Trials, tribulations and trimix
The harsh alarm cuts through the relaxed atmosphere in the wheelhouse. The DSC automatically sets the radio to channel 16 and we both stand waiting for the announcement to come over the crackly speaker. Gale force 8 expected soon, then 10 minutes later expected Fair Isle Imminent. An air of order comes over the boat - this kind of weather is never nice, especially now in the middle of the season when boats can be unprepared for it. Hard and Fast seems to be the norm with summer gales - they blow themselves out in a matter of hours, but even so the imminent forecast means that it is expected within the next 3 hours - right when we would be dropping our divers in. Wisely they call the dive and we head back to the welcome sight of Stromness before the weather turns.
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Tiny red sparks drift upwards on the turbulent swirling currents, carrying them onward until they fade from view in the dark infinity. Straw and hay flare and vanish into ashes, cardboard becomes a ghost of itself and crumbles in the air.
There is something hugely satisfying about burning a huge pile of rubbish.
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As the light fades from the crystal blue to gentle yellows and orange we cycle around the tiny harbour of Stronsay. The boat safely tied to the solitary pier, voices carry over the still evening air. Reassuring in the coming darkness, lights on the navigation buoys in the narrow channel blink their message to infinity.
Stronsay is a small island in the Northern Isles of Orkney. Its harbour once almost solid with herring fishing boats now lies almost forgotten, less than 10 boats now lie sheltered from the sea within its confines.
Papa Stronsay has a monastery on it, the buildings looking very un-churchlike as it actually has a herd of cows and a flock of sheep to care for. Cycling to the tardis like shop I nearly run over a nun. I hope my soul isn’t tarnished any more than it already is by this, although on the grand scale of things I think its probably pretty low on the list of bad stuff you can do.
Gazing over the narrow stretch of water that separates us from them, it might as well be an entire ocean. To get to this tiny island from mainland UK you would need to get a ferry to Orkney, then get to Kirkwall, get another ferry and then find someone to take you over there. Committing ones self to such solitude to dedicate themselves to a religion is admirable, casting off anything you might have had plans for, to live a life of simplicity where you take only what you need from the world. Not having to worry about where your mobile phone is, where your next meal will be coming from or if there is enough money in the bank. The flip side of the coin is obvious, but I suspect this kind of lifestyle has its immense rewards which for those with the strength to do it will reap.
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Taking the opportunity to jump in the water with Rob before my trimix course in the coming week I am full of the plans I want to do, which he completely breaks into bits, making me do the things I really should have been practicing but haven’t. A few out of gas drills are woefully inadequate, the spikes on the hood might be good for a giggle but they really do interfere with the long hose deployment. Damn. I wonder if its bad karma from JJ for the halcyon logo? I seriously struggle with the shutdown, the valves being far to stiff for me to move easily. A broken wrist a few years ago which was not set until it was out of alignment causes me pain with every turn, and the other wrist I broke this year also aches. Both of these can be worked on though - lots of shutdowns with stripped and lubed valves, plus a repositioned backplate mean this is ok. My trim goes to ratshit when I try to do anything, but then this was something I expected. Oh yeah, and the Freediving I did the other day has definitely worn off - a 45 minute dive to around 6m, and I used 90 bar - I would do that to 35m and use the same normally. Stress doesn’t even come close! I knew I wouldn’t be where I wanted, but the way I feel about the whole thing now has echoes of how I felt after my fundies, the mountain being so steep I don’t know if I can climb it.
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Fighting with the duvet I wrestle it into the clean cover and prepare to hunt out the elusive buttons to complete my task. Hazel shouts down the hatch to me, and even from her tone I know there is something wrong. Hurrying to the bottom of the ladder I am met with a pale and anxiety filled face.
She tells me that a local diver has been lost on one of the wrecks and the skipper of the boat he was diving from searched the wreck and recovered his body. Such a truly brave thing to do, I would struggle to have to do it myself.
I first met him years ago on one of my first trips to Scapa, and he was a regular diver when people had spaces, as are myself and Hazel at the thin ends of the season. I always remember him as being ready and sitting there tapping his fins on the deck, as if it would hurry the rest of us up as we struggle into our gear.
