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NfS:DykkestafettenMatt DukeNitroxblenderGroup manager ICTOperations Odfjell SEIt was my turn to be “Gas Monkey” atthe dive club on Tuesday. We offer gasfillings on Wednesday and Fridays eachweek at 18:00, so that people are gassedup for the official club diving days, (Weorganize diving on Tues, Thurs, Sat &Sunday). Seeing as I needed “Permission”to be out after school time anyway,I figured I may as well have a night divetoo.I had a fair number of bottles to fill,three twinsets, two single tanks and twostages, so at 20:00 I was itching to getgoing!As is normal here in Bergen duringthe week there had been some SMS’sand phone calls and general mutteringsof what this week’s dive would be, andthat it would be nice to do a scooterdive. I’ve moved over to a Gavin Shortbody(who I christened Brutus) and I’mtweaking the weight to be neutral at10m, so I’m tending to take Brutus alonga lot these days. My back isn’t thankingme for it.In the club we have 17 scooter divers( 6 Gaving, 1 salvo Mojo, 2 X Cudas,Scooternightdivein Drotningsvik4 X Sierras’, 2 Silent Sub and 2 ApolloAV1’s) so it’s not normally too hard toget a scooter buddy. Luckily enough twoof my good friends Jørgen and Ane (MsX) opted to hang with me whilst I wasfilling gas, and to take a drive out to adive afterwards.We had some discussion about whereto go, in the end I decided “Drotningsvik”would be the place and in a dizzymoment I told Jørgen “Rongesund” sothat kept him on his toes when I drovethe complete opposite direction. J Sorry,my bad. Good to see you check yourmirrors! It was a comedy moment whenJørgen politely asked why we are at adifferent dive site than agreed. (He hasthe world’s best dry humor, that’s hisEnglish side shining through.)Drotningsvik then. It’s about 20minutes drive from the club house,and is a small bay that is slightly to theright a massive bridge, and connectedto a fairly major fjord. You drive downto the Quay, reverse your car in andthen you entry point in the Quay, yourexit point is the beach behind you. MsBack in 2003 I made a sketch of Drotningsvik, and it looks something like this:X and Jørgen elected to jump in withtheir scooters, but as I had been fettlingwith weights on mine I decided to lowerBrutus in with my drop line and do abubble check. No bubbles. Good. Stillslightly negative. Pants. LHere is a view out from the bay. It’s anice peaceful place, and lovely to haveso close to home. It must have been 2years since I last dived it.We had a chat about what to do, andbeing a BSAC lad at heart I enjoyedformulating a plan and draw a sketch onthe ground that was supposed to showwhat we should do, both as a plan andalso options if we lost a scooter at theworst time. We had this happen for realat another site a few weeks ago, and itwas very nice to know my buddy knewthe drill for buddy towing , so I literallyjust had to give him a “Grab myarse” signal and then we scootered a fewminutes out of the tide @ 30m and intothe back eddies and calm of the wallat that site. Not life & death to surfacemiles away at someone’s boat house,but I don’t like the idea of walking for1 hour in a drysuit to get my car! If youuse scooter in current, you have to agreea plan if they go wrong in my humbleopinion. Besides I don’t mind towing, it’sa bonding thing. JWith the formalities squared away, wewere ready for trying to plan a dive thatwould get the most out of the dive site.Basically the bay has a nice sandybottom that slopes down with walls eachside, and sticking to the side at 20m youfind the walls give a right angle turnon the right/left depending which sideyou swim down. The dive itself thentakes place as much as possible on thewall, with massive boulder beds andoverhangs to investigate. The problemwith the place is that the tide her canreally rip and when swimming & wenever really get far before we are forcedto turn.My plan was that we would scooteragainst the current for 25 minutes andthen drift/scooter on low pitch back. Ifthe tide wasn’t strong we could then usea few minutes going the opposite way,before returning to the bay for a slowaccent and 6m stop at the beach.Back in 2003 I made a sketch of this,and it looks