Yo-Han Cha swaps his camera for a measuring tape and gets to grips with maritime archaeology
YO-HANCHA
Nautical but nice
Yo-Han Cha swaps his camera for a measuring tape and gets to grips with maritime archaeology
It’ s a beautiful sunny weekend in July and instead of being out at sea, I’ m sat in a classroom in Vobster. This is all the fault of the Salado wreck at Lundy Island. It all goes back to a diving day when the wind restricted our diving options. As this was a Nautical Archaeology Society( NAS) trip, the boat was full of divers desperate for a wreck.
The skipper of the Barbara B suggested diving the Salado, although there were“ only a few ribs left of it”. It was either that or no wreck at all, so we jumped in, only to find that there were considerably more than a few ribs.
One of the divers on the trip, Sara Hassan, counted 28 of them, and there was a lot of other wreckage to be found around the site. I turned out to be next to useless in providing information of any value. Apparently,“ a round thing, yay big” is not especially useful, especially if your location data is“ not sure, about here”.
With the NAS looking to organise another trip to Lundy, specifically to dive and survey the Salado, I thought I’ d best learn some basic
“ I did the unthinkable and left my camera in my car” archaeology skills in order to be more than a hindrance. I’ m not the greatest when it comes to training, but needs must, so I booked onto the NAS Foundation in Maritime Archaeology, which involved both online and practical learning. The online course was very good; however I learn best by doing, so I was more interested in the practical aspects, which were to be taught over a weekend in Vobster.
That weekend took place on a very hot but beautiful weekend in July, where each day would start off in the classroom before we practised surveying a site in the car park. After a feedback session we would dive a fake wreck site that the NAS has set up in Vobster- those of you who have dived Vobster have most probably swum over it countless times!
The visibility that weekend was poor, but we were told that it was realistic for UK wreck surveying conditions. I thought I would be able to get some underwater shots of my buddy David Walker in action, but the conditions proved to be far too challenging for my photography. So much so, that on the Sunday, I did the unthinkable and left my camera in my car and instead went diving with a tape measure.
The most enjoyable part was putting into practice what we’ d been learning to do. I found it particularly exciting when we got back to the classroom and found that the
PHOTOS: NAS
measurements that Dave and I had made for our trilateration survey worked. Yes, I am a massive nerd!
We also learned that it’ s really important to measure the baseline of a site. All six of us learned the hard way not to neglect the basics. We all forgot to measure the baseline on which all our subsequent measurements were made!
Many thanks to Jon Parlour and Sara Hassan for teaching us, and to our safety diver Leon Smith. The weather was baking hot that weekend, but they made the training very enjoyable. �
Attempting to draw the‘ practice’ wreck
Yo-Han with his buddy David Walker
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