Crimea 2006

Crimea 2006
A Tale of Derring-Do and Derring-Don’ts
By Nick Manfield


My job has led me to live and work abroad, most places tend to be devoid of diving possibilities (Afghanistan being a noticeable exception where I spent a good time diving for cover!). So it was with great relish that I accepted my current job in Odessa, a beautiful seaside town on the Black Sea in the Ukraine. Several months of armchair-diving later, I was starting to wonder why I had spent countless pounds in overweight baggage allowance bringing over my dive kit including my shiny new Megalodon rebreather which by now was more of a conversation piece in my apartment than anything else. I was also starting to count the cost of the overweight baggage at the end of the contract.

The Ukrainians came to the rescue, courtesy of the rebreatherworld.com. My profile had been noticed by a couple of local divers who offered to end my misery. First was Mike, a Russian Inspiration diver who lives in Cyprus and Odessa and second was Alex, a Ukrainian Maths Professor who lives in Nottingham, who was an open circuit Trimix diver who had recently bought an Inspiration Vision but was awaiting his course.

Mike introduced me to Black Sea diving, in which I singularly failed to impress. Having lent me his bailout Aluminium 40’s to use as my inboard cylinders and obtained sofnolime for me which in these parts is as rare as rocking-horse do-do, I proceeded to demonstrate that financial affluence does not equate to diving prowess. It was my third dive on my Megalodon and my third dive in a dry-suit for 6 years. The surface temperature 40 degrees, below it was 12 degrees. The boat was a ‘converted’ (it has a dive flag) ship’s life-raft which required the collective skills of a spineless contortionist and belly dancer to negotiate entrances and exits. A deep-fried, beer-swilling Brit in a dry suit didn’t stand a chance, so as I felt the waves of heat exhaustion hit me I threw myself in the water and proceeded to loose the bands holding my inboard oxygen. Mike came to the rescue and clipped the cylinder to me as if it was a stage – not a photo for the front cover of a dive magazine! For the rest of the dive it was a case of the Michelin man meets Mr floaty-feet. The next week I was off for a week diving with Alex in the Crimea. Luckily he didn’t know what a treat he had in store for him as my future dive-buddy.

Ukrainian hospitality is legendary, so armed with Mike’s 3 litre cylinders and the rest of his cache of Sofnolime (and no doubt him wondering if he’d ever see me again), I set off to Crimea. An uneventful seven hour drive later I arrived at Yevpatoria railway station where I had arranged to meet Alex who was arriving from Kiev with more kit than a heavily-kitted thing. It was clear that he had not flown from the UK.

A short drive of 30 kilometres later we were at Popovka. The accommodation was new, clean and, judging by the amount of brand new German cars and 4x4s, a popular hang out for Mafia hoods taking a well deserved break from the exhausting business of money laundering. A lullaby of drunken revelling and hard-core jungle music from outside my room assisted me to drift into the welcoming arms of Morpheus.

At first, it was hard to see the boat. ‘Rumb’ is a former commercial dive-boat and in its current livery it is painted in camouflage and covered in camouflage netting which left me wondering if we were going ‘up jungle’ to meet with Colonel Kurtz in an Apocalypse-Now stylee. Those thoughts were rapidly put out of my mind when I was handed a cup of coffee and not an assault rifle. Stages sorted, fills filled and fettling well and truly fettled we bumped and scraped our way out of the wharf headed for the wreck of the Volgo-Don, a WW2 Russian freighter that had been captured by the Germans and sunk by a Russian submarine. At 90 meters long she sits upright on the sea bed at 38 metres. Visibility was 15 meters and as such made for a perfect check dive enabling me to get used to the particularities of the Black Sea: at the surface it is warm at about 20 degrees until you hit a large thermocline at 12 metres. From here your man-bits have a tendancy to gravitate topside as the water plummets to about 9 degrees. One poor soul on the boat was only told about the temperature above the thermocline and had decided to bring his 3mm wetsuit – needless to say he only did one (very short) dive that day! Thankfully there is no current which also means that the wreck is completely covered in mussels which seemed to be very keen to attach themselves to my dry-gloves as I tried to get my buoyancy.


