Читать книгу Into the Abyss - Rod MacDonald - Страница 10

‘There is nothing more powerful than this attraction toward an abyss’

Jules Verne, Journey to the Centre of the Earth

The chain of events that led me to dive into the heart of the Corryvreckan Whirlpool started in 1982 when I first turned up as a fresh faced 23 year old at the Peterhead Scottish Sub Aqua Club’s weekly dive training night.

I had snorkeled on holidays before on coral reefs and seen barracuda and sharks in the wild – but I always felt that as a snorkeler you are something of a voyeur. You are on the outside looking in. I wanted to be a diver, getting down there and becoming part of the action happening below.

The difference between diving and snorkeling is similar to the distinction between riding a motorcycle and driving a car. Driving a car is a bit like playing a video game or watching TV. You are cocooned from the wind and rain outside and shielded from noises and smells, which you would normally pick up subconsciously.

Riding a motorcycle is a totally different driving experience - you feel more a part of what is happening. You get wet from the rain. You are rocked by wind and slipstreams as you pass large vehicles – you feel the effects on your skin. All your senses take in the environment you are in. Sounds and smells are real - unlike the car driving experience where sounds are muffled by noise insulation and smells masked by whatever you have in the car. Such is the difference between diving and snorkeling.

My initial training covered endurance swimming tests to determine if I was physically fit enough. From there I moved on to the delights of practical tests - like duck diving to recover a rubber brick from the bottom of the 15 foot diving pool.

After some basic training and theory it was time to be introduced to the diving tool that would be with me through my life, the aqualung. I didn’t, at this stage, truly understand how marvelous an idea it was nor how it worked. I just knew that if you fitted the 1st Stage clamp of the aqualung onto the pillar valve on the top of a compressed air tank, and stuck the breathing regulator, the 2nd Stage, into your mouth, it gave you whatever air you needed - whenever you needed it.

Like practically every other novice diver in the world, my first experience of the aqualung was in a pool. Wearing just a T-shirt and swimming trunks I sat down at the side of Peterhead pool and pulled on with great relish my new wet suit boots and the incredibly robust black rubber Jet fins of the time. They have proved to be truly indestructible - and are the only piece of my original dive equipment that I still have and use, twenty years later.

I picked up my mask and looped the strap over my head - perching the glass faceplate section on my forehead. I hesitantly slipped my arms through the straps of my back mounted air tank harness - and clasped the central belt across my stomach. Pulling my mask down over my face I picked up the breathing regulator mouthpiece and put it in my mouth. Not knowing what to expect, I slipped into the water - and was immediately in love with a new sensation.

The cool pool water enveloped me and I sank down heavily to the bottom of the pool. Immediately, I saw a different aspect of the pool – from below up. There on the bottom, in little groups of two or three, were other novice divers being trained by instructors. I was able to swim around them easily and choose at what depth to swim – the feeling of weightlessness was akin to floating in space. I could move easily in every direction, up, down, left or right. I tried turning a few cartwheels, which seemed hysterical until I realised that I had lost control of my buoyancy and floated up to break the surface. Red faced I sank back down to my instructor.

I was hooked for life - and continued at my training, turning up for weekly lectures. I began to understand the mechanics of how all my equipment worked, what it was for and started to learn something of the physiology of diving - what was happening inside my body as I dived.

After 6 months of training and a move to Ellon, I joined the local branch of the British Sub Aqua Club (BSAC) there. There were number of very experienced divers at this branch and the club dived regularly and went on expeditions to far flung exotic parts of Scotland. It all seemed extremely daring and exciting.

Soon after joining the BSAC in Ellon, I turned up at my local dive shop in Aberdeen, Sub Sea Services to buy my first wet suit. At that time everyone was still diving in wet suits – the dry suit revolution had not yet happened in sport diving. With great relish I bought the biggest dive knife money could buy, a wet suit, a 72 cu ft. aluminium dive tank and harness, weights and a weight belt and a Fenzy ABLJ. The Adjustable Buoyancy Life Jacket (ABLJ) was a large, bright orange horse collar life jacket that went over your head and was secured by a couple of straps, one round your back and one under your crotch - so you didn’t drop out of it.