something like this:If you can imagine the blue routehere, and then multiply the distance byfive to the right, you get an idea of whatwe did. More information is available ofNorway’s diving wiki here:http://www.dykkepedia.com/wiki/DrotningsvikIt was just so bloody lovely to getaway from the bay and scooter along thewall and between boulders. Stopping tolook at impressive anemones, squat lobsters,a large common lobster that wasout of his hole, and a gazillion other species.Viz was pretty good, I’d say about15/20m, and further than our HID’scould reach and it never gets boring tozoom out in the blackness watching thefjord drop below you with your buddieslights painting dancing shadows on thefjord wall behind them.After five minutes on the hammerwe got to the place that normally causesme to turn when swimming, just abit too much tide to get past on (Jet)fins. I did get a “Boys like toys” feelingwhen Brutus obliged my desire to breakthrough the tide and we had no problemmoving forwards. There must be somekind of spar here, or some anomalythat funnels water here as the currentreduced past this spot, and there wasless to go against afterwards.The following 20 minutes were ajoy. Drotningsvik has several differentdistinct geologies along the way. Youstart with an anemone covered wall,then it’s a boulder city , then back toanother great wall and drop off, then wehit Scallop station which was just brilliant.MASSIVE crabs with scallops allover the place on a white sand bottom.Jørgen “Pimped” his ride by stuffing aScallop in the carry handle on his Cuda,so the scallop could enjoy the ride too.At one point there was a large UW cableand some mooring ropes/stuff that werealso covered in life and fun to navigateon the scooters. The feeling of beingweightless in three dimensions is alwaysincreased in the dark I think.All too soon we had hit the agreedturn time and we started our returnjourney, with almost no current wereduced pitch and took our time enjoyingthe views, the wildlife and the factthat scooter night dives are a blast.I kept a look out for a few “Mentalchecks” I had made for pilotage on theway back, so that we would end up atDrotningsvik bay and not some othergulley. [EDIT; which is exactly what Idid the last time I dived here, March2010!] We had finished just past theCables, so we needed to go back past,Scallop station, the drop offs, the spar,the boulder alley and then the final clueis the wall with the “Condom anemones”which means you are nearly home.The final check of the night was that thesand of the bay is obscured at 20m by acarpet of brittle stars.Getting back to the sandy bay afterabout 35 minutes the tide had not onlyslackened but also turned, which wasperfect as we then had a short scooter inthe opposite direction and enjoyed theleft wall, which is a more “Aggressive”dive site with smaller boulders and verysteep drop off. I think It’s very deep offthis point.Returning slowing we got back to thesandy bay, and left the carpets of brittlestar fish at 20m to the yellow sand andthen kelp of the way back up to thebeach.It was very peaceful and chilled onour safety stop, looking at the wonderof UW ecosystems that you normallymiss on day dives, such as Hermit crabs“Life was sweet, and two good friends, some scooters, greatlights and access to Norway’s fjords 7 days a week make fora very happy Englishman”More information is available of Norway’s diving wiki here: http://www.dykkepedia.com/wiki/Drotningsvikand their symbiotic anemones carefullyexcavating their burrows, and Blenniesaggressively protecting their patch. Ieven noticed tiny zooplankton shrimpdancing in the glare of my 21Watt HID,and felt warm, calm and ready to comehome to my family.1 hour later I had washed my kit, putBrutus on charge, hung everything up inmy garage whacked the dehumidifier onand sat on the sofa with my better halfto catch up on the day’s events and sharea warm whisky and chin wag.Life was sweet, and two good friends,some scooters, great lights and access toNorway’s fjords 7 days a week make fora very happy Englishman, a long wayfrom home, but somehow now feelingthat I am home.Photos: Drotningsvik © Matt Duke36 Nytt fra SUB Vår 2010 Vår 2010 Nytt fra SUB 37