Wreck of the Valiant "where is it?"

Up at 5AM we went out in search of the wreck of the valiant yesterday. The Valiant was apparently commissioned in 1945 by the Ministry of Munitions. The tug was 22.5 metres long, 5.4 metres wide and displaced 72 tons. A sister ship, the Fury, was built at the same time. The Valiant was powered by a Crosley HR4 diesel engine giving a top speed of only 8 knots.

Valiant

 After the end of World War II, ownership of the Valiant passed to the Melbourne Harbour Trust Commissioners. It appears that the ship was modified at this time, with water tanks added, the foredeck lowered and equipment added to suit her new role as a fire boat. It appears to have operated out of Melbourne. I do not know much more about its history but in 1975 it was still registered to the Commissioners.

In 1981 after a complicated series of events while under tow to be scuttled, the tow ropes broke and the Valiant sank approximately one kilometer east of Barrenjoey Head. reference: Michael McFadyen Scuba Diving Web Site


We boarded the "Hoochie Mumma" at the Spit and set out on our 90 minute trip to the wreck site. What started off as promising weather soon turned into fairly blustery conditions.

 

Hoochie Mumma anchor chain, bad weather

As we were anchoring over the site the crew had a mishap that caused the rear anchor to get wrapped around one of the propellers. One of the divers jumped in to inspect and it took several attempts with hammer and crowbar to remove the mangled sand anchor from the prop.
We were the first into the water and started our slow descent to the bottom of the anchor chain. I was on 33% Nitrox and was buddies with Michelle and our DM, Sam. To demonstrate the effects of narcosis, Sam had a slate of 3 brain teasers at the bottom (~28M)which I completed in 27 seconds (on the surface it took me 19 seconds). We headed out at 45 degree (suggested direction of the wreck)using a 40 M line. No sign of the wreck and only bare sand to be seen. We did a complete 360 degree search at the end of our 40M line, still no sign of the wreck.

CO2 poisoning

We had been down about 17 mins and it was time to head back. I noticed a headache starting and thought nothing of it at the time. We stayed on the anchor line at 5M for our 3 minute safety stop and then slowly surfaced. My headache was now quite severe and I suspected that something was wrong. Upon getting back on board the boat I took off my gear and felt a strong urge to throw up that was accompanying my pounding headache. I went to the back of the boat and took some fresh air. After a few minutes I started to feel better and I got a cup of tea. I suspect my headache was caused by CO2 retention (
Headache information) as I had been skipping breaths wanting to not be the person who ran low on air first, in fact I had returned with over 100 bar while my buddy was down to 50 bar, so I must have been breath skipping quite a bit.

Feeling better we went down for our second dive after the boat had been repositioned. The Captain said that we had drifted while the rear anchor problem was sorted out and he would now get us directly over the wreck. Second dive; I focused on continuing to breathe as I did not want the CO2 retention problem again. Unfortunately we did not find the wreck again, but we did see the concrete bucket (that was attached to the rear anchor) which we saw on the first dive in the distance. None of the other dive groups found the wreck either so our boat operator apologised and blamed new sonar and sat-nav equipment that had just been re-calibrated. He offered us all a free second trip to this or any other site that they operate to - not too bad.

One poor guy was terribly sea-sick and he looked awful on the 90 min trip back. It was cold, grey and raining. I managed to doze for about 20 minutes to ease the trip.