A week later we all sit in rows in the tiny packed out kirk, the chairs having long run out by the time the minister takes his place at the head of the congregation - standing room only. Clutching damp tissues we laugh, and also sometimes struggle to hold down the tears as the man we all knew is discussed by those who loved him most.
I know the water is warm and the vis is good where he is now.
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Trimix course with Mark Powell
Trimix is something I have wanted to do for a long time. When I first wanted to do the course a few years ago it was for the wrong reasons, as a diving status symbol, that I was a good diver to everyone, that I was more qualified than the average person on the boat. Maybe I would have been one of these people who had the huge green and yellow stickers proclaiming their set to be full of nitrox once I had that ticket, but once the course was complete then I could get some different stickers which scream that I use the devil gas itself - trimix. Back then depth was a measure of how good you were, how brave you could be and a deeper dive was better than a shallower one.
A whole lot has changed now, I really do enjoy the animal life a whole lot more than looking at twisted metal, so why even consider doing trimix then, when the vast majority of sealife is in the top 20m of the water column?
I do enjoy wrecks, the German fleet up here are a divers playground. But to make a wreck really worthwhile then for me it has to be intact. By the very nature of the sea, the deeper the wreck the more intact the wrecks tend to be. No quest for diving tat, shining brass portholes to proudly adorn a dusty garage floor, I enjoy looking, not taking. The other thing is that I am more often than not solo, especially within the flow. I seldom get to dive the deeper wrecks, so when I do, I want to remember them and have my wits about me. A dive while narked and solo is just asking for trouble. So I organise to do my course with Mark, an instructor with an excellent reputation and hopefully the patience of a saint.
Our first dive is more of a checkout dive, so he can see where I am at and we jump in on the Kronprinz Wilhelm. Heading aft we see everything we really want to, guns, big guns and even plenty of fish. I see a large hole just asking to be investigated, and since John Ollerton has lent me a 10w Halcyon torch I feel confident enough to have a mooch inside. The wedge shaped opening is huge, and hiding right at the back is a tiny spot of green light. Finning inside the patch of green gets bigger and develops into a diver sized hole. Perfect. We both swim through the wreck and emerge on the hull side to be faced with an immense wall of the most delicate plumose anemones, feathery arms softening the harsh starkness of the hull plates. Back over the top of the wreck and I send up my SMB and we surface without issue.
The next dive is where we start to add things - in this case a 5l stage cylinder with 50% in it. We aim to practice a few skills involved in using a stage to make sure I am up to the rest of the course. This instantly pushes me outside of my comfort zone. I have done very little diving this year, let along any with a stage. Last year I could count the number of dives I had done with a stage on one hand simply because the vast majority of anything I did tended to be the second dive of the day, hence shallower than the first.
Finding an interesting looking hole I peer into the cavernous void, almost forgetting I have a buddy for once. Bought back to reality with an out of gas signal from Mark, I crash into the wreck as I struggle to turn in the restricted space. The long hose catches on my manifold and I find it almost impossible to deploy it. My buoyancy goes to ratshit, I have stirred up a huge cloud of crap and we have been in the water for under 10 minutes. I want to go home.
Being asked to perform the outwardly easy task of unclipping and laying down the stage, then reattaching it I hope for more success. It cant get worse really. Unfortunately I really struggle with it, partly because I had a bent D ring on the wrong way round. Unwilling to simply admit defeat, I battle on for what seems like hours, but to no avail. Thoroughly annoyed with myself and feeling like I am about to find if I can cry underwater I have to ask Mark to re-clip the stage. I attempt a shutdown, but my buoyancy and busy fins really make it awkward, I seem to crash off everything and anything. Feeling totally down, beaten and fed up we ascend. Once back in dock I go and hide downstairs, mainly because I know what a total disaster the dive was and I so do not want to talk about it, but soon enough a shout comes down the hatch and I have to face the music.
