Divers Down

This morning we've had Apex Divers at station. They were here to carry out the annual inspection on our moorings and also to replace the pickup ropes on the main mooring. The annual inspection isn't quite due but because they had to come and change the ropes it made sense to do the inspection at the same time. I bet the diver would have rather waited until a little later in the year!

There are 4 of them. The diver, standby diver, boat man and the dive master.

The first job was to inspect the main mooring and replace the pickup ropes. The main mooring has 2 anchors that run aprox East/West. These are connected by a heavy ground chain, a riser comes off the centre of the ground chain up to the buoy.

The breasting buoys were checked next. The Western one was moved back into position as it had been washed in to the West by the waves in the latest round of strong Easterly winds. The breasting moorings only have a single anchor and are designed so that we can pull towards the slipway. Unfortunately this means that the Western one is prone to getting washed out of position. The RNLI are looking at making this mooring more like our main mooring to stop this.

And the results? Good news is that the main mooring and Western breasting mooring are fine, the bad news is that the Eastern breasting mooring is badly worn. The anchor is OK as is the buoy but all the chain and shackles will need replacing. I guess we'll be seeing the divers again sooner than expected!