I've launched a new wreck diving You Tube channel featuring short video clips of my own footage from some of the great wreck  centres I'vr explored - such as Truk LAgoon, Palau, Guadalcanal and Scapa Flow. I've annotated as appropriated so you know what you are looking at and I intend to add about one a week when I'm not away diving and set up playlists for each location so if you're planning a trip you can get a flavour of what its like in advance. 

It's my fault really!! The contract with my publishers Whittles provided for a 220 page book. By the time I'd finished it and done justice to Scapa Flow it has come in at 360 pages! This has in turn meant a longer editing and design process - before the files get sent for printing an dsubsequen tdsitribution of th ebound volumes. We have simply run out of time to meet the provisionally intended publication date of 28 May so to take the heat off we are letting publication slip by about 1 month. No point rushing it.

Just back from presenting about HMS Hampshire at OZTek in Sydney and a week's diving directly after with Tulagi Dive up in Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. Interesting WWII wreck diving with some incredibly well preserved aircraft - particularly a Catalina PBY flying boat and a Japanese Kawanishi fluying boat - Allied reporting name MAVIS

Its been a lot of work but the manuscript for the Centenary edition has now completed its edit process. Huge thanks to my brilliant editor Caroline Petherick for spotting my howlers (hopefully all of them!!) and tidying everything up.The book is now looking great - its been fully expanded to about 150,000 words and will be a big book - packed full of information that just wasn't around when I wrote it the first time round. The only thing that remains the same is the title!

The launch has now been set for Thursday 18 May at the Royal Hotel in Stromness - looking forward to it already!

2016 was quite a year.

An early Wreck X expedition to Scapa Flow in February was followed by a Wreck X expedition to Palau where we launched my latest book DIve Palau - the Shipwrecks at Sams Tours on the island of Koror.

After leading an Explorers Club expedition under MOD Licence to survey HMS Hampshire off Orkney in June, the same survey team reformed at the beginning of December to begin the survey of the British battleship HMS Vanguard, which blew up at anchor in Scapa Flow in 1917. The wreck is a war grave on which no diving is permitted but our team was again granted a MOD Licence to visit her remains. We carried out preliminary work with a side scan sonar survey of the site before we began to dive the wreck and piece together her story. A further 2 week expedition to complete the survey work takes place at end of January/beginning of February. 

Its done! The manuscript is done and dusted and going off to my publishers with all the photos, charts, new illsutrations all neatly captioned and ready for the editing and layout process to start. A quiet celebratory beer seems in order tonight!