Equipped with all this new gear, I went on to scrounge or pick up cheaply, the other essential pieces of diving equipment, a torch, dive watch and an old-fashioned capillary depth gauge. This clever yet simple device was the size of a large watch and fitted over your wrist. It had a round face with numbers all the way round. A thin transparent pipe, open at one end, circled the outside of the face – and it worked very simply. The deeper you went, the more the increasing water pressure compressed the air in the thin tube - as it tried to force its way into the open end of the tube. You read your depth from the numbers at the point where the air bubble was compressed to.

Even with all this equipment, under the prevailing club system of the time, it took me about six months before the time came for my first sea dive. Swimming around in the safe confines of the pool environment was one thing – but diving in the sea would be completely new to me.

I drove to Aberdour Beach to the west of Fraserburgh on the north-easternmost corner of Scotland. The regular Sunday dive had been planned as an easy shore dive for the novices like myself coming through the club system.

About 15 divers in total turned up, some experienced, some, like me, completely new to the sport and under instruction. I was paired up with a very capable and experienced club diver called Colin Rivers. Colin was a very genial tall bearded diver, unassuming but very capable.

We got dressed into our wet suits and rigged up with our dive gear. Colin, knowing that it was my first sea dive had a good look over my shiny new kit to make sure that I hadn’t forgotten anything obvious, like turning my air supply on.

I knew how buoyant my wet suit was without weights, and never having dived in the sea before, I wasn’t entirely sure how much weight I should carry in my weight belt to counteract that buoyancy. Sea water is more buoyant than the pool water I had practised in so I knew I would need some more - but how much? I was also concerned at what might happen if the seemingly fragile plastic clamp on my weight belt were to fail or be knocked open.

To avoid such a calamity, I thought it would be a good idea to put a half hitch knot in the excess length of my weight belt to secure it to the main section. Colin saw this straight away and patiently explained to me the error of my ways. If he had to recover me from the water and had to get my weight belt off to get me into a boat or onto rocks at shore, he would be hampered as he would not be able to untie the knot quickly. He might have to cut the belt off me. Weight belts were designed to be quick release for just such an eventuality - and I was complicating the position.

With my buddy check completed I took a few trial breaths out of my breathing regulator. It was working fine, so, tank on back, mask on forehead, fins in hand and the all important “I’m a diver” knife strapped to my leg, I walked with Colin down from the car park to the water’s edge over a shingle beach. Some large rocky spurs ran out to sea from the beach for some way before disappearing underwater.

We walked into the water up to our chests then pulled our masks down and ducked down and pulled our fins onto our feet and secured the straps over our heels. With trepidation I then let myself fall forward into the caress of the water - wondering weather I would sink or float. As it turned out, with air in my ABLJ, I was quite buoyant.

We kicked our legs and snorkeled out from the beach on the surface until we had got into a depth of about 20 feet. The sky was a rich summer blue and shimmering bright shafts of light were penetrating down through the water lighting up a wondrous seascape below of sand, rocks and kelp forests. The north east of Scotland has very clear seawater and I could easily make out the seabed and rocky spur in great detail.

Giving each other an OK hand signal, I took the snorkel mouthpiece out of my mouth and stuck the breathing regulator 2nd stage into my mouth. I took hold of the mouthpiece and corrugated hose from my ABLJ and held the mouthpiece up as high as I could. Pressing the dump valve on the end allowed all the air in the ABLJ to escape. The air rushed out from my ABLJ and, from having been positively buoyant on the surface, I now became heavier - negatively buoyant.

I sank down, slowly at first but with increasing speed until I landed on the seabed kicking up a cloud of white sand like a helicopter landing. Colin arrived down beside me gracefully and gestured that I should now get back neutral buoyancy. I took a long draw on my regulator and then took it out of my mouth and inserted the mouthpiece for my ABLJ into my mouth. Pressing the open/dump valve on it I then breathed exhaled air into it and it puffed up a bit – but I was still too heavy. I replaced my breathing regulator back in my mouth, took another long draw to fill my lungs and then repeated the laborious process of breathing out and into my ABLJ mouthpiece - giving it a bit more buoyancy. (In the following years this laborious process, something of an art form at the time, was ended when a direct feed whip for air was introduced which ran from the 1st stage straight into the ABLJ. Then, at the touch of a button, air could be bled directly into the ABLJ without having to remove your regulator from your mouth.)