Mark is far less critical than I was, saying that I simply needed to practice, pointing out that since he is up here for three weeks, we are hardly in a hurry. I simply don’t believe him, my view of myself and where a trimix diver should be are so far apart its beyond what even 3 weeks of diving can achieve.
First squeaky wind dive.
A dive on the James Barrie is perfect as my first trimix dive, and I silently hope that it will re-affirm why I want to do the course. It’s a dive I have done many times on air or nitrox, therefore is a good comparison for the difference a little squirt of helium makes. Descending the shot we go to the bow, peering into the long empty hold. The fish life down here is amazing, cuckoo wrasse so brightly coloured they wouldn’t look out of place in the tropics dart around the superstructure. Getting to the wheelhouse I peer inside with the torch beam highlighting the slowly decaying metal skeleton. Getting to the stern the current is beginning to pick up so we stay on the deck side of the wreck. Back to the bow and I notice the huge ball of net still in the foc‘scle. Two minutes of our planned dive time remain, so we ascend to the top of the whaleback and I start to get ready to send up the SMB. Reaching to my pocket I have just pulled open the Velcro lid when the flash of Mark‘s light alerts me to the fact he has run out of gas. Bloody careless if you ask me….. :o).,I deploy the longhose without any problem, my buoyancy staying steady and the hose not getting caught on the manifold. We do the ascent to 21m - our gas switch depth on my back gas via the longhose then he switches to his stage and we continue to do our stops and surface with no problems.
Does trimix make a difference? Yeah, course it does. I noticed so much about the wreck I wouldn’t have ever seen. The massive lobster in the aft section, clouds of tiny fish, the glass still in one of the windows. Awesome visibility. The only downside is that I suspect that if we do more stops than the twenty minutes or so we did I will feel the cold. I might have plenty of bioprene on board, but by some strange paradox I seem to feel the cold more than most skinny people. I guess somewhere in the world there is a skinny bird who is constantly too hot.
Our next dive is on the F2, a dive I know so well I think I could do it blindfolded. This does little to stop the fear I feel deep down, a fear not of the dive, but a fear of failure, of being unable to do what is asked of me. I teeter on the edge of calling it, the not trying being better than trying and failing, but as I shuffle to the divergate, I get a very knowing look from Rob and I know it is something I have to do. Looking back, if I had called that dive there is no way I would have completed the course. Years of being told you are no good at more or less anything you try to do leaves a mark.
On the dive itself I practice playing with the stage, it is still causing me problems so I hop off to Scapa Scuba to buy some nice shiney bits and bobs to help sort it out (like the worlds biggest dog clip to get used to, then swap to the smaller one once I get the hang of it again). I do a shutdown which is much better, my buoyancy is stable, with less than half a meter difference in my depth, but my busy fins still push me forward. At the end of the dive Mark hands me his stage as well as my own, I feel about the size of a jumbo jet and have the directional stability of a weeble. The joy of a steel and an ali stage. Oh dear.
The Kronprinz Wilhelm with Mark and Rob.
Diving with Rob is a rare pleasure, something to look forward to and enjoy. However this is slightly skewed by the virtue of Mark hanging around to cause chaos and be evil on the ascent. The dive itself was excellent, mooching in and out of holes, despite the halcyon light deciding not to work at all. I use Rob’s back up light as mine is hidden at the bottom of my pocket (I later decide to move it and find the batteries are flat). The ascent is made more interesting by having an instructor playing hide and seek behind my back - at one point he is below me purging a dangling reg (after a gas switch, the dog clip having come untied just before I jump in….dammit) and my immediate reaction is to clip him around the head and waggle a finger in his general direction but I manage to stop myself. I guess its too many years working with animals….
The line from my SMB also manages to mysteriously get tangled in my manifold, but I can tell when something is about to happen as suddenly there are only two sets of breathing rather than three. I had mentioned that I listen for where my buddy is a lot, so Mark had decided to hold his breath so I wouldn’t know he was close by….which is a great theory, but when the noise stops I get paranoid.
