The F2 is strange wreck as it doent really have a proper name.  It was an escort ship with a German documented name which literally translates into escort ship number 2 - this has been bastardised into the moniker F2.   She sits in roughly 17m of seawater and is accompanied by a salvage barge that was recovering her guns in 1960-70 when it was moored on anchors that were too short and she was overwhelmed by the rising tide - they are now sitting side by side on the bottom of the seabed.  

The wooden barge is home to many sea creatures and made an interesting dive in itself, however the F2 was magnificent as it has been partially blown to pieces as it was considered a danger to surface shipping scattering all sorts of bits and pieces over the seabed which makes for an interesting look though...  The dive lasted some 60 minutes during which we circumnavigated both the barge and the main F2 wreck inspecting the bow which is intact, its control rooms and forwards guns (also intact), Iain took the swim-through in the bow to the rear of the forward gun (I watched him swim the length of the swim-through and then joined him at the rear of the gun) and then we went on a bit of a muck dive to look at of the broken pieces of a blown up war ship.  We stumbled across a 3:1 reduction gearbox used within the ship to lower the speed of the engines  to drive the prop shaft of the boat - it was the size of a small family car!  Quite amazing really when you think this was a SMALL boat!  

All too soon we were feeling the cold and at 55 minutes we were heading for bow to return up the shot line to the surface.  Once on the boat we were greeted with tea and biscuits, followed by a hearty lunch of chilli and rice, followed by chocolate muffins with lemon icing.  Once again yum, yum..!

Dive 2 was on a WW2 block ship called the Tabarka (no wikipedia link available) - a 2600 ton freighter.  These we ships sunk in strategic parts of the Scapa Flows to make entering more difficult for German submarines - hence the name "Block Ship".  Alas most of these ships were sunk once HMS Royal Oak had been sunk by a U-boat that penetrated the Flows but she remains an excellent dive despite effectively being the equivalent of shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted.  

The Tarbarka sits upturned in approximately 16m of seawater.  The descent to her was made in supposedly slack water, however i thinkEmily may have judged it a little premature as it was still running damn fast and getting down to the wreck proved channelling, however no one in the group overshot it and missed...

Damage to the Tabarka's hull allows access into her internal areas and they are very large open parts to swim into.  The deterioration over time has allowed light penetration into the interior effectively turning them into cathedrals of underwater lighting as they are so picturesque.  in the engine room the 3 huge boilers can be seem and coupled with the light penetration literally took my breath away and I had to sit on some of the exposed spars of the floor (technically its a ceiling as its its all upside down) just to soak up the view for a few moments.  Every aspect of the wreck had a fantastic play on light with the hull being exposed like fingers and the sunlight penetrating from the surface to display amazing gracefulness.

Finally the tide began to turn and as we were beginning to feel the cold it was time to leave so Iain deployed his SMB (Surface Marker Buoy) and we returned to the surface once more to complete the final dive of the holiday...   :-(

It was a very quick motor to the harbour at Stromness and soon we have packed all of our wet dive gear into our crates and placed it into the shipping containers ready to load on the ferry tomorrow.  We then returned to the digs for showers and went out on the town for a final meal and a few beers.  

Tomorrow we start the long haul home...

The SMS Brummer is a minelaying light cruiser displacing some 4500 tons.  She lies on her starboard side in approximately 36m of seawater.  We descended the shot line and discovered the superstructure of the ship along with some of her forward guns and access hatches.  Inside one of there hatches we could see train tracks that were used to wheel out the mines from the storage areas down to the stern of the ship so they could be pushed of the rear.  Large parts of the superstructure have peeled away from the ships hull exposing large sections of her innards and overall you got the impression that this boat was not as heavily built as some of the others.  She was still an impressive dive and immensely enjoyable, and it was a shame to have to return up the shot line due to ever increasing deco time on our computers.

Mugs of tea were waiting for us on the boat and Emily moved the boat to more sheltered waters with seals on the banks of Hoy in clear view.  The seals in Hoy are able to be hunted by the fishermen so are quite shy of man (in case they put a cap in their ass!) so on the approach of the bat the seals departed fairly rapidly...  Lunch was served (Moroccan Lamb Tajine with couscous followed by Sticky Toffee Pudding - yum yum) and then it was a return to a previous favourite for the second dive of the day - the SMS Karlsruhe.

