ON YOUR MARKS IN THE RACE FOR DEPTH

When it comes to breaking records, rivalry can be intense, but it's entertaining for those of us on the sidelines.

Controversy surrounded the record-breaking wreck dive attempt off the Channel Islands by UK diver Mark Andrews and his French colleague Jerome Meynie,” reported Chris Stone of BBC Radio Jersey.

“The Jersey-based diver who had arranged to video the attempt, Mark Ellyatt, dropped down to the wreck before the others. When they failed to arrive he completed the dive solo – leaving Andrews most unhappy.”

Andrews and his associates had spent months preparing for the 170 m (558 ft) dive on a wreck believed to be the Baden, a World War I German battleship, sunk as a result of gunnery practice by the Allies after hostilities ended. The wreck lies upside down in Hurd Deep off Alderney.

With the intention to spend 25 minutes exploring the wreck followed by a nine-hour ascent to take into account the required decompression stops, Mark Andrews had claimed he had raised around £100 000 in sponsorship to pay for the costs. This included a backup team of 20 divers and helpers, 34 gas cylinders, compressor, booster pump, the charter of the dive boat Wey Chieftain, a support vessel and two large inflatables.

Storms delayed his departure from Portland so he arrived only on the day of the dive, 25th July 2000. It was the day that Concorde crashed in Paris. Mark Andrews had originally intended to be based in Alderney and carry out warm-up dives before the attempt.

Another Mark, Mark Ellyatt, arrived from Jersey where he lived, with two RIBs and three support divers and carried out the dive, citing as evidence his dive computers, which showed a maximum depth of 167.1 m (523 ft), plus the material recorded by his video camera.

Ellyatt said he rendezvoused with the record-seekers’ flotilla of boats above the wreck at about 3.30pm, to be ready for slack water at around 5.00pm. His own plan involved a more modest 14-minute bottom time. He had dived several times before in the area, including a 180 m (585 ft) bounce dive – a dive made with only a short pause at the bottom. Hurd Deep is well known among locals for its strong tidal flow.

Ellyatt said he was ready at the right time, but noticed that the main team was having problems deploying their shot-line accurately. What happened next was farcical.

The record-seeking divers, Andrews and Meynie, might have practised endlessly back home for this event, but loaded with an unusual number of gas tanks required to carry out their plan, they found they had no exit point by which they could leave their boat. It was the one detail they had not considered. The doorway was too narrow. They managed to get jammed in the tail-lift of the boat. The pair wore quad bottles and side-mounts.

Unaware of any of this, Mark Ellyatt had already entered the water at the moment the tide slackened and with his video camera at the ready, descended on his own shot-line to prepare for the dive at 6 m (20 ft). He claimed that this was after signalling to Mark Andrews’ boat. He then continued on down to the wreck and waited there for them.

Meanwhile, tempers had flared on Wey Chieftain. They also found that their hat-mounted lights were fitted with cables to the battery packs that were too short, which restricted their head movements. When they finally got into the water, the tide had started to run. Mark Andrews got down to little more than 7 m (23 ft) deep while the other record-attempt diver is said to have made it to 14 m (45 ft).

When Andrews and Meynie failed to appear, Ellyatt was slightly confused as to why. He assumed that somehow he had missed them and they were still on the wreck but out of sight. He prepared to ascend.

After a few moments getting tangled with his own shot-line, which had become taught thanks to the action of an increasing tidal flow, he completed the dive as planned. He ascended at a safe rate, receiving decompression tanks to breathe from that were handed to him by two of his faithful support divers, but found he had drifted around eight miles from where the group had started in the rapidly accelerating current. By then Wey Chieftain and its support boats had left the area was nowhere to be seen.

It appears that while the two record seekers had been floundering at the surface, Mark Ellyatt had inadvertently made a record-breaking dive. Meanwhile, the others had set off for home in disgust.

Ellyatt gives a full account of his dive in his book Ocean Gladiator. He told later that he breathed trimix 20/30 down to 60 m (195 ft), then switched to a bottom mix from there down and back to 66 m (215 ft) of which 8 per cent was oxygen, 67 per cent helium and 25 per cent nitrogen.

He switched back to trimix 20/30 up to 21 m (68 ft), then nitrox mixes of 55 per cent to 9 m (30 ft) and 80 per cent to the surface.

“Conditions weren't ideal, but there was some colourful life and not too much current,” Mark Ellyatt remembered later. He had been unimpressed by the other team's failure to complete the dive.

“The more I practise, the luckier I get,” he said quoting the golfer Arnold Palmer. “If you want to dive in Channel Island waters, then that's where you have to do your training and preparation,” he claimed. “I spoke with Mark Andrews several times beforehand about the tides and conditions, but he seemed to have got them confused.”

“I'm pleased to have made the dive and set a new record, although I didn't do it for the glory. I just expected to be an unpaid cameraman for the other two.”

Meanwhile Mark Andrews was furious. He claimed, “Mark Ellyatt used an unsafe shot-line that did not belong to him, and descended without telling anyone.”

He also claimed that Ellyatt had to borrow decompression gas from him to complete his dive, although Ellyatt argues this was only a single tank of air picked up from Wey Chieftain at the last moment so that his team would not have to wear a twinset down to the 9 m (30 ft) stop.

Andrews admitted, however, that he had miscalculated the tides, and had trouble getting into the water to anchor the dive platform to the shot-line in time to hit slack water.

Once down at only 6 m (20 ft) deep, Andrews found conditions too dangerous and chose to abort the dive. After training for the dive almost continuously all year, the team suffered massive disappointment and many were said to be visibly trembling with adrenalin aftershock. The Wey Chieftain had departed for Portland before Ellyatt surfaced.

Andrews said he was unhappy about the way things worked out, and discounted Ellyatt's having broken a wreck-diving record “because of the way it was done”. He criticised him for diving solo in unsafe conditions and without what he saw as sufficient backup.

“Mark was ill-prepared for the dive and had little if any support,” he claimed. “I see him as nothing more than a danger to himself and others. If we had not been there he would have had to surface short of his required decompression. I won't be beaten. I'll be back in September with my team and sponsors behind me to do it right.”

Ellyatt said he found the criticism he had received surprising. He later said, “I'm only guilty of being prepared.”

He said he received plenty of congratulatory phone calls and e-mails from those who heard about the record along with some less than complimentary ones from the record-attempt team who accused him of hijacking their project and calling him among other things an ocean terrorist! Mark Andrews has yet to return to attempt the dive. Mark Ellyatt returned to the wreck one year later.