One thing that is really starting to bother me now is the busy fins - it is so frustrating to not be able to simply keep still while on deco or doing a skill or drill. The more I try to keep them still, the more they seem to move, almost subconsciously as if they have a mind of their own. I am also aware that I have two pairs of eyes on me.
Safe in the knowledge that both of them are friends, that they are both there for my own good seems not to be so much of a consolation. I would even go so far as to say it made me even more critical of my diving. Having one person to compare yourself to is bad enough, but two such skilled divers makes me feel about an inch high. I know this is the total opposite of their intention, but I cant help compare my trim, my skills and my general comfort with theirs.
Surfacing with such mixed emotions from the success of avoiding the planned screwups, but adding some of my own I’m not sure how I feel about the dive.
The rollercoaster of emotions is something I find tough. Surfacing from one dive feeling elated, then surfacing from another ready to sell all my gear on eBay. Not sure how many people get a hug from their instructor halfway through a course, but it helped.
After a night in Burray we do the UB116, a German U boat blown to bits after a torpedo being detonated by the navy actually turned out to be 7 torpedoes. Descending the line pipefish entwine their spindly tails in the furrows of the rope. Their slender bodies adorned with eggs, they gaze upon us with a look of curiosity as we slip past them. The wreck is small, tiny in fact and nothing I can see resembles any part of a submarine. However, the wreck lies on white sand, pristine and almost glowing. A shroud of tiny fish nearly obscures the wreckage, silver bodies acting as if they had one brain, moving as a single entity away from us. A mooch around the wreck and the outstanding visibility almost makes you forget her depth - at almost 30m it feels like less than half that. I guess its an easy wreck to get far more deco than you planned. Having been right around the wreck I get all macro and find a spectacular nudibranch munching its way along an algae covered plate. Pointing it out to Mark it takes him a moment to notice what I am pointing at, I guess not everyone is a slug head like me. Leaving the slug to his lunch we ascend, practicing gas switches as I have two stages.
The next day we plan two more dives, but something is saying to me don’t dive. I don’t feel ill, just out of sorts. Something is not right, I cant put my finger on it, but even Mark notices too and I decide to can it before I get any further. I would rather be on the boat wishing I was in the water than in the water wishing I was on the boat.
Underwater knitting.
Mark prepared me for the dive by saying that he was not going to hold back. Great I thought. I’m going to be wrapped up in string, have my mask off and be playing with a stage.
We descend to the Rodean, a silty wreck in around 18m and I tie off a primary around 1m from the shotline and a secondary just next to it on a handy bit of metal. Making my way off from the shot I start to be able to make out bits of wreckage, but the vis is low at around 5m. We come across the remains of an outboard engine, plus loads of other junk which seems to have been dumped onto the wreck and I continue to lay line until I get to the end of the reel where I clip it off. I know I have broken one of the golden rules - I have not been consistent with the way I have tied off to each anchor point, but this is not the time to worry about it just yet.
Mark signals me to remove the stage, which I do and place it on the seabed, compensating for the change in buoyancy and then re-clipping it without issue thanks to the new supersized dog clip and fixed D ring.
Next is the nasty bit - I have to remove my mask and hand it to Mark, and once I feel comfortable I remove my regulator and keeping my hand around the line make my way to the next tie off point, some 10m away. This is where the Freediving comes in, and this is really no stress whatsoever. In fact, I can feel the mammalian diving reflex kick in and lower my heart rate and off I go.
Once I get to the end of the line I make a fundamental mistake - I let go of the line and have to ask for my mask back to get re-orientated. Once this is back on and I am happy, off it comes again!.
I need to remove my stage, swim back to the end of the line, turn around and swim back, re clip the stage and replace my mask. Suddenly I see flashes of light over my closed eyes and donate my longhose in the general direction of the flashes, which is then taken by Mark. On arriving back where I left my stage, I know there is something wrong. The stage feels too floaty, too big and just not right, a quick check finds that its not mine, its Mark’s ali 40. Git. A little further along the line and I find my stage, and re-clip it with no problems.
Replacing the mask, we go back to the end of the line and Mark explains I have to reel back in the line blind, so off the mask comes once more. The simple Kent Tooling reel is excellent for this, and I find the first few tie ins no problem to undo.
