The trip to Scapa flow was my first week long SCUBA diving holiday in the UK and also my first experience of hard boat diving in the UK, so I was intrigued to see how it compares to the day trip boats of the Red Sea!

 The first hurdle was the drive up to Scotland.  This was tackled by people travelling up in pairs in order to share the driving.  I went up with Keith, Gwen & Bob and (once the van was fixed – the less said the better) we headed up and stayed over in Scrabster on the Friday.

 On the island we stayed in the Orca hotel, as our group filled the hotel it basically meant that we could make it home away from home.  A kitty was set up for food etc and as Steve had a bad cold he became head chef for the week!

 Now to the diving…

 Our dive boat was the MV Jean Elaine, Andy is the Captain and Mark was his First Mate!  The boat has a great set up as you basically set your kit up on day 1 and then never have to move it (other than to go diving!) for the rest of the week.  Air was free and Nitrox was £5 per fill. 

 Most groups ease into their weeks diving by starting on the Karlshruhe but there were a few dive boats on the wreck so Andy took us to the Dresden for our first dive and the Karlshruhe for the 2nd dive. 

Most of the wrecks in Scapa Flow are shot and it is a straight forward descent down to the wreck.  Once we surfaced you never had to wait long for Andy to come and pick you up and once on deck you had barely taken your reg out and Mark was ready with a warming hot drink for you!

The Brummer, my max depth was 34.0m was our first dive of day 2, I was buddied with Guy and lead dive.  Whilst Guy was paying little attention to me (so to demonstrate that you sometimes need to be firm with a buddy) I saw a seal! Woop Woop – it was a great moment.  After the dive Andy said that the seal has become a regular sighting on the Brummer so has possibly taken up residence!  

The FY2 & YC21 (barge) was the 2nd dive of the day.  There was a gun almost at the end of the shot line on the FY2, but you are best following the line to the barge and 2 guns stick out of the hold & is a great sight.  You can also do a nice little swim through on the barge.

 The Kronprinz & Karlshruhe were the two wreck choices for day 3.  When we did the Karlshruhe we went around the hull side & there was a random toilet on the sea bed!!! 

Over lunch we went to the museum in Lyness, which is a very informative and makes you feel very humble as well as being great full to all the service men and women.

Day 5 saw us doing the Coln & V83.  I had been waiting for the Coln all week and it definitely lives up to the rating the Wreck Tours and books on Scapa Flow give it.  There were so many guns on the wreck and I was finally getting the hang of spotting them and was beginning to wonder how I had missed them on the first few dives!! 

The last day we dived the Coln and the Brummer, two wrecks the group had thoroughly enjoyed during the week.  We were finally ‘allowed’ a girly diving day.  Gwen & I were buddied on the first dive, with Dawn joining us on the second.  This time when we did the Coln we went to the Stern where the guns are very impressive.  The last dive of the week was on the Brummer & with the seal making another appearance it certainly finished the week off with a bang! 

Scapa might be quite far from Birmingham but definitely worth the effort.  

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 19th, 2009 at 6:52 pm and is filed under Club Trip Reports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.