Arriving at
Littlehampton Marina on a bright sunny Saturday morning 5 BUDC members
prepared the boat for a routine dive at the Mulberries.
The kit was loaded and competently driven out by George at
reasonable pace. Once in the
vicinity of the Mulberries we moored up on the shot line (once we found
it) to discuss dive plans. As
we were the only divers there we took our time and planned in
detail—next time the planning will be a bit quicker, I think, as by
the time we finished we were joined by lots more divers.
We moved away from the main shot and George and Bob put in their
own shot to do their exercises of shot moving/lifting.
Soon afterwards Julian and I put in and were soon down at 10m
with 8ftish of vis. This was
my first time at the Mulberrries and was amazed to see just how sharp
the stakes that I had been warned about were.
By this time the total number of divers seemed to be increasing
by the minute but Julian adeptly managed to keep us clear of the other
divers. Prior to picking up
a mid-sized lobster he claims to have seen the resident conga eel,
although I’m a touch dubious of this.
Further
round we reached the shotline, surfaced, and began our way back on the
boat carefully and smoothly, with Bryan at the helm.
Upon approaching the entrance to the Littlehampton channel there
was a sudden grinding and 
grating noise, accompanied by shouts of
“B*@%$r! What was that!”
Lifting the engine revealed a badly damaged prop—but then
again, Bryan has practiced doing this before.
As with any practice, the results should be bigger &
better—it was. Not only
was the prop damaged but most of the skeg was missing as well.
This was despite using the depthfinder.
It would appear that we’d hit the only natural rock in the
English channel with the profile of a kerbstone (there you go, there’s
one excuse for you). With
much Mickey taking we edged our way in, only to find that the water was
just too shallow. We
anchored just outside the channel and waited for the water level to rise
enough for four of us to walk the boat into deep enough water for it to
then be driven again. We
finally managed to moor and de-kit the boat, followed by a debrief of
the day’s events (this included wondering whether the upcoming ‘boat
handling course’
should have
been planned for sooner in the year).
All in all,
though, it was a great day with much thanks to the instructors.