A grip around my elbow and then a seeking hand up and over my head to my reg tells me that once again there is a need for me to part with my primary. I spit it out and switch to my secondary. I undo almost all of the rest of the line blind and with a diver on the longhose. The regulator is finally returned to me and I find a tie in where I cannot seem to make heads or tails of it. Feeling what it is tied onto, I work some slack into the loop and simply slide it off the top, around a foot from its original position. Cheating? Hell yeah! Once back at the primary tie in I unclip the line and stow it, then my mask is returned to me. We exchange ok’s and make to move away from the shot to send up an SMB. Only I cant. Some sod has clipped the reel back to the shotline in the cloud of silt I created while faffing with the mask. No idea who that could have been. Honest.
Ascent with a gas switch and finally to the welcoming serenity of the surface, safe in the knowledge that I coped with everything that was thrown at me. Yeehar.
Toxing diver lift
The F2 is a dive I know very well, and seeing the two guys on their course laying line opened my eyes as to how even a simple and incredibly familiar wreck can become confusing as soon as you are task loaded. After a few meters of line had been laid and divers passed by the vis was deteriorating to a fraction of what it was, landmarks are suddenly gone and although I know pretty much all of the wreck - I struggled to pinpoint where I was. No wonder the guys on the course got lost so easily.
The end of my trimix course was to do a toxing diver lift. Toxing is when a diver has what can be described as a seizure when the partial pressure of oxygen is too high. This is why getting the MOD - the maximum operating depth - right for any gas you are breathing, even air, is vital. A toxing diver lift simulates when a diver makes a mistake and swaps onto a mix too rich - there is too much oxygen and they fit. This simple sounding procedure goes anything but to plan, with my “victim” sending me into fits of giggles with his fake tox, but it was realistic enough for his buddy to react and try to sort it himself, forgetting I was supposed to do it instead. Getting him ready for the lift I add gas to his wing, but find we are going up too fast, so I ditch gas, but then we are too negative and crash back into the bottom. A couple more of these and I give up, the scenario is not helpful anymore and I need to practice it when there is just me and someone else, not another two people watching adding the pressure for me to be perfect. I guess I will have to have another go at some point this week, but despite surfacing from the “I’m going to be horrible to you” dive feeling high as a kite, after this dive I felt so bad at not being able to do a simple lift, I really don’t care if I never qualify.
Another go.
Me and Mark jump in on the bottle dive, a flat bottomed bit of seabed between Fara and Lyness where a lot of the ships were moored up during the war and ejected their rubbish directly over the side. This makes for a great rummage dive, and since we are on spring tides a fantastic drift too. We seem to get a lot more tat than the other buddy pairs, including some lovely bottles, pots and a couple of shell cases each. At the end of the dive we leave the bag on the bottom and ascend the SMB line where Mark simulates toxing, and I lift him without issue to the first stop depth, switch gas, then continue another 3m. Yeehar! We surface and Mark tells me that I am now officially a fully qualified trimix diver. Feckin scary or what?!
Friday and we plan to do the Markgraf to take advantage of having a buddy and my new toys to play with - squeaky wind and deco software. The previous evening is spent playing with various gas mixes and profiles, finally settling on 21/35 with 50% for deco, a 30 minute multi level profile with around 32 minutes of deco. The really worrying thing is that we also did our gas blending courses (both the nitrox and advanced for me) and I cooked my own gas - eeeek!
Going down the shotline to the bottom we pass several large guns, and then find a tempting hole to have a mooch inside. I was worried that with the mix I might be *too sensible* to go inside - simply that it is the narcosis that gives me the bottle to go inside - but passing under the hull I feel perfectly within my capabilities. A butterfish is curled around a tiny segment of plate, leopard spotted gobies scoot off to avoid the invaders. Walls of rusted metal curve away from us and we swim parallel with the wreck until it gets too low ahead of us, so we turn and retrace our fin strokes, I am glad my trim and buoyancy are ok and the space we have passed through is devoid of silt.
