Scapa Flow

With an array of historical shipwrecks located in its waters, Scapa Flow could be described as a wreck diver’s heaven. DIVE asks readers for their opinions. Kate Quarry reports. Photographs by Lawson Wood

When to go
April to October is the main season, but hardy souls dive there all year round.

What you’ll see
There are many wrecks in Scapa Flow, but most divers aim for the seven wrecks remaining from when the German fleet was scuttled in 1919; the others were salvaged. The seven consist of four light cruisers – Cöln (22–36m), Brummer (22–36m), Karlsruhe and Dresden (22–40m) – and three battleships – Kronprinz Wilhelm (18–38 m), Markgraf (28–45 m) and König. As these are relatively deep, afternoon dives are often on the shallower blockships in Burra Sound. Fish life is not prolific, but you will see ling, cod, ballan wrasse and conger eels, soft corals and brittlestars on the wrecks, and scallops, mussels and sea urchins on the sea bed. In some areas snorkelling with seals is possible.

Where to go
Out of the water, a visit to the museum and cemetery at Lyness on Hoy is recommended, and the area is very good for birdwatchers: good sites on the mainland are the bird reserves at Hobbister, Birsay Moors, and Marwick Head.

Air/water temperature
In April, the water is around 4–5°C, and the temperature increases to 12–14°C by September. Even at the height of summer, air temperatures generally remain cool, but can sometimes reach 20ºC.

What to wear
A drysuit is highly recommended at all times of the year.

Conditions and visibility
Scapa Flow is surrounded by land, and consequently the area is not badly affected either by winds or tides. However, the exception to this is Burra Sound, a popular area for second dives, which has very strong tidal flow.

Accommodation
If you are not on a liveaboard, your diving centre may have its own accommodation
(as Scapa Flow Diving Centre and the Diving Cellar do) or will recommend accommodation. Alternatively, you could try The Ferry Inn in Stromness, tel:
01856 850280 .

Travel
The Orkney Islands are beyond the northernmost part of mainland Scotland. Most dive-boat operators are based in Stromness on Orkney, which can be reached by ferry from Scrabster (near Thurso) or Aberdeen. For information, contact P&O Scottish Ferries, tel: 01224 572615, website: www.poscottishferries.co.uk
Flights from Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Inverness to Kirkwall on Orkney are run by Loganair: these flights are bookable only through British Airways, tel: 08457 733377, website: www.british-airways.com. Airlines operating flights from England and Wales to mainland Scottish airports (for connections
to Kirkwall) include British Airways, British Midland, tel: 08706 070555, website: www.flybmi.com and easyJet, website: www.easyjet.com.

Easy diving - Andy Wood

Andy Wood, 33, lives in Bexley, Kent, and works as a draughtsman. He has been diving since 1994 and is an instructor with the dive school Divemasters International and also teaches disabled divers. He has made three trips to Scapa Flow.

All three of my trips to Scapa have been with groups. On the first two trips we used the Sunrise liveaboard and on the last, in 2001, we dived with the European Technical Dive Centre. We used the centre’s two boats, the MV Crombie and the Loyal Mediator as dayboats, and stayed in accommodation arranged by the centre.

As we were using twin-sets, we had a lot to carry, so we took a minibus. We started at 7pm on the Friday and drove through the night (with six drivers), getting the midday ferry from Scrabster, and arriving in Stromness at 2pm. Last year’s trip cost £300 each, including the minibus and ferry, all the diving and bed-and-breakfast accommodation, but not lunches and dinners. The problem with flying is that the flight from Scotland to Kirkwall – around £200 for a return – is so expensive. If you dive with the European Technical Dive Centre using the Loyal Mediator, they’ll pick you up from Scrabster, so you don’t even have to pay for the ferry.

In 2001 we used bed-and-breakfast accommodation because there were quite a few couples in the group, and although the cabins on the Sunrise are comfortable, they are tiny, which was fine for all the single guys on the previous trips. On my next trip to Scapa, I will probably go on the Sunrise, because you get to the dive sites earlier.

The boat returns to port each night and the skipper arrives at 7.30am the next day to start the engines. The cabin boy provides the hot drinks, cereals and toast while you’re heading for the dive site, so you dive and leave the first site by 9am, which is when the dayboats are arriving. It’s really nice to be the only ones on a site. After the first dive you have a cooked breakfast, and the day’s second dive is after lunch.

All of my trips were in August/September and the water was 12–13°C, but you never notice the cold because the dives are too exciting. There is a perception that the diving at Scapa Flow is ‘rufty-tufty’ and that you have to be very experienced, but I don’t agree with that. You need to be able to dive to 30m, but I’ve dived with PADI advanced divers up there, who haven’t dived much after qualifying, and they’ve been fine. The Flow itself is very, very sheltered: the worst I’ve seen is a Force 4, and even then the water was just a little bit lumpy. The boats are big and comfortable and don’t rock and roll, and as each wreck is buoyed, there’s no waiting to put down shot-lines. The boat pulls up near to the shot-line, and each buddy pair is picked up after the dive by the boat, which has been following their SMBs. It’s better to put up an SMB when you exit the wreck, because the wrecks are so large that it’s difficult to get back to the shot-line.

I dived using 32 per cent or 36 per cent nitrox, which doubles the bottom time you’d get on air, so you have up to 45 minutes on a wreck. On all the trips we dived all seven of the German wrecks. My two favourite dives are the Brummer and the Dresden. As they are cruisers they are smaller, and it is easier to orientate yourself, and as soon as you locate the wreck you know you’re diving a ship, not a lump of old iron. The battleships are so big that you can only appreciate the size of the ship if you find the rudders or, on the Markgraf, the side-guns.