Alex had a few issues to sort out on his twinset, so for the second dive I was buddied with the boat-owner, Dima, who dives an Inspiration with hammerhead electronics. We could not understand each other above the water but once under the waves the universal language of hand-signals made everything much clearer. Having another rebreather diver seemed to inspire me and soon I was following Dima through the ships superstructure except for in certain places where the doors were too small or the mussel growth too thick for me, two 11 litre bailout cylinders and a healthy covering of ‘bioprene’ to squeeze. After 40 minutes the surface beckoned and the 12 meter thermocline was very welcome.


Alex had enjoyed the antics of the partygoers so much the previous night that he had decided to stay on the boat, no doubt discussing the best tactics to infiltrate up the Mekong Delta. I arrived to find the boat full of recreational divers who had managed to work out how to take up the maximum amount of space with the minimal amount of equipment. Things did not bode well as, again, we bumped and scraped our way out of the dock. 45 minutes later we were told that we were nearing the divesite, only to find the other divers on the boat not moving – things were looking up as we found that it was only Alex, Dima and myself that would be diving as it was too deep for recreational divers and that the others would be diving later on. Having kitted up, it was with much relief that we threw ourselves into the water before passing out with heat stroke. The Varna is a mussel-covered Bulgarian World War two freighter that sits upright on the bottom at approximately 60 metres (observant readers may now start seeing a pattern regarding Black Sea diving). There is a permanent line attached to the top of the mast at 22 metres which gives you a good idea about the size of the wreck. Once through the sludgy 12 metre mark the visibility increases significantly to over 20 metres as the temperature drops. On hitting the deck the view upwards from the bottom of the mast is outstanding. Swimming towards the stern the twin anti-aircraft deck guns still point upwards awaiting attack, unfortunately for the Varna it was a Russian submarine that was to become her nemesis. The holds are open and visible in the ooze that covers her are wooden barrels and boxes of ammunition. Unfortunately, any penetration on her would lead to a no vis situation and with Alex’s gas supplies dwindling it was time to head back to the surface. The ‘Rumb’ steamed back towards the Volgo-Don to allow the recreational divers to have a crack at stirring up as much silt as possible – a task they set about with much gusto. Whilst sitting out this dive the smell of rotten eggs indicated that someone had brought something to the surface. The mud of the Black Sea and the cold temperatures means that things remain preserved, so when the sticky mud was washed off it revealed a stack of world war two vintage newspapers in mint condition. Judging by the print it looked like the Germans were going to win! Alex, having used all the gas in his twinset, was unable to make the third dive, leaving me to ‘go solo’ for the last dive. Again, there is so much to explore on this wreck, with easy penetration into the bridge areas, holds and salvaged engine room. A complete circuit of the wreck later and it was again time to surface before the boat left without me. On return to port it was fun to see that the recreational divers were getting their log-books stamped with official stamps that had previously been found on the Volgo-Don. There can’t be many people with a stamp in their log-book that comes in from The German Admiral of the Black Sea fleet! In total the diving, plus lunch on the boat for the two days worked out at $150 (though Dima didn’t end up charging for the gas and cylinder hire).

The next day it was time to decamp to Balaclava on the Southern tip of Crimea, having paid my hotel bill I went to pick up Alex and to say goodbye to the Rumb. Alex looked like the newest addition to the Black Sea wrecks having enjoyed Ukrainian hospitality until 4 in the morning and having got himself slightly ‘over refreshed’. We arrived mid-morning at the Aquamarine dive-shop which is situated slap-bang in the middle of the promenade in Balaklava and, having sorted out equipment and stages, went for the required check-out dive. There had been some recent Tec-Diver accidents in the area and as such this was a prerequisite prior to deep diving. The boat was very small but as it was just myself and Alex (now laden with a twin 18 litre monster twinset) very convenient to dive from. It would be a good shake out for the next day’s dive to 90 metres. The dive itself was uneventful but allowed me to practice my rebreather skills on the Meg and also showed Alex some of the peculiarities of buddying with a rebreather. He also learnt very quickly not to use the rebreather loop as a convenient hand-hold when carrying out a bubble-check (I don’t think he’ll be doing that again in a hurry!!!!). The dive was a wall dive down to 30 metres, with very little to see except a vast amount of jellyfish. With my dry-suit, gloves and hood I became very complacent and started boxing the jellyfish and sticking them on the end of my 10 watt HID (It was that sort of a dive). However, where Achilles had a heel, the rebreather diver has a top lip, and one jellyfish decided to ‘take one for the team’ and in a supreme act of defiance managed to lodge itself between my mouthpiece and my mask giving me a very painful sting. Jellyfish1, Rebreather diver 0.