Exiting the wreck we head forward and find another hole to mooch in, there being a gap on the other side of the wreck which would let us swim all the way through. This cavernous hole is filled with broken pipe, twisted machinery, the cogwheels rusted to almost obscurity. Again after what seemed like a very short time we exit and continue forward, where the hull meets the silt, I know we are approaching the bow. A couple of slabs of armour plate lie against the hull here, and I am impressed at their thickness - a good 6 inches. I can see why they removed the armour for scrap.
Ascending right up the very point of the bow, the sheer size of the curve on the metal prow is impressive to say the least. We need to be at 30m, but the top of the wreck is in about 36m. Arse. Getting to 30m and then finning aft we finally see a big chunk of wreck standing proud which will allow us to do our multi-level profile. A broken area of plate is covered in plumose anemones and suddenly the shotline emerges from the green ahead. We are nearly at the end of our planned bottom time, so begin to ascend, the current making me instantly want to send up a bag, but the line is empty so I decide to stick with it. After around 4 minutes other divers arrive at the shot and I signal to Mark that their bubbles will give me vertigo, and I bag off.
The next 25 minutes are spent me trying to backfin and failing, crashing into each other (my fault from my crappy attempts at finding reverse gear), scissor paper stone, light sabre fights with the torches and charades (jaws was the film if you were wondering….). I got pretty cold towards the end and considered mugging Mark for his suit inflation cylinder, although he did offer the hose to me at 6m which would have been the equivalent of a jet fighter refuelling in midair. I cant remember when I have enjoyed the whole dive quite so much, even the deco was spent giggling.
The afternoon was a dive for the two guys who were doing their wreck course on the F2 as the weather was less than nice. About to stand for the dive Barry (Baloo) deposits another stage onto my D rings, so now I have the ali 40 and another cylinder around about an ali 60-ish. Arse. Despite my protestations with a wry smile Mark says it would be a good thing for me to practice with so with the cries of “it’s a stage-a-saurus” I jump in. Squeezing through the swim through on the barge I am actually pleasantly surprised that I am not wider than I feared. Something is not right though, my buoyancy is well off, and I am constantly having to ditch gas from the wing. Bringing the inflator to my ear I can hear the bubbling of gas. Arse, arse and double arse. Bloody halcyon bloody crappy bloody wings! I make Mark aware of the fact I am not too useful as I am grappling with the damned thing, but it is not a major issue - just don’t expect me to do anything other than ascend, if it gets worse I will disconnect the wing inflator hose and run off the suit. At 6m, I take my eye off the ball for a second and that’s it, I’m off up - no amount of ditching gas from the wing and suit seems to help, and before I can disconnect the wing hose I am on the surface.
On getting back aboard the boat I am mugged again by Barry, who adds every single stage and bit of kit he can find, I think it was 5 or 6 in the end, plus a yellow SMB and Hazel’s reel. Oh dear.
Freediving
The air in the flow was utterly still, so I climbed into my semidry and ask Mark to spot for me if I freedive. It is a total rarity for me to have someone who knows what they are looking for when being surface cover. The ability to spot for a samba or a blackout - both signs of pushing it too hard is possibly something he should have kept quiet about. I hoped this extra safety factor would allow me to get outside of the comfort zone I had been diving within for such a long time - the under a minute dive to less than 10m.
As it turned out Hazel had already warned him that I would be pushing it as I would take advantage of having a spotter. Aware of the eyes on me, I breathe up and descend into the green to the bottom of the line down the side of the boat. I reach the bottom at 12m and return to the surface - this is hardly pushing me at all, and so I ask her to add more line to get the weight to 20m - in my mind a good target since I am out of practice. Descending again I feel the pressure on my ears, following the thick blue rope into the darkening green, I can suddenly make out dark and light patches below, the bottom comes into view only 5m or so beyond the end of the rope. The lead blocks hang tantalisingly in view, less than 3m from my glove, but I know from the urge to breathe that the surface is a long way up and turn back. Glancing up the boat looks tiny, an even smaller figure with fins on gazing down silhouetted against the pale shimmering blue of the sky. Finning up I feel the kick of my diaphragm the urge to breathe huge now, but the elation of getting to 17m is buzzing through me. Breaking back into the cold of the air I immediately begin to breathe up again.
