Yo-Han Cha is learning the ropes of having a non-diving partner – lesson one being to seize every opportunity for a cheeky dive
YO-HANCHA
A pass for the M2
Yo-Han Cha is learning the ropes of having a non-diving partner – lesson one being to seize every opportunity for a cheeky dive
Having Claire in my life is the best thing ever. Nowadays, if I have a free weekend, instead of automatically filling it up with diving, my first port of call is to see if there’ s anything that we would like to do together. This is a life adjustment that all divers in relationships have probably made as well. I had heard about being given a‘ pass’ for the day / weekend before, but as I’ ve mostly been single during my diving life, it was hard for me to conceptualise as my time was always my own. Now I understand its meaning. [ Perhaps not entirely, but let’ s not sully your innocence – Editor ]
So when Claire told me that I had a pass for a Saturday in August, it got the cogs in my brain whirring. First, I had to check if I was on call that day – I wasn’ t. Second, see if anyone else would be free and want to go diving that day. I messaged my club and within the hour there were four of us willing to go diving.
“ I had heard about being given a‘ pass’ for the day / weekend’ before”
The forecast looked good and as I’ m not a boat handler( and have scant working knowledge about RIBs) I initially looked at seeing if we could book onto a hardboat. Unfortunately, as it was a short notice pass, all the charter boats were full, but I did notice that two of them out of Portland were planning on diving the M2. The tides must be favourable and I double checked the forecast, light northerlies, the M2 from West Bay( where my club keeps Badger, it’ s RIB) looked doable.
Out of the four of us, fortunately the other three were all boat handlers so a plan quickly came together to dive the M2 and Baygitano. By the end of the midweek pub meetup, we had a full complement of six divers. Jon Massey took the lead in organising Badger’ s logistics, while I covered the dive management aspects of the day.
My main concern was working out the slack for the M2. It’ s usually three to four hours after high water Portland. But during neap tides, the information we had was that there’ s slack a few hours before high water and we were on neaps.
I checked when the hardboats were going out of Portland and their websites said 11.30, which convinced us to go for three hours after high water. But, due to a very favourable sea state, we arrived very early and we were the only boat there. After about 20 minutes the glorious site of other boats arriving confirmed that we weren’ t total numpties and had correctly worked out the slack time.
Diving the M2 was a particularly special achievement for one of our group, Sophie Frendo, who had tried on four previous occasions to dive the famous submarine. For a variety of reasons, her previous attempts had all fallen through; the last was especially frustrating as the shot had come off the wreck and all she saw was the seabed near the M2.
This time, however we all enjoyed a successful dive on the M2 followed by the Baygitano before heading back to West Bay, tired, hungry but very happy. It was all in all a very successful use of a pass. �
Yo-Han’ s M2 dive team at West Bay Harbour( l-r) Amelie Balfour-Bernard, Nicholas Schofield, Eduardo Santana De Vega and Sophie Frendo
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