A dive? In November? On the South Coast, the day after a storm? Sure, in the long list of questionable decisions I’ve made over the years, this might be quite a long way up there. Even more so doing it in a single day with 6ish hours of driving.

I’d missed out on this wreck in the summer and when a seat came up on a FB group, I thought ‘what the hell’, I had squeaky trimix sat on some tanks, I have fresh bailouts with deep and deco mixes and I’m sure I can put together the rebreather in time. Then Storm Claudia blew in and I blithely assumed the skipper would cancel and made plans to meet a friend for coffee. Skip to saturday afternoon, skipper has confirmed its going ahead. SF2 is assembled, gases have been tested and everything is go (and friend re-scheduled).

Sunday morning at 6am, down the M5 to Portland, arrived early to brisk wind and cool temperatures and started questioning my life choices. This would continue as we loaded the boat and headed out. Like most UK divers I’ve been in shitty seas, I’ve also done boat courses (sail and power) so generally like to believe I’m ok at sea, especially for a guy from the Midlands. The journey out was unpleasant, rocky but bearable, bit hairy getting kitted up as the boat bounced around, but managed with assistance of the skipper. Everyone who’s done this, knows the sweet relief in these circumstances when you go from bouncing around wearing 50+kg of kit to then having waves breaking over your head to then drop quickly down to 5m or so, everything goes quiet and still, you stop thinking about throwing up and start checking all your kit is good. Guy I’d jumped with gave me an ok, checked him too and down we went to a very dark 50m to the U-322.

Bottom of the shot to see a massive lobster and various bits of gearing etc. It was very dark so the 2-4m viz was only ever in the beam of a torch. Nonetheless, moved down the wreck to the stern, very quick look at the prop before deciding I wanted to see the bow and the torpedo tube. Back along the boat taking in the various bits of gearing, and a weird circle that I was later informed was a passive radio receiver for detecting boats so thats pretty cool. Saw the torpedo tube then back along the top as my deco rapidly climbed up, saw the conning tower and the break where she was depth charged and straight back onto the massive prop. Stopped for some dark photos and marvelled that this massive prop is still attached to the wreck then drifted back up, away from the wreck. Turning my torch off to deploy the DSMB left me in the fun position of being able to hold one of those things but not both so I deployed the DSMB basically in the dark by feel. Quickly up to 30m then a bit slower up to 18 for the first stop. 1 min at 18, up to 15m for a few then 12m, 9m for a bit then up to 6m for around 25mins of deco. I’m not the hugest fan of deco hangs so that was long enough staring either at numbers on my computer or into the cloudy green. Drove my PP o2 up to 1.4-1.5 for the last bits of the deco and kept it there for a few more minutes before getting up to the surface. The hang at 6 was fairly ok, but I’d heard from some on the boat who had stopped at 3m (why!) that it was very bouncy there. On the boat, quickly de-kitted and either stayed out the way or assisted as some more divers came on deck.

As we departed and got close to Portland Bill the sea was very choppy - fair bit of starting hard at the horizon until back behind the breakwater and felt able to get out the dry suit and take on more water. The sun had gone down, the spray from the sea was covering the deck and there was a lot of movement. So freezing cold, slightly queasy we finally arrived back in Portland. Loaded the car. Turned every form of heating I had in there on. Told myself to concentrate and headed for the motorway, a filthy burger and a 3 and a half hour drive home. Overall - great dive but I should have known better than to risk sea conditions in November as the journey out and especially back wasn’t that fun!