Diving on the Nab Tower is an excellent dive that can be done at all states
of the tide and is a typical Solent dive. It has it all, with the life, lobsters, fish
of numerous species plus the gloom/darkness.
Underwater the Nab Tower is described as a wedding cake structure each step
about 5 metres. So you can structure your dive anyway you wish, with the depth
that you wish. Diving with a ‘novice’
diver, ie one that has neither dived at the 20 metre depth or with little Solent experience, I have set out a very simple dive plan beforehand.
We are dropped off by the
boat in the lee of the Nab Tower and surface swim to the Tower. We then descend to
the first tier if ok proceed straight down to the second tier and so on until
we get to the bottom, or fourth tier if you wish, at ~20 Metres.
The most important point of
this dive plan is in the explanation beforehand that we only proceed if the
‘novice’ diver is happy and it is carefully reinforced the first rule of
diving, that one does not do anything if you are not happy or confident with.
Equally the dive plan can be
set out which tier is the bottom of the dive. The lead diver can equally stop
and return to a higher tier during the dive if they feel that the novice diver
is ‘under stress’.
We can then proceed around
the selected tier until the tide stops you and return around the base then
ascend up a tier. Each tier can be explored in turn and they are all different
with their different types of life.
So finally one gets to the
last 5~7 metre tier so the safely stop is the last tier, admittedly not the
best tier but a lot better that hanging on a line in the gloom for three
minutes.
I do not normally post my
dive computer underwater profile but I feel that this time it explains the dive in the
best way.
This dive was a threesome
dive with my regular dive buddy Dan plus my daughter’s partner Josh. Josh comes
from that ‘clear water diving land’ of New Zealand and is an Advance Diver and this was to be his first
dive out of New Zealand!
I was glad that his holiday
schedule over here allowed his dive to be the Nab Tower.
This dive on the Nab was
rather unusual in as much as it was at a slack tide but I did not take that on
board at the time during the dive. So we could have gone all the way around the
Tower but we didn’t.
As you can see during the
video the two diving styles are very different with Josh’s 1~2 metre dive style
off the bottom verses Dan’s ‘on the bottom’ technique, common amongst ‘Solent
Divers’.
This is definitely one of
the most relaxing dives one can have in the Solent, one just has to watch out for the tide wall when the tide is running
otherwise one could get swept away.
The Nab Tower is also the place where one can pick up lobsters and,
as can be seen in the video, Julian is the diver who can always locate and
catch a lobster on his dives! It was big enough that he sent the lobster up
using his lift bag!!
A really nice dive.
To view the video on the Youtube website click the link:
No comments:
Post a Comment