The last of it gets through.

As explained in an earlier post I was involved in getting aid into war torn ukraine. The last of that aid was 20 power generators bought in poland with the donation money.  The polish family in this picture helped us greatly to source these items and we thought they had gone straight into Ukraine.  

Sadly, what happens when you dont take aid door to door is that it gets turned away at the border for any number of reasons and ends up held in a large depot on the polish side of the border. This was happening to our generators. Its all about paperwork being correct as we found out when we drove over there a while back. Luckily we got wind of what was happening and that they needed a bit of papae to state who was sending these items in and why. Crazy when you think its they that desperately need such things. Anyway the organiser of this aid supply, Derwent Jaconelli,  posted off a letter of explanation  to the Ukraine/polish border forces setting out the facts. With that the generators suddenly got through last week and are now beinfg distributed to where they are needed. Alls well that ends well. 

Heres an image of our generators stuck at the border

 Heres an image of the guy who took them into Ukraine and helping of distributing them.

Heres an image of all the staff at Castorama in Poland who were only to proud to be involved in supplying the 20 generators. They sell such things all the time but when they knew where ours were going they couldnt help us enough. Heres an image of them too.  Oswiecim -also infamously known as Auschwitz. A terrible past to this town inflicted on it by Germany in WW2.  To the Polish it is still Oswiecim and a very nice town it is-inspite of the infamous german camp built nearby. It was our visit to that camp on our way home from Ukraine that lead to us getting in touch with Castorama. Read my earlier posts for that remarkable story of luck. Its so nice to have such a better view in my head of that town than its savage history image. Love to them all in Oswiecim!!

 

The Clusterphuk.

Every year a bunch of friends come over to dive here. They have great banter and are funny as hell. This year they helped me to check out a few mag hits around one of my wrecks. Sadly nothing new has been found yet. They are set to go home today so I'll be back to it on my own again soon. Shame their visit couldn't have been more interesting but that's diving. It can be fabulous finding new things but more often than not that don't happen. Still they got wet most days which was good considering the huge sea swells we have had lately. I wanted to go out searching further out to sea but that swell just put an end to it. Thus we stuck closer in. More banter than diving thats for sure.

 

No wreck hunting at present.

 No Wreck hunting for a few days. We have had light winds so this grunt on the sea is from some very bad weather further away.  These two Videos say it all but dont really do it justice. Much more spectacular in person. See it a lot worse in winter here but just tad unusual for June. So no wreck hunting in this!

North of Tresco Island on friday. 

Shipman head Bryher Island saturday when it had calmed down a bit.

Magging he Deep

A couple of posts ago I showed how it is magging for shipwrecks in the shallows close in around the rocks. A buoy was attached to keep the mag fish up.  Been doing some more deep water magging recently as again I went looking for targets I think are down there too. The area I was hunting was in 30meters and over; so for that the mag fish has to get down there nearer the bottom.  The buoy is removed from the the cable support rope and instead we add a few lead weights to it. 

We then drop it in behind the boat and begin towing. I leave the harbour and set it going as soon as its deep enough. Moving fast will still keep the fish near the surface but i do this until im in my target area as it may just pick somthing interesting up on the way out. Once im in the target area, in this case a particular area 7 miles west, I slow the boat right down to allow the fish to drop deep. Then I perform a grid search. This was how I found the Bassenthwaite, and this is how im expecting to find the wreck Im after. As with all wreck hunters Im working on a theory of where the wreck may be based on research. The these theories are often wrong but one has to go through with every theory otherwise it will bug the life out of me until I do. You never know your luck-you could be right!!..... and there's always the chance you'll find something else as indeed happened with the Bassenthwaite wreck discovery.  As I always say after days of failure- "we just have to go again" - (in the right place)

 

60 and counting.

 Well my news this week is that I turned 60.  The red badge given to me by my nephews says it all really.  Above it is an image of me diving after my birthday. I started diving in my teens and am now still at it in my 60's. Im not planning on letting up either. Hopefully the health will hold out to keep on going. Still got lots of wrecks on my list still to yet to be found. I've had some great finds over the years but I still firmly believe that my greatest discovery still awaits me out there somewhere- so the wreck hunting will continue for as long as I physically can.

Wreck Activity his week.

I had an underwater Archaeological team over the last 5 days doing an assessment of one of my wrecks. Phoenix sunk in 1680. Lucky they got some good weather to complete the work. They took lots of measurements and photos and cleared a lot of the weed away. The boat was 'Sea Watch 1' and the dive team were Wessex Archaeology who were contracted to Historic England and looked after by skipper Nigel Hodge on the wreck.  They will also be properly recording all my finds from the wreck.

Sea Watch 1

Some of the 16 or so ballast guns still on the site. These form part of the evidence as to what wreck this is. I found the wreck using an old chart from 1680 which gave me an approximate area in which to search for this wreck.  It was quite a large bit of sea but after a long search I finally found it in 2016. I researched out that Phoenix was carrying "a Kentledge of broken guns" Kentledge is an old english word for 'Ballast' Here they are!

While they worked on that site I went off magging  around some other rocks for another one on my list. Sadly didnt find it but thats the challenge. i will just keep at it til I do find it or just move to another place where another on my list awaits discovery. The weather dictates where I search on any given day. That is not to say that the phoenix project is at an end as I am still searching all around that area of the wreck to make sure no more of it exists elsewhere.  I dont hold out a lot of hope for that as the Phoenix is clearly in a very good position for that expert early 17th century salvageman Thomas Ekins who lifted all the guns from this wreck. The site is shallow and away from any rocks and the water clear. This is why not much of her remains today...just ballast guns and small artifacts.  One can never be sure and so I have a few small mag hits still to visit thereabouts.  Once that is done I'll move on permanently to another project on my list.

Setting up the magnetometer on my punt to search close in to the rocks

All set and off I go for another session of magging