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Our group of divers had dressed into our drysuits some time before on the approach to the site; pee valves (or should I say, offboard urination devices) were already all connected up. With the wreck shotted and slack water approaching, we began to wriggle into our rebreather harness webbing, pulling on fins and mask, clipping on bailout cylinders under each arm, connecting suit inflation direct feeds and switching on our rebreather wrist computers to let them start going through their boot-up self-check menus. Finally, fully rigged, we simply sat still carrying out our rebreather final pre-breathe for a few minutes – if there is going to be an early problem with a rebreather, it’s better it happens on the boat than in the water. All was good, we were ready to dive.

The skipper asked if Paul and I, being the most experienced, (what he meant, I suspect, was the oldest) if we would splash first and make sure the shot was near the wreck. We heavily stood up from the kitting-up benches on the dive deck and in the rather clumsy, ungainly gait of a fully rigged technical diver, carefully clumped our way over to the dive gate through the stern gunwale. At a signal from the skipper, it was one stride forward and we were splashing heavily into the water.