After repeating this process a couple of times, I felt myself lift slightly as I breathed in, and sink slightly as I breathed out. I had achieved neutral buoyancy and it was time to head off on the dive.

Colin had a wrist mounted dive compass and had taken a bearing for our route from the shore. Whilst sorting out my buoyancy I had ignored my underwater bearings and not having acquired a compass as yet, had no idea of which way to go. Colin checked his compass, got our course and gestured for me to follow. We were off.

We swam over to the spur of rocks, which had assumed a totally new perspective. Now there was a wall of rock that ran all the way from the seabed up to the surface. It was an underwater cliff face and I was at once mesmerised by everything that could be found on this cliff face. In the nooks and crannies, crabs and squat lobsters hid. Large fronds of kelp drifted up from their fixings on rocky outcrops. Anemones and sponges competed for space. Large starfish lay on the bottom and fish drifted in and out of my vision. I was completely spellbound and followed Colin as we moved along the seabed beside the wall out into deeper water.

As we moved deeper I could sense my surroundings getting a bit darker and could feel the cold of the water more. I realised that even at this shallow depth, the weight of water above me was compressing my wet suit causing it to lose some of its thermal protection. Every now and then as I went deeper I felt a pressure increase in my ears and had to remember to pinch my nose with my fingers and ‘pop’ my ears, as you do on a plane, to equalise the pressure and relieve the pain.

Once we had swum out for about 20 minutes, Colin paused and took a new bearing on his compass at right angles to our previous path. We then headed off in that direction for 5 minutes before he reset his compass to take us on a return bearing back to the shore.

I arrived back in shallow water after some 45 minutes inwater and having got to a depth of about 15 metres. I had thoroughly enjoyed my first shore dive and the world of sea diving had been opened up to me.

  

The following week it was time for another first, my first boat dive. As with my first sea dive I simply had no idea what to expect when I eventually would roll off the side of a dive boat.

We arrived at Portsoy harbour and launched a battered old grey Zodiac inflatable. I watched, as if a spectator, as the old hands readied the boat for sea. Everyone except me seemed to know what had to be done. It was like a ritualistic occult practice. No one seemed to be giving any orders – they all just seemed to know somehow what to do, as if following some secret code unknown to me.

There were 6 divers diving off the boat that day and all the divers’ tanks, weight belts, fins and other gear had to be loaded in the boat as it was tied up alongside the pier. The engine, an old Johnston 35 hp was on tilt, its propeller out of the water.

Once all the kit was in, all of us jumped aboard and the engine was taken off tilt and the propeller and shaft was lowered down into the water. A few pumps of the fuel bulb and several pulls on the ‘pull’ start and the engine roared into life in a cloud of blue smoke.

The painter, the bow mooring line, was untied and the Zodiac moved ahead. We motored towards the harbour entrance and as we did, a gnawing apprehension start to work on me subliminally. I had no idea whether I should be scared - I didn’t know what there was to be scared off - but apprehension there definitely was. I suppose it was really just a fear of the unknown that was getting to me. I was about to go offshore and dive into deep water - where there was no prospect of swimming back to shore if things went wrong.

The old hands chatted loudly above the roar of the outboard engine and there was a lot of manly banter. These guys didn’t seem apprehensive at all - but I couldn’t help thinking that this was a dangerous place to be going. It was one thing to do a dive from the shore – it was something totally different to head out into far deeper water offshore.

We surged out of the harbour and throttled up. The boat pushed at its bow wave, driving a mass of water before it - we were heavy in the water with all these divers and their kit and the cox got us to clamber forward over the gear bags towards the bow.