As soon as I put the monofin on a clock is ticking - the fin hurts my feet to the point that I will get cramp after around 10 minutes, fifteen at the most. If I am not quick with the next dive I will be unable to dive due to the lack of blood flow in my feet. The other factor surprisingly hurrying me along is the fact I have a spotter - someone in the water. I cannot help but worry he will be getting cold and bored watching me fanny around.
Three minutes clicks over on the Suunto D3 and I power back down the line, already feeling the lack of coordination heralding the end of the session - my feet are going numb. I get to 12m and stop, knowing the bottom is below me, calling me down to see if I can better my previous. It smarts my pride to not venture deeper, but despite my screaming ego there is nothing down there worth dying for, or rather scaring the crap out of Hazel and her banning me from even having so much as a bath over 6 inches deep.
Watching the 30 seconds click over on the computer I slowly head back up, taking my time, trying to increase the time rather than the depth on this dive. Getting to around 7m I know I have over cooked it and haul on the line to increase my ascent rate. At 4m I know it is going wrong, the overwhelming urge to breathe is so strong, I give the out of gas signal to Mark and break the surface barely able to keep my head up. He grabs me and yells at me to breathe, but I am way ahead of him, gasping for air.
A small samba, all a normal part of freediving and nowhere near as bad as people like to make out, but a lesson in not pushing my luck, and maybe tailoring my expectations to my abilities. A distinct lack of practice and static dry holds means I am woefully under prepared for the dives I attempted. Lesson learned.
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For the first time in what seems like months I am truly alone on the boat. For such a long time people have been staying for more than a week, and I have had someone on board on the Saturday. Seeing the boys off I have to admit to having a small cry, such a fantastic group from YD, I think I will miss them all. One person for the second time added a new dimension to life for all too short a time, and I wish he had been here to hold my hand through the last week of my course.
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The sunlight seems to be noticeably weaker than a few weeks ago, its colour fading from the almost intense blue white light to a much softer yellow. Autumn is on its way, marching relentlessly over the land, turning leaves from green to brown. Along with the shedding of the leaves comes the inevitable gales, and we seem to be losing more days to the weather than ever before. Both of us are tired, physically and mentally. This is one of the most intense things I have ever done, and if all goes to plan, next year will be even more so. Just 10 more weeks before we are done, and under 6 before our first day off in months. I plan to sleep, maybe sleep some more and then possibly sleep, just to be sure. Oh and do some washing.
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Letting go.
Some of us carry with us baggage. I don’t mean a huge hold-all filled with clean socks and pants, but something in our heads which we feel somehow obliged to keep hold of. Wondering why we do this lately has let me lose a lot of it. A profound conversation with one of the most spiritual (not religious) people I know made me almost DIR my life. Do I need this (whatever your personal this may be) for my life just now? No. I don’t. So don’t take it, leave it where it can’t do you any harm.
Practice and become good at the things you need to do each day and don’t take short cuts because you will be screwed the day you can no longer use the short cut.
Do everything you can as well as you know you can, using the best of what is available. Life is too short to wear cheap pants.
But he biggest thing is the letting go. Things that people have said and done that have annoyed me, really burned deep and all it needed was for someone to say let the buggers go and you will feel a lot better.
So I did. And I do.
A close friend had a quote from Buddha which really meant something - roughly along the lines of “holding onto a burning coal to throw at someone will burn you much more than it will burn them“.
Being bitter and twisted about anything is such a waste of energy, such a waste of life. I could sulk at everyone who I feel to have wronged me, but I think that being nice to someone who feels you should be being nasty is so much more effective.
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The YD invasion.
Th great YD invasion is over for another year, suddenly Stromness is filled with friends and there are twice as many days tales to catch up on. Team Foxturd are joined by Team Hollywood and I am invited out for a meal with the whole group on the last night which is made extra funny by Howard’s nice new hood. How very apt it is.