As we returned it became clear that the weather was turning for the worse and come the end of the night there was a full blown storm raging. So after an evening of bailout strategy discussion it was time to return to our apartment where the owner moved out and moved into her garden shed for the period of our stay.


The planned early morning dive looked increasingly unlikely as I was awoken by flashes and crashes as the storm reached its peak. A quick call to Oleg, the dive-centre owner, who confirmed that the harbour was closed and the dive duvet-magnet was set to maximum. There would be no diving that day, however a local boat owner came to the dive-centre to say that his boat had come adrift and he needed diving support to attach it to the pontoon. Alex and Oleg came to the rescue and spent 45 minutes at 11 metres in zero vis, reattaching the boat and earning themselves the equivalent of $20 a piece for their work. Consequently, I have decided not to give up my day-job to be a commercial diver in the Ukraine.


With no diving to be done that day, the ever adaptable Ukrainians decided that the best thing would be to shut the dive-centre early and shortly the bottles of Cognac, wine and local champagne were being shuttled in by the dive-centre staff, divers and boat owners. Chats about decompression made way for debates about the merits of the Beatles and Chelsea football club. Despite not diving I was surprised by the level of narcosis I achieved.


So it was like a small child on Christmas morning that I looked out of the window to see if Santa had delivered some good weather. It was a bit gusty but looked fine for diving. However, the Balaklava day-boat fleet is not made of as sturdy stuff as British skippers and anything remotely bigger than a ripple can send them scurrying back home for a nap / vodka break. We were told that, all being well, we might be able to dive at 4ish. By 3.30 we had packed the gear on the boat and were chugging out in virtually mill-pond conditions. By 4.30 we were at the dive-site when the skipper started to look concerned as he stated that Ukrainian divers wouldn’t usually dive in such rough conditions (I think he might have spotted a very large rogue ripple on the way out). Nevertheless he was prepared to let us go once he shotted the wreck. This is where the fun really started and I feel that the translation for Sacha, Ihor and Ivan, the skipper and deckhands, must mean Mo, Curly and Larry as their attempts with the shot were likable to the three stooges. First, the spool got caught, then the rope got knotted, then the shot went down but 50 metres from the wreck. Apparently the Skipper said that they had reduced the weight of the shot from 60 lbs to 30 lbs as it was much easier to haul aboard, and that this had worked fine at 30metres. Unfortunately, this shot with floaty climbing rope did not make for a good combination for a wreck at 90 metres, so with a heavy heart (and a light shot) we had to cancel the dive as we would have been surfacing at night.

Unfortunately, the weather took another turn for the worse and the final day’s diving was also cancelled. Still the wreck will still be there for another day.

In conclusion, I would say that the Crimea offers some excellent opportunities for deep wreck dives. The weather is not usually as poor as it was this week, but it has to be considered that most Black-Sea day-boats are not designed for typical UK Channel diving conditions. The Wrecks themselves are intact thanks to the cold temperatures, lack of current and the heavy layer of silt. Technical diving is yet to become truly mainstream, but there are a number of outfits and individuals that are passionate about it. One certain unit is supposed to be very professional and will take you to some excellent wrecks in the 70-130 metres range, but you must be prepared to pay. As a Rebreather diver they will charge you an extra $100 per dive for using a rebreather (not including gas, sorb, boat hire etc) as they say that they make most of their money on gas and rebreather divers don’t use enough of it. I was told that in reality the argument is that if you’ve got enough money for a rebreather, then what’s $100 between friends. There are many known, but undived wrecks in the area which would make it a very exciting place to do true expedition diving. This is so tempting that Alex and I are thinking of mounting an expedition next year, with a view of diving the main wrecks in the area between 70 and 120 metres with a view of diving the unknown at 130 metres. Alex is a master of negotiation and we reckon we could do the lot for the cost of a week red-sea live-aboard trip. So if you’re interested please email me at nmanfield@yahoo.co.uk

Finally, a big thank-you goes to Alex, whose patience and assistance were invaluable, I hope your MOD 1 Inspiration course goes well and look forward to diving with you again in the very near future.


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