Paul Kidson

So, just got back from today’s dive on the Empress Of India.  I’d had real mixed reports on this one, some said it was a waste of time due to her being upside down while others had said she was a cracking dive with the best portholes in Lyme Bay!  Only one way to find out though so off we went..

An 08:15 leave on Blue Turtle saw us over the wreck about an hour and a half later.  Sea conditions were good so Seasick Ric  didn’t feed his breakfast to the fish as usual.  Wreck shotted at the stern and after a quick bubble check and s-drill at 6m we were off to the bottom.  We started off by swimming up the starboard side admiring all the portholes, these were amazing as most still had there glass in and the one that was open actually moved when I applied some force to it!  Not bad considering she’s been down there 95 years.  After that we swam around inside where her boilers are before drifting up to the bow.  Came back down her port side, had a look at her mast (snapped) before making our way onto the top of the wreck to send up the SMB and begin all our stops.

Stops were pretty uneventful, gas switch to 80% at 9 meters and surfaced after our planned 96 minutes had passed to be greeted with sunshine Yay!

The day was not without some bad luck though.  The last time we dived for this long I came really close to losing bladder control so this time I decided to use the p-valve I fitted to the suit for Scapa last year.

Right, for those that have no idea what I’m on about I’ll quickly explain.  A p-valve is a one way valve in the leg of my suit that connects to… well, little Paul shall we say.  In theory you apply a external catheter in the morning, plug into the valve and you can just go underwater.

Knowing I was going to go equipped I did a bit of careful pruning around little Paul in the shower, not enough as it turned out as I immediately managed to stick some rather tender hairs to the really sticky catheter, oh well, nothing a hot shower later won’t sort I thought to myself.  Once on the boat and kitted I realised I have yet to cut a hole in my new undersuit for the hose to go through, a few tense moments passed as I managed to use a 6″ dive knife to cut a hole without stabbing myself in the thigh.  All clipped in and that was that?

Managed to go successfully several times through the dive, much to the upset of my buddy Rob, especially as I made a point of telling him as we were hanging on our stops and he was starting to get desperate.  But with a couple of minutes left to go I felt the need to go again but forgot I had closed the bolt on the valve with predictable results   That awful feeling of a warm liquid running  down my leg.  I think Rob nearly choked with laughter when he saw the look on my face and I ended the dive with a cold, smelly leg!

Took me two days to get all the glue off me, but that’s a story you don’t want to hear…