Wreckage from the magdeleine

Brass wheels from a telegraph or control lever. On the end is lots of small chain and a lever like a bike brake handle. Spotted by the London dive team, this was being battered and sandblasted by rocks and shail and had big marks on so we though we would lift it to see if we could find any makers identification marks.

Dredging pendrethen

The water pump in the inflatable tender is used to pump water down to the sea bed to a venturi pipe. This sucks up the sand gently as it is wafted up by hand and leaves the items behind to draw, photograph and measure. The site we were looking into here was the Pendrethen wreck site and Inisidgen cannon site.

Side scan sonar towed array on the boat.

The side scan sonar fish, as it is known, is towed behind the boat at speeds of three to eight knots. It digitises the sea bed and produces an image up to 400m wide called a swathe. Higher frequencies give increased detail or resolution but less range. Today we found some good hits but enterpreting the data takes a lot of time. Eventually we will mosaic the data to give a coverage of the whole area for analysis and archives.

This one was developed by Myself and a few friends I used to work with.

It is a 220kHz system using a programmable processor to digitise signals and send them to the PCs USB port. The software gives lots of tools for analysing th data, recording it, zooming and measuring whilst correcting radiometric and geometric errors.

porthole maybe from Schiller?

Bishop rock lighthouse. Next stop America

What looks like a brass deck drain

Diving off the retarrier ledges this was concreted into the bottom. There are several wrecks here most notably the Schiller, a German transatlantic steam packet wrecked on the 7th of May in 1875 with a loss of 335 lives. It was coined the victorian Titanic in recent times and is well broken up by harsh tides and heavily salvaged by visitors and locals alike so archaeology is difficult. It holds some nice cutlery and rumours of coins with good examples of engineering from Glasgow and England! All in all a nice find with something to report to the receiver of wreck on returning.

Off to the western rocks.

London spidge SAC out deciding where to dive while trying to avoid seasickness. A great bunch and a good laugh. After fixing their boat a few years ago we became friends and now have a regular meet each year.

A hedgehog looking for scraps of food was one of several noisily snuffling away and gathering scraps of food.

Good food cooked on a barbecue on the camp site.

Burgers, pitta bread, spare ribs, onions, salad and chili sauces. Well earned. The RIB or Rigid hulled inflatable boat is moored in the harbour and the kit set up so more diving tomorrow.

Barbecue with divers.

Scilly day 5 breakfast!

After a few days relaxing im just finishing breakfast while waiting for a group of divers from london to arrive. The plan is to look at a few sonar hits, dredge a site to uncover the extent of the wreckage to see if we can identify it and have some fun making a new DVD. It will be good to see them again. I made friends a few years ago after repairing their boat engine and have kept in touch as we all have a great time and similar interests. The weather since has been very inclement over the past few years but we are hoping for better this year. Fingers crossed this but so far so good!

A stunning evening.

After two dives and some wildlife watching the light put on a stunning show for us where cormorants, razorbills, puffins and shags gracefully glided over the ironed sea and the sun reflections glistened off the rocks and wavelets. I am having problems with my phone key pad but will try to sort tonight.

Me

Stunning day

1 knot wind blue sky warm absolutely perfect

Filming.

Well we started filming on among the western rocks for a new film and will be diving later. There are a lot of puffins seal pups and cormorants around.

Sunset

The bay of Porthmellon on St Mary's with its seaweed and volcanic stone coloured white sand. The sailing center is just out of picture to the right and with a low tide the water is almost ready to start flowing in again.

Exploring wrecks and filming puffins with pieces to camera off the western rocks

Calm day after sonar tests

After testing the sonar successfully a walk to old town for food and drink seemed a good idea.

Quiet and green

Welcome to base camp

Chez Robin is complete

Garisson walls

The entrance to the garisson which surrounds the campsite and star castle. Gun batteries of cannons similar to those from colossus are scattered around it at strategic locations.

My peaceful hq for 3 and a bit weeks

Now my luxury accomodation is sorted I need to sort dive kit.

Eventually up

What a mess!

The sun has gone in and im having trouble remembering the instructions!

SCILLY !

Arrived in glorious sunshine ready for four weeks of diving, sonar testing and surveying, dvd marketing and production. Home currently feels like Scilly after being here more than where I live this year.

Scilly !

Arrived with tones of rubbish ready to dive relax and enjoy life

Scillonian bridge

Off to Scilly

The Scillonian 3 steams across smooth seas.

A stunning day

Sun and sea with sand on the way.

The sun and sea.

Its such a flat calm beautiful day. The sea smells lovelly and am starting to relax. I have just been told by the captain they saw basking sharks and dolphins yesterday.

Penzance!

Its six fourty five and im very tired but after parking the car in town I now wait to load the boat.

Leaving in the dark

When I left at two am it was pitch black with the only sign of life a vixen and her cubs playing in the road.

Finally a website I can be proud of is uploaded and hopefully I can keep it updated regularly using my mobile phone.
After giving my design ideas, some photographs, 3D artwork, text and links to Chris Wilsdon, fellow experienced web designer and photographer he has done a great job of taking my design ideas and engineering what I wanted, adding his own icing on the cake. Thanks to Chris for a good job and a good creative eye.

Sonar repair for Andre is complete. A revamped sonar originally built by Sture Hultqvist (sadly no longer with us) and similar to mine but using his own hardware and software.
The original connectors were not underwater rated and had corroded preventing the surface unit from triggering the fish. As a result the TVGA(time varying Gain Amp) was not triggered and the sonar was missing the most vital piece appart from the transducers.
This was repaired and a refurbishment undertaken to allow Andre to use his fish reliably whilst looking into the possibility of upgrading it to my software and new hardware to digitise his fish.
this is now a future possibility.

I am off to The Isles of Scilly in two days for 3 weeks and 4 weekends, to start hunting for some wrecks testing my improved sonar and filming for various projects. I will also finish filming the Isles of Scilly Travel PR work and my Explore Scilly DVD all being well.
As per usual I expect to be repairing things for locals, playing music and having a few barbecues too. Cant have all work and no play!
Thats it for now.