The dive on the SMS Karlsruhe is fairly shallow at 27m (ish) so as my computer has been counting deco time a bit quicker than Iains I decided to dive on Nitrox 32 for this dive whilst iain remained on normal air.  The result was that we both enjoyed over 45 minutes on the wreck whilst incurring minimal deco time for iain (and none for me).  Whilst waiting to get in however we were greeted by the savage arrival of winter as it started sleeting with real ice in it.  Brrrrr!  We got in to the sea to warm up...!

During the dive on the SMS Karlruhe we visited the bow of the ship as we had previously dived the stern.  We saw the forward 6 inch guns, the Conning tower (and had a good look inside it too) and even managed to locate the bow capstans and was able to inspect the little steam engines that drove the anchor winches located in the 3rd deck down (don't worry, easy access to that level is possible due to the ship having collapsed in that area providing open access).

Returning back along the hull we explored a little of the ships openings and dropped in deck to poke around with our torches.  We encountered a rather large shoal of fish that looked amazing when backlit against the surface sunlight and then we met a resident seal who seemed intent on rummaging amongst us in the wreck.  This seal was easily as long as we are tall and plenty of us saw it - commenting about what a large animal it was.  until then I figured seals were small and charming creatures but this one would cause you some damage if you upset it...

Returning to the shot line we were buzzed by Rob the boat hand who has his ride-on scooter in the water for the first time.  It was quite amazing to see it - and pretty quick too!  After completing the deco stops we were back on the surface and soon were onboard the boat again just in time for the heavens to open up during the return sail back to the harbour,

The visibility was roughly 6m today so gauging the scale of this wreck was a challenge.  The Stern of the ship has a beautiful double row of portholes (some even with glass in them) through which remnants of the officers accommodation is visible if you care to poke around with your torch.  The rudders of the Markgraf are sitting dead upright and are huge,  Swimming between them and up the hull superstructure we were soon following the dorsal fin that runs down the starboard side of the vessel which would have enhanced stability at sea.  All too soon it was time to send up the SMB (Surface marker Buoy) and commence out travel upwards towards the surface - stopping for deep stops at 20m and 14m followed by an extremely long deco at 9m and 6m using our 50% O2.  

Upon arriving back at the surface we returned to the boat and had a hearty lunch of fantastic Sweet Potato and Ginger soup with loads of local baked bread, followed by Sultana and Cherry homemade scones - yum yum!

After roughly a 2.5 hour surface interval during which we had been briefed for our next dive which was on the SMS Konig the namesake of the Konig class battle ships.  We had dived a sister ship of this class of battleship - the SMS Markgraf - earlier in the day.

Dropping over the side of the dive boat we descended the shot line to the rear of the Konig.  Her upturned hull has completely buried the superstructure of the battleship so little of the guns and upper deck is visible - the real gem of this dive is that the salvage operation undertaken years ago did not recover all of the good stuff within the engine room.  It did however inadvertently expose masses of the internal superstructure of the boat - allowing visible access to the steam turbines, torpedo tube areas of the stern, lower decks where the gun turrets would have reached down to and so forth.  Emily's brief gave us a map of where to go and what to look for but I soon found myself lost amongst the wreckage of this ship as it so HUGE, and was grateful when Iain took the lead and found a few more things that I had managed to.  

On this second dive the deco time seemed to wrack up rather fast, so all too soon we were preparing to send up the SMB again when Iain signalled to me to look behind myself.  Literally 3 feet behind me was a huge seal with the most massive dark eyes you can imagine just handing in the water.  Iain thinks the bright colour of the SMB attracted it to investigate, however I could not resist rolling on my back and showing the seal my fins - and just like the text books i have read the seal took a playful nibble...  I was unfortunately very mindful of the deco time we were exposing ourselves to, so I deployed the SMB and the sound spooked the seal and all too soon we were at our deco stops and then on to the surface.

A lesson was learned today on my Vyper dive computer in that deco stops totally if you drop below 6m - so future stops will be made at 5m instead.