The best visibility is to be found on the blockships in Burra Sound, where the current takes all the mess away. On the Tabarka you get crystal-clear water. There’s a 15-minute window at slack tide to get inside the wreck, which, once you’re in, is like being inside a cathedral. The sun shines through the holes, making them look like stained-glass windows. As soon as you exit the wreck you send up an SMB and drift, but you’re going so fast you have to look out for the other wrecks or you’ll run into them.


Feeling cold - Jim Fisher

Jim Fisher, 49, is a head teacher who lives in Leigh, Lancashire with his wife, Gillian. Jim learned to dive 30 years ago and is a member of the SAA club Atherton SAC. He has visited Scapa Flow seven times, always diving there with Scapa Flow Diving Centre.

I first dived Scapa in 1983, and my seventh visit was during Easter 2002. We always go either at Easter or in September – weather-wise September is a little more settled, and Easter’s a little riskier. This year we had to abort one dive because the wind was picking up and the weather forecast wasn’t favourable. People do dive Scapa in winter, but obviously not as many of them as during warmer weather. I am a fan of wreck diving but, even so, Scapa is very special – it’s the northern hemisphere’s Chuuk Lagoon, where intact wrecks are guaranteed. In other places the wrecks have been dragged by wires or broken up.

We usually go in a group of 12 from the dive club, and book our own ferry, although Dave and Eileen from Scapa Flow Diving Centre would book it for us if we wanted them to. We arrive on Saturday and dive from the Sunday to the following Friday.

We stay in comfortable self-catering accommodation in Burray, South Ronaldsay, just three minutes away from the pier that the boat departs from. It takes between 45 minutes and an hour to get to the dive sites on the MV Shalder – the hardboats from Stromness take about ten minutes to get to the sites – but we enjoy the boat ride. Between the two dives of the day there are two or three hours out of the water, during which you can enjoy the other things Scapa has to offer. The boat often stops for lunch either at Lyness, where there’s the museum and war cemetery, or Stromness.

I don’t know what the water temperature is – I just know that it’s cold! I have a drysuit now, but I didn’t have one in 1983 and the locals thought I was mad! The visibility depends on how busy it is – when there are a lot of divers, the silt gets kicked up. The dives are more exciting in clear water, but even if you dive Scapa in poor visibility you can still get an overall impression of what a wreck is like, so it’s worth it. I’ve dived the seven main wrecks several times, and although we don’t do decompression diving – our decompression stops are for safety – we still get bottom times of between 20 and 30 minutes.

The Brummer is my favourite dive, but I also enjoy seeing the big guns on the Kronprinz Wilhelm. The Germans did such a good job of making the ships difficult to salvage that you can’t see the guns on all the wrecks – some have turned turtle so that the massive guns are sinking into the silt. The wrecks do have access points and open areas, and some are on their sides, so that you can safely go along the deck walkways. You could go a long way inside some of them, too, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

Our club often dives places such as Anglesey, and we have regular trips to the south coast and the Red Sea but, even after having been there seven times, I’m sure we’ll be going back to Scapa again.


Battleship glory - Mike Bailey

Mike Bailey, 46, lives in Hereford and works as an electrical engineer. He learned to dive 13 years ago, is a BSAC advanced instructor, and is the chairman and diving officer for Hereford SAC. He is married to Susan and they have two children, Andrew, who qualified as a diver two years ago, and Rebecca. He spent a week in Scapa with a group of 12 divers, and intends to go again.

We were planning to go to Scapa and asked around to see if anyone had any recommendations. One of the guys at Comdean [a diving school and shop in the West Midlands] suggested the Sunrise liveaboard, which we had to book a year in advance. The 12 of us slept on the boat, which came into port each night. It’s a converted trawler, with quite nice, reasonably sized cabins. After the first dive each day, the first pair of divers back on the boat would start cooking the breakfast, as we’d arranged to do our own catering, and we ate lunch and dinner in pubs and cafés.

The trip was in September and the water was very clear and not at all choppy. Lion’s mane jellyfish seemed to be everywhere. There were a lot of urchins but not so many fish, although we did see a few shoals, some lobsters and crabs. We did all the popular wrecks, and the Vanguard, which was more wreckage than wreck [the Vanguard, on which 700 lives were lost, has now been declared a war grave and cannot be dived].

I preferred the dives on the big battleships such as the Kronprinz Wilhelm, which are three or four football pitches long. The wreck is nearly upside down, but not completely, so you can tuck in underneath to see the stairs or gun turrets. It’s difficult to orientate yourself, because of the size and position of the turrets, but it’s amazing to see how big they are, and they’re largely intact, apart from a few blast holes. One has brass wheels, which were used to position the guns manually if the electricity was turned off. It is essential to carry two strong torches, but I’d advise people not to go inside. The Karlsruhe is another wreck which is very broken up and has lots of tempting holes. On some wrecks a few from our group did go inside, but I didn’t.

The dives we did were quite long because of the decompression stops. Once you’ve gone underneath and had a mooch around, you need to do decompression diving, as the wrecks are fairly deep – my dives on the König, the Kronprinz Wilhelm and the Brummer were at 39m, 38m and 36m. The Wilhelm was fabulous, with huge guns and lots of pipes. The day we dived the Dresden we were the only boat on the site. We usually did see other dive boats at sites, although the skippers do call each other to try to work round each other.

Although the Orkneys are a bit touristy, some of the lunch stops are interesting. The museum and cemetery at Lyness on Hoy are worth a visit, and I found the area fascinating. When we go again we’ll probably try a different boat. I wasn’t disappointed with the Sunrise but I’d like to try something different. If you don’t try new things. you don’t know what you’re missing.