The Zodiac got up to about 9 knots, pushing at its bow wave. Then, it seemed to conquer it - and rode up and over its bow wave. We were on the plane, and immediately our speed leapt up by 10 knots, to between 15-20 knots. The cox then got us to return to our seats on the Zodiac’s side tubes (called sponsons) near the stern and throttled back as far as possible. He skillfully kept the Zodiac up on the plane, conserving fuel – maximum speed for minimum fuel.

We roared along, bouncing from wave to wave, battered by wind and spray. With each impact onto a wave I was bounced upwards by the sponson I was sitting on, holding on for grim life with both hands to the lifelines along the top of the sponson. At the same time I tried to wedge and secure my feet under heavy pieces of dive gear on the floor.

We headed out until we got into deeper water about ½ -1 mile offshore. The boat didn’t have an echo sounder - they had not become popular and cheap in those days, as they are now so we didn’t know what depth of water was beneath us.

After a short journey of 10-15 minutes out, the cox throttled back on the outboard tiller. We slowed and then the Zodiac dropped off the plane and wallowed to a halt before the pursuing wake caught up with us. The cox had the anchor ready and threw it over the side. We made an educated guess as to the depth we were in from the amount of anchor rope we had paid out.

Once the anchor had snagged on something on the seabed the wind blew us round so that we were head into the wind and waves. We now started getting kitted up and I soon noticed that the slow wallowing action of the stationary boat started to affect some of the divers – even the hard looking guys in beards. One was sick over the side and one or two others started going a bit greenish/grey. I felt quite fine and, as if in some coming of age ritual, it made me feel as though perhaps I had the bottle for this after all.

My ABLJ went on, then my weight belt, then my air tank and harness, fins, and mask. I was soon ready and sitting all kitted up on the side tube of the Zodiac.

I was to be diving with Colin Rivers again - who had taken me on my first ever sea dive the previous week. We sat opposite each other and went through the standard buddy checks on each other’s gear.

“Are you ready?” he enquired staring straight at me.

“Yes” I said hesitantly. I was on the brink of diving into deep water, and the gnawing apprehension I had felt at the harbour, which I had momentarily forgotten about as people got sea sick, came flooding back.

“OK – let’s get going” he said. Slapping his regulator in his mouth and holding it and his facemask in place with one hand, he deftly rolled backwards off one side of the boat. I copied him and did my first back roll off a dive boat – splashing backwards into the water.

As my weighted mass hit the water, it erupted in a confusion of bubbles and white froth. Almost immediately the white foam of bubbles from my entry disappeared and I thrashed my legs and arms around to get myself upright from my upside down entry position.

I looked downwards and was surprised that I could not see the seabed below. I could see nothing below but empty deep water for as far as the eye could see. Below that, was a seemingly bottomless dark, inky void that filled me with foreboding. Was I really going down that far into that?

Looking around at either side of me, other than the boat I was holding onto, there was nothing that I could see other than empty water. It struck me that this was something of a tenuous position to be in. I was far out from shore clinging to a small inconsequential speck of a rubber boat with a single outboard attached to it - and was preparing to let go of that meagre modicum of safety to plunge down into the depths.

I kicked my legs and finned to the front of the Zodiac where the anchor line dropped away down below. I looked down the line as far as I could and saw it disappearing into the inky void, seemingly into infinity. This was something totally new to me – I hadn’t been in water this deep before and had not expected it to look, well. …. so deep.

Colin looked at me, eyes seemingly bulging through his facemask and gave me the OK question signal. I gave the OK signal back, belying my apprehension and he then gave the thumbs down sign, the sign to start going down. He dipped his head down and raised his feet high and the weight pressing down helped him duck dive. He started going down the line effortlessly and casually. I duck-dived and followed him down the line, hand over hand.

I was not to get far down. I had been unnerved by the depth of the water we were in – there was still no sight of the bottom. I then realised that I had not seated my mask properly on my face. The seal, which should seal onto my skin, was sitting on top of a small section of my wet suit hood, not under it. I did not have a watertight seal and so, as I went down a steady trickle of water entered the mask and it started filling up.

I was making the descent in a head down position so the water dribbling into my mask ended up on my faceplate. Everything below, the line – including Colin - seemed to become slightly blurred and indistinct. Then everything swam completely out of focus so that I could not make out anything at all.

