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The Darkness Below

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22/23 Jan - Diving - I don't think so.

After last weekend's shakedown dive it seems we won't be able to get wet this weekend. Winds of 45-55mph expected. Will keep my boat well away from water methinks.

 
15 Jan - return to the sea

Yesterday was an early return to North Sea mixed gas diving for the Stonehaven Snorkellers - thankfully it was my turn to boat handle. Getting my boat ready in my drive at 0745 it was pitch black, -2C and the boat covered in frost and ice. Once the sun was up it got a bit better. Dived the SS Fernside 5 miles out of Stonehaven in 55msw. Water looked clear in the shallows but the boys reported pitch black, silty 3 metre vis on the bottom - and 7C chilly temp. One guy's in water off board pee system failed - came a bit unstuck, if you know what I mean - and he got a bit wet. Topside for me was lovely when the guys were in the water. I got a good chance to look carefully at the SS Gowrie not far away and get its orientation sorted out in my own head - and on my GPS. Fine pint in the Marine Hotel afterwards - thanks to Paul Haynes, Gary Petrie and Simon Carter for a fine day out.

 
24 December. Have a Merry Xmas

We'd talked about trying to get a decent dive in between Xmas and Hogmanay - despite topside conditions, the water is still warmish as it takes a while to cool down from the summer. Big winds forecast 50-60mph next week so I guess it will be a non diving break. Have a Marry Xmas and a grand Hogmanay. Rod

 
16 December. Great British Shipwrecks - the new project

Now that The Darkness Below is selling away it's time to move on to my next project - to be called Great British Shipwrecks. Over the years for my various wreck books I've illustrated more than 30 UK shipwrecks from Scapa Flow to the English Channel. The new book will be a coffee table style book, low on words and high on images and will include lots of wreck images - I've already finalised new images of the Konig, Bayern turrets and James Barrie and am working on new images of the Justicia, HMS Audacious and SS Empire Heritage in the North Channel as well as HMS Pathfinder in the Forth. if anyone has good underwater phot's of the wrecks which they would like to submit for inclusion in the book e-mail me at rod@rod-macdonald.co.uk

The manuscript has to be in by end Feb and we're looking at publication in the summer.

 

dive scapa flow The Darkness Below

 

 

 

Rod Macdonald ready to diveI took up diving in the early 1980's - it seems so long ago now - before even Wham were popular. I went on to develop an interest in shipwrecks after my first dive trip to Scapa Flow in Orkney where the remains of the German High Seas Fleet from Word War I still lie on the seabed - 4 cruisers and 3 gigantic battleships.

When I was there I struggled to find any decent information for divers on the German wrecks and this led me to come up with the idea of writing a Dive Guide to the Scapa wrecks. The First Edition of Dive Scapa Flow was published in 1990. The wrecks have however decayed and changed so much over the years that the book has been constantly updated - it's now in its 4th edition.

Dive Scotland's Greatest Wrecks covered the histories of the classic Scottish wreck dives and was published in 1993. It is in its 2nd edition.

Dive England's Greatest Wrecks was a complimentary book about the top 10 wrecks south of the border and was published in 2003.

Each of these 3 wreck manuals covers the history of the wreck and its current condition. I tried to give hard diver information on each of them and commisioned a marine artist, Rob Ward to illustrate each wreck as it lies on the seabed today.

My last book Into the Abyss - Diving to Adventure in the Liquid World is a collection of all the incidents, hilarious and serious, that have crammed themselves into my diving career and covers my panic stricken first sea dives and subsequents forays into increasingly deeper water in search of virgin wrecks.

My latest book, The Darkness Below, is being released in October 2011. It covers my transition from deep air diving to trimix diving -where we use helium gas mixes to make deeper diving safer. From there it follows the progression to rebreather diving - and along the way covers diving in Scapa Flow, the South China Seas, Norway and other fabulous wreck sites, some lost and forgotten for aeons. Join with me to be the first to dive, see and experience these hidden wonders from history.

Rod Macdonald...Posing.

 
Survivors Forum

Rod and FlagResearching, diving and writing about shipwrecks has brought me a fair amount of contact from survivors of some of the wrecks I have written about - as well as from relatives of those who perished in the sinking or who survived but have now passed away. To date I have dealt with this in an ad hoc way as and when contact has been made with me.

Although there are Survivor's Forums for a number of well known Royal Navy vessels there has to the best of my knowledge never been a focal point where Survivors and Relatives of other vessels can come together to share information and make contact. Despite its faults, the internet has proved to be a wonderful tool for this sort of thing.

To give some structure to this and provide such a focal point I have created a Survivor's & Relatives Forum on this site. After following the registration process you can then start posting about ships of interest and start making contact. I truly hope that this will bring people together whose paths would never otherwise have crossed.

Click on the "FORUM" button on either the left or top menus of the site to access.