High winds, rough seas, gales, big swells, chop...is there no end to this crap weather we’re getting? Searching for and finding a window to get out on the yak is hard work; but we spotted one this weekend. In the early hours of Saturday morning the wind was going to drop down to a force 4 - this was doable but it was also going to turn south south east so I wasn’t sure how it was going to affect things at Hopton. It would be up to force 6 by late morning so we had to get in and out early and so I set my alarm for ‘oh my god it’s early o clock’ and went to bed at ten on Friday night.
This was the time that the weekly party began opposite my house and the constant banging of the front door, shouting in the street and loud music had me completely unable to get to the point of dozing before waking me up again. I was, to put it mildly, f**kING IRATE by the time my wife got home at around 11:30. Woken up by yet more shouting at 12:30 I went across to the window and watched two girls having a set to – an excuse for some sleep now ;) I called the police...Four of Lowestoft’s finest came along and things settled down a bit by one. The next wake-up was at 02:30 when they started to go home, noisily. Imagine how I felt when my alarm went at 03:30 having had perhaps one complete hour’s unbroken sleep. I felt like banging on their door to wake them all up but figured it’d delay my launch and they’d possibly still be awake. As it was, my neighbour woke the bastards at 8 ;D
Suited and booted, coffee in a travel cup I got down to Hopton to meet Onmas just after 4. We could hear the waves hitting the beach but they weren’t going to be problematic so I got the Scupper off the roof and went down with Jason in his Trident 13. I was also keen to try my new customised Scupper-sized coolbox (it worked really well, photo taken afterwards though).
Jason launched first while I returned to look for something and then I paddled out shortly afterwards to a mark I’d identified on the Humminbird Side Imaging unit last time out. Jason was at the usual mark and I was crossing my fingers that the technology would not fail against the trial and error approach of the previous year!
I downed anchor and dropped down my 4/0 Viking pennel rigs baited with black lug and 1cm wide rings of squid tipping them off. It didn’t take long before the first whiting was aboard – and a good size too. This carried on for a while until the tide started to ease. We’d missed the faster run of the tide when the cod usually bite but I’d had non-stop action and most of the dozen whiting I’d brought aboard had been keepers. Jason called me up on the VHF and asked me to stick some lights on so he could locate me as he’d packed up and we were going for a paddle. The plan was that once the bites had slowed we’d head north on the slack and anchor up by the wreck of the White Swan at Gorleston to try and get some of the fish I’d picked up on the finder the other week. As he started getting closer I up-anchored and we set off together, me recording the track and going via some of the waypoints from last week. I got a better image of the debris field from one of the wrecks having gone a lot closer and this was filed away as definite hot spot for future use.
It was quite a pleasant paddle really, it was getting light as we paddled along and finally we spotted the buoy that marks the wreck itself and headed in for a few scanning passes before dropping anchor to fish.
Bugger. There were only 3 anglers fishing the stretch between Hopton and Gorleston and they were all 200 yards apart and casting at the wreck! It would have been impolite to continue with our plan of fishing it and so reluctantly I resigned myself to scanning only and then, having no doubt annoyed them by our constant passes (sorry) we headed south again.
Scans of the Swan:
What you see on the screen at the time:
Processed snapshots in Yellowfin
Here there’s a bit of study going on – the top left screen shows a conventional 2d sonar recording with the bottom left showing a 2d side scan, this done in Humviewer:
Top left is the standard 2D downlooking sonar (this is on the 200khz narrow beam equivalent to a third of my depth for the sample). The bottom left window is the transducer data shooting out to the sides as per a quadrabeam unit and the blue is of course the Side Imaging, the central darker area being the water column and bottom contour (ie the ship rising upwards from the ground) and then the bottom spreading out from the edges ie the plan view, port and starboard of my position above it. On the top left you're seeing bow - superstructure - rudder from left to right. Bottom left it's bow-rudder from top to bottom - left and right of your position.
The White Swan itself is an old Swan Line Ltd collier completed in April 1903 by the Blyth SB Company Ltd (Yard No.113) and owned by J. A. Dixon and T. N. Sample of Newcastle, the single screw White Swan was en-route from West Hartlepool to Liverpool when she went down on 17th November 1916…93 years ago. Measuring 287.3ft long with a 43.2ft beam and weighing 2,173 gross tons, she dragged her anchor (it’s not just me!) and ran aground. It took 13 hours to get the twenty-strong crew off by Breeched Buoy. Their only steamer, the loss of the White Swan put Swan Line out of business. The morning after she ran aground:
Measuring the wreck in the software it's still the same length.
Andy: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=230382057437&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT
Here's a 10x speed video of the scan.
[URL=http://s24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/609photos/Humminbird/?action=view¤t=SwanCrissCross.flv]
[/URL]The first wreck area didn’t show much worth bothering with so we continued on after I’d pinpointed it and finally came to the general area of the debris field. I started to scout around for it and bingo! It was pretty extensive, there was plenty of structure and we’d be in a good position for heading in too. We finalised things and got ready to drop. I had some trouble with cable ties so had to keep stopping and paddling and then finally got in position, dropped anchor and waited for things to settle down.
It was a bit tasty to be fair. The wind had picked up by now and was in the opposite direction to the tide. I got my lines down then started to swing as the flow wasn’t too great as yet so brought them up again after ten minutes…a decent whiting on the end of one of them…result! I decided to stick to one rod for the time being instead.
Things didn’t seem to improve as far as the current was concerned and the waves were getting a bit annoying to be honest, compounded as they were by being over some wreckage of course! Therefore we decided ‘f**k it, lets go have a cuppa at mine’ and up-anchored, me having to break out my weak link. Then we started to move.
Brilliant! Head on into the waves which were in the 2-3ft high head-on, close together range and I was loving it – exciting but not unstable it was! The Scupper Pro cut through nicely, riding up and over each of them and I even started to laugh, sing and cackle! It was great. Then back onto dry land and we watched as a couple of teenagers came running down in swimming costumes and went for a dip. Rather them than me, although Jason also had a go…
Well, that was it. We returned up to the top, had a natter and then went our merry ways, getting home at a diplomatically early time to boot.
Abigail was down quickly when I got home, asking if I’d caught some fish which she had to look at, of course, and which she had to watch being gutted, of course, and whose stomach contents she had to study, of course and so we got the paper and knives out and set to dissecting…Abigail spotting the first worm. There were a fair few too. The stomach cavity on these whiting were teeming with round ammonite-looking hard objects as well which turned out to be the same – the Anisakis worm, but in a different stage – smaller and curled up but not moving. The livers were covered in them, embedded on the surface of them but not actually ‘in’ them if that makes sense. I took a photo and stuffed all the bits into a tub ready to take down to the pier later with Abigail. Later on it occurred to me that I might be better to just dispose of them in a different way though rather than spreading the worms further and so I left them in the fridge for the time being. Having decided that worms are just additional protein I then froze the majority and filleted four for our lunch which were served up with the fried roe I’d also put to one side.
I remembering about the bits again when my friendly neighbourhood CEFAS scientist was sitting having coffee and cake at ours the following day! So, with knife, lupe and paper we proceeded to have a good look at them and managed to uncurl one. Which was nice!
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