Come Dine/Dive With Me

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DLL COME DIVE/DINE WITH ME
 

THE STORY OF A SCAPA FLOW COOKING COMPETITION WITH A BIT OF DIVING THROWN IN AS WELL.
 

We can officially announce that the winners of the inaugral DLL 'Come dive/dine with me' competition are the Boys. Their triumphant menu went as follows:
 

Nibbles: Bombay mix
 

Main: Home made lamb rogan josh (created with a spice mix prepared from scratch by Martin and then transported all the way to the Orknies for the competition), coriander rice, aloo ghobi and 'home-baked naan' (naan from a packet...)
 

The dessert was Bangalore bananas served with ice cream.
 

It was delicious.
 

Let's backtrack a little here; DLL went to dive Scapa Flow in mid August, probably my favourite place to dive in the world. The Flow is a large protected area of water in the Orkney Islands which has played a major role in both world wars. Divers travel from all over the world to dive the famous German battleships which were scuttled at the end of the first world war.
 
The wrecks are awe inspiring, giant battleships, still remarkably intact, with many of the huge guns still present on their decks. The wrecks have enticing names like the SMS Dresden and the SMS Kronprinz Wilhelm a destroyer almost completely overturned with it's immense guns partially buried in the seabed at the bow.
 
All the wrecks teem with life and offer incredible swim-throughs and penetrations for the more adventurous.
 

We were based in Stromness for the week which leads me nicely back to the cooking competition. This being our third year in Scapa, Jen and I were acutely aware of the dubious culinary offerings in the town, a place where asking for an unbattered sausage in the chippy leads to open ridicule from the locals and a possible wicker man scenario (sorry for pinching the gag, Ben)! Therefore a plan was hatched that would enable us to eat like kings whilst we were there: 3 cottages with 4 divers apiece: The boys, the girls and the teccies, 3 nights, 2 courses and the sole brief to prepare 'hearty diving food'.
 

We were treated over the following nights to such delights as the aforementioned homemade curry and then the bangalore bananas which provided a comic double whammy of being so soaked in rum that when the oven was opened all the boys were blinded by hot alcohol vapours and then the sight of Martin serving us the bananas in just his underpants, a phrase I'm already thinking I should re-write. Needless to say he was heavily marked down by the teccies and marked up by the girls for the performance.
 

On the following night the girls served up a sophisticated roast lamb dinner followed by an astonishing rhubarb crumble. Unfortunately there was no nudity this time something that resulted in markings down from both other cottages.

Finally the teccies served up another roast dinner. This time the menu was presented in the form of a deco plan and despite the usual analytical and precise mind of the technical diver the food, although delicious (if I do say so myself), was served in a haze of disorganisation that not even an Irish coffee consisting of whiskey flavoured with coffee could rescue from some heavy point losses.
 

After the competition was over, replete and with drysuits all feeling a touch tighter than before we headed out to dive the Tabarka, one of the blockships sunk by Winston Churchill (not by hand, he told someone else to do it) to prevent U boats from sneaking into the Flow. The Tabarka is an awesome dive that requires a slightly frenzied negative entry to get to. It's only about 14m deep but it's in a area with a strong tidal flow meaning you can only dive it at slack. You usually enter the water as the tide is slowing, get into the wreck and then head out again as the tide turns the other way. In this instance everyone was so efficient they got down incredibly fast and started finning into the current in the wrong direction meaning I was presented with the amusing site of a group of fins frantically heading away from the wreck whilst I yelled, waved my torch, banged my cylinder and activated flares to attract attention. Fortunately Amelia guessed the mistake and everyone ended up back on the wreck. Inside the wreck is like being in a cathedral with incredible, crystal clear water.
 

After that we did the bottle run, a chance to have a rummage around on the sea bed looking for all the stuff that got dumped out of the wrecks when they were being salvaged. We came up with all sorts of plates, bottles, bits of brass and a few lovely scallops.
 

The last couple of days of diving were spent revisiting and properly exploring some of the battleships.
 

This was one of the most pleasurable dive trips I’ve done with a great crowd of people and the diving in the flow never failing to amaze. It’s definitely worth the long journey up even when travelling in a hired van restricted to 63mph.....!