LETTER FROM EAST ANGLIA...

The cry from Dave who has a look at the beach in 'twirlly town'* just about every day of the year - "There's Blue water (i.e. Vis) out to sea - who's going diving?"

Damm; it's Tuesday morning and another test spec to create; but apart from Dave and myself the rest of the 'Sunstar' diving club just can't tear themselves away from their desks.

OK then so we go on Thursday, 6 of us will meet up at Felixstowe Ferry, after sorting the boat out the night before, around 10 O'clock to catch the 1^st slack of the day. Because the wind is picking up we make the decision only to go out to 'Fort Massac' about 8 miles offshore, we arrive nice and early for slack water so anchor up and wait. Wreck site is easy to find, Marked by 2 cardinal buoys, run from one to the other with a sounder running and you'll find the wreck without problem.

There is six of us the RIB, Tracey S. and myself are second pair in. Head under the water and the wreck(s) are visible 8 Mtrs below- this is unreal for this part of the North Sea! Wreck stands some 4 mtrs proud of the bottom with a lot of the hull still intact. So it's down the anchor line and swim around the outside. There is lost pots to look inside, nets to keep clear of and sea life to look at. I saw more Nudibranchs (Aeolidia papillosa) on this dive than I've seen in a long time. Tracey ask later what I was doing as I picked up lots of crabs, turned them over and then let them go. Actually I doing 2 things, checking for legal size and sexing them, the female crab has broad tail shells between legs and a male has narrow one - it's very obvious when you look, I only try to take a male ones for our dinner. There are several wrecks around this site - the original wreck, a salvage vessel and service barge which sank whilst salvaging the FM. A trawler which caught it's nets in the wreckage and rather than cut their nets sank the trawler and at another freighter which hit the wreck site as it was off course.

Notable things to see are a lot of large pipes outside of the wreck its self, working out were one wreck starts and the others finish, crockery and Chess pieces, made out of Lead and painted red or black. Also around the wreck site are large quantities of Bottles which contained? They are of twisted octagonal shape with space for an oval label. They had a screw top on at one time. The writing on the bottom gives the name of H. Jones & Co and deposit paid. What did they contain? Well I've found anyone yet who has any idea.

We did a 2^nd dive, not as memorable, somewhat closer to shore, which was broken up with the majority of the wreck displayed as flattened plates on the sea bed. This had some Lobsters on but the legal sized one didn't want to play with the insides of my goody bag!

In all I spent 1 hour 30 minutes in the water that day - this is what living this close to the coast is good for when conditions are right, which sadly it just isn't often enough. I would hope that the keen diving members of Midlands clubs would be far more enthused to go diving at short notice if they lived and worked this close, within 30 minutes driving time, to the water.

Have fun,
Wilf.T.

* Felixstowe - it was called that by one of the locals when I first moved down here and it's stuck. Why twirlly town? Well it's because of all the old peoples tea dances were they 'Twirl' around the dance floor (and along the pavements afterwards!).

e-bubbling: Trip vacancies, news and for sales for e-bubbling to Bob Kempton at robert@rkempton.freeserve.co.uk

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