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At about quarter past eight, I yawned and dragged myself awake. “Are we nearly there yet?” (Luckily for Sparkles, I’m a better dive buddy than I am company in the car!)
We had made it to Fathom & Blues in Portland in perfect time – that is, time for a full English breakfast before our first dive! Thirteen of us were all set to dive the M2 – for many, this was a second or even third attempt. At 12 miles from the shore and 30m+ deep, this is not a dive for the faint hearted!
The weather was beautiful as we kitted up and divided into our buddy pairs, checked our kit and traipsed out to the pontoon, where our glorious vessel awaited. We climbed aboard Shiraz where skipper Pete pointed out the flotation devices and O2 kit, and how to use the radio. Since Dale’s brilliant presentation on South coast diving at the social, I have paid attention properly during the safety briefing!!
The ride out on the RIB was slightly bouncy, but according to the group who had been on the last attempt (Ann, Terry and Geoff at least) it was flat as a pancake compared to that! For Geoff, this was third time lucky after two failed trips to dive the M2 before. And sadly for my dive buddy Steve, it wasn’t his lucky day. We rolled off the RIB, got to the buoy and started to descend … only for him to find his dive computer blinking faintly. It was a great disappointment but safety has to come first, so we ascended again and met the rest of the group at the surface. I decided to continue with the dive as I still had enough air left, and John agreed to buddy with me, so we were off.
I was expecting the dive to be deeper than it was, we hit 30m, but only just. John and I swam the length of the submarine, and as we turned around the front we found two huge blue conger eels nestling inside some tubes. I hadn’t seen any so big in the UK before, so that was really cool! As we drifted slowly back along the top of the wreck, I shone my torch under the crevices to find loads of small spider crabs waiting for their next meal. Towards the end of the dive, we even found two crabs locked together having a bit of a bonk … which had both of us laughing into our regulators! Especially when we tried to signal it to each other 
The M2 is a fairly large wreck, with plenty to explore. John ventured a short way inside it, but it was fairly dark and silty, and I was happier to stay outside. As well as the eels and lots of tompot blennys, there were plenty of sponges and other life growing on it. Some of our fellow divers chose to explore a smaller area rather than swimming around the entire wreck – although we were diving with Nitrox (most of us had between 28 – 31%) we could only spend a maximum of around thirty minutes on the wreck before we had to start our ascent. Some of us chose 15l tanks and of course Terry Twin Tanks had plenty of air, and we all had pony tanks, but after 30 minutes we were all reaching the safe limits of our air supply. The PADI tec courses (Tec40, Tec45 and Tec50) would be great to do for a dive like the M2, to have that extra bit of time to really be able to explore it properly. Maybe next year!
Our second dive of the day was on the Alex van Opstal. We had plenty of time for some lunch, which we ate outside with the kitchen staff at Fathom & Blues shouting down to us when our food was ready! I even had chance for a quick nap in the sun before it was time to crawl back into our sweaty undersuits and drysuits. Not that I’m complaining about the beautiful weather!
Steve Sparkles was back out for the second dive, thanks to Ron at Fathom & Blues who had been able to fix his flooded dive computer, and Geoff who had loaned him a spare one just in case. I was delighted to have my buddy back – not that John hadn’t done an awesome job on dive 1!
I thoroughly enjoyed the Alex van Opstal. The visibility was not great, and at 30m it was fairly dark and gloomy, but incredibly atmospheric. The wreck seemed to be more destroyed, almost at one with the surrounding ocean. As Steve and I poked around, I swam over a huge tube to peek inside it, where there were several large grey prawns scuttling around inside the top. I almost missed seeing the huge blue conger eel staring back at me from right inside! Steve D swam past us and tried to point out a second massive eel just below me, but somehow I missed that one altogether.
We carried on around the wreck and found an absolutely massive common lobster, bigger than any I have ever seen before. It was making a meal out of a dead crab, but kept darting back under its rock as we watched it.
With the depth, after nearly 30 minutes both Steve and I were close to the no-decompression limits on our computers, and we couldn’t see any shallow areas to explore, so we started our ascent. Terry and Ann had sent the skipper’s shot line back up, so I deployed my DSMB to give us a reference – it made the ascent so much easier! Safety stop done, we climbed back on to the boat for salty chocolate bars and a slightly bumpy ride back to the harbour.
With all our kit cleaned in the giant Fathom and Blues kit bath, all that remained was to enjoy a cold pint, or glass of wine, and a nice snooze on the way home … ahhh!
About the sites:
The M2 sank in 1932 during a routine trip. It is a submarine that was used to carry small aircraft, and is largely intact at about 90m long. On good days, visibility can be up to 10m – it was around 4-5m for our dive. It can be reached from Portland on a RIB, the trip takes about an hour – travelling around 12 miles.
The Alex was sunk by a mine at the beginning of the Second World War. She was a Belgian passenger liner measuring 420 feet long by 57 feet, weighing in at 5,965 tons. When she was sunk she was on her way to New York.
