Many thanks to Richard Bass...

An excellent evening many thanks to Richard T Bass, author of Exercise Tiger.

The 2012 LST project team (minus Gareth lock, Joe Tidball, Graham Blackmore and Richard Whalley who were here earlier in the week).
Jerome 'Smudge' Smith - our excellent skipper; Paul Burgess; Kata Kuit-Nagy; Christine Grosart; Jack MacLoughlin; Andras Kuit; Darren Morley, Richard Bass (author); Dorota czerny; Paul Duckworth; Richard Walker.

All head for the stern...

Day #3 of Project Tiger got underway a lot earlier - 9am ropes off.
Jack and paul did a good job of lining the stern section and we all dropped onto the stern section.

Todays team was Graham Blackmore diving with Jack Mack - Paul Burgess dived with Darren Morley - Andras and Kata together again and Rich and I shot some video.


     Snapshot of the 'sticky up thing' from yesterdays dive on the bow section, by Andras Kuti

                                                   Stern section - screen grab by Andras.

Richard Bass, historian and author of Exercise Tiger and narrator in a recent documentary about Exercise Tiger, is here in Portland at the Breakwater Hotel and will be talking to us this evening about his discoveries.

Project Tiger Dive #2

Dive #2

Jack and Paul dived the stern to lay line around it – they managed to cover one side. Meanwhile, Kata and Andras investigated the ‘sticky up thing’ which is covered in fishing net.

Jack & Paul knot line.....ready to go to the stern

Chris analyses and labels gas

Rich and Dorota looked into the break at the back of the hull section – described as pretty much empty cargo holds. They swam up the starboard side and spotted a DUKW chassis inside and further in, possibly a bulldozer.

Around that area is also a door/hatch which may have a plate on it – heavily encrusted.

In the same vicinity were some telephones in a ? comms room. Dorota shot some video of the dive.

Joe, Darren and Christine had 25 minutes beginning on the bow section. Darren confirmed holes in the large doors(?) which may be shell holes. The divers swam around the bow and Joe investigated inside and the divers returned to the area of the shot line and turned right towards the break, with the upturned hull on their right. Joe and Darren had a brief look inside but found nothing of any interest.

Evening work....

                               The gnomes discuss tactics for getting up onto high benches.......

 Gathering at the breakwater to draw up sketches, compare notes and sort out video and stills.

25th June, 2012, Dive 1

Today we put 5 teams into the water. The way we like to work on these projects is to take a simple overview of the wreck first, and then build up a detailed picture of the wreck as we work through the week.

The first goal is to "surround" the wreck in a perimeter of line.  This gives us a good idea of how big the wreck is, and allows us to navigate easier on subsequent dives. This normally takes two teams - the first goes down and secures the shotline, ties in a line and runs along the side of the wreck.  The second team ties into the first teams line and then heads the other way. All being well, they meet at some point and the wreck is then "contained".

Subsequent teams then follow these lines, and mark items or areas of interest. If we have photographers, then they also start to shoot as well.

I'm really happy today, as the dives went exactly to plan. We have completed the line, have a few points we want to return to, and also have 30 or so great pictures by Gareth Lock at various points around the wreck.

The dive was 50m deep, and teams spent between 25 and 40 minutes on the bottom.  All are well and enjoying dinner in the Royal Breakwater Hotel in Portland.

We've spent the past couple of hours recreating what we saw, and have put our first sketch map together. This map will evolve over the duration of the project, detail and accuracy increasing on each dive.  We have a great team of GUE divers on this project, and superb support from Smudge and Sarah at Scimitar Diving.

Heading home......

First shots from the project, courtesy of Gareth lock http://www.imagesoflife.co.uk/

First shots from the project, courtesy of Gareth lock http://www.imagesoflife.co.uk/

                                                            So what did we see then??

Dive #1...

The team all just stepped off the boat after a cracking dive on what we believe is LST 507. The viz was about 10m - great conditions and plenty of life - large edible crabs, huge anemones, bib everywhere and some saw congers and lobsters.
The wreck is upside down - Rich and I saw a big flat door so we are pretty convinced we finished the dive on the bow.
Jack and Paul laid line one way around the wreck and I laid line in the other direction from their tie off, while Rich took some survey video.

We are pretty sure that we have dived the large section which is likely to be the bow section. The stern is about 25m away and we need to look for this next.

                                    
                                                                  Gareth Lock

                                                                     Joe Tidball

                                                                  Skipper Smudge

                                                                      Darren Morley

                                                              Paul Duckworth

                                                                 Andras Kuti

                                                               Kata Kuti-Nagy

                                                                Richard Whalley

                                                                  Jack McLoughlan

Snoozing on the way out...it's a long 2 hour boat ride...

Tall ships enjoying the breeze

Rich Whalley. No style.