guess, normal now (if not old-fashioned, even). You may want to consider not doing this at work, unless you like all your colleagues staring at you. Shall I stop waffling on now?