I knew that my mask was now almost completely filled with water. I had been trained in the pool how to ‘mask clear’ in a situation like this - but I was now in an incident pit, when one small thing triggers off a series of events and you lose the ability to sort it out. Each incident is manageable on its own but it is the culmination of these individual factors that causes problems. A bit more common sense and experience and it would have been simple to resolve. As it was I couldn’t deal mentally with the depth or the mask flood and loss of vision. I was starting to lose it.

I tried a mask clearing drill by holding the lower part of the mask off my face and blowing through my nose. You can only do that when you are in a ‘head up’ position - and I soon discovered the hard way that you can’t do that exercise when you are head down. As a consequence, the air I breathed out trying to clear the water from my mask disappeared, and more water flooded into my mask.

My mask was soon completely filled with water. As I breathed, it was going up my nose and making me gag. My eyes were bulging wide open - and were completely immersed in water. Why I didn’t simply bring my legs and feet beneath me to repeat the drill I don’t know.

On the verge of panic, I looked down with my blurred vision. I could barely make out my surroundings – I couldn’t read my depth gauge and didn’t know what depth I was in. I couldn’t tell if I was going up or down.

With my blurred vision I couldn’t make out any sign of Colin below me. In the few seconds that it had taken for me to arrest my descent - and shoot from a semi-controlled state into abject terror, he had disappeared from view beneath me into the darkness. I grimly held onto the anchor rope and fought to deal with my mask flood.

In reality I was completely safe, but my novice’s inexperience was running riot with my common sense. I was in an alien environment, things were going pear shaped – I now perceived I was in trouble and was teetering on the edge of panic.

My first thought was to try and continue the descent and reach Colin who would now be well below me - out of sight but still holding onto the anchor line. I tried to tough it out and continue down blind but I got some more water up my nose and gagged - I couldn’t go on.

I stopped this attempt at a blind descent and started to go back up the anchor line. I moved into a head up position and kicked my legs to start moving upwards. Why I didn’t just clear my mask now and then recommence the descent I don’t know. I had just lost it - and was bailing out - whatever. Looking back, the main trigger for all of this was the simple fact that I was thrown by not being able to see the seabed below and not knowing what depth I was going into. That sealed how I behaved.

I reached the surface and my head broke through into daylight. I pulled my mask up and the water flooded out of it. I was back beside the Zodiac and safety. As I talked to the divers in the boat reassuring them that I was fine, Colin appeared unexpectedly beside me. He swam over to me and asked if I was all right. It turned out that he had got right down to the bottom at 25 metres. When I hadn’t appeared down beside him he had followed the rules and made his way back up the line slowly.

I had given up on the idea of the dive completely and felt a fool. But, Colin was very understanding and persuaded me to have another go. I agreed and we started the descent once again, this time Colin was right beside me, holding onto the strap of my ABLJ.

We pressed down and again I was disturbed at not being able to see the bottom. But then, when we got down to a depth of about 15 metres it was as though a curtain was pulled back and we moved through a visibility horizon. One moment I couldn’t see the seabed. Next, there was an amazing underwater seascape about 10-20 metres beneath me. The white anchor line led down to the chain and anchor – which were just lying on the seabed.

We dropped down the last 10 metres and landed on the seabed. I took time to look all around me at my new surroundings and get my buoyancy sorted out. Then, after an exchange of OK signals we moved off in one direction, swimming along just a few feet above the seabed.

All around me were flat slabs of rock housing lobsters, edible crabs and lots of conger eels. I had never seen conger eels in the wild before and they hid in their dark bolt holes with their blue/black head and eyes peering out at us, alien visitors in their underwater world. I had heard divers’ stories of congers biting off fingers and so gave them a wide berth. At one point I saw a conger in the open, a rare sight during the day as it moved over and under a large overhanging rock.

After a bottom time of about 20 minutes down at a depth of 25 metres it was time to start our ascent. My novice diver’s inability had almost ruined the dive but Colin’s stoic perseverance had saved the day and introduced me to the world of boat diving.