Two Days, Two Very Different Dives
All week the forecast for Bank Holiday weekend in Cornwall has been dire, dire and yet more…dire. It changed every couple of hours but never really veered away from wind and rain from Thursday through til Monday. The only upside I could see was that I didn’t have to drive for 5 hours to sit in the rain and get blown out!
On this note I was expecting the usual Friday night dive to be cancelled, but Friday stayed bright and warm all day, and come end of play at work I was rushing home to throw the kit in the car and drive down to Falmouth. The trip usually takes about 1/2 hour, but the expected extra tourist traffic lead me to take a few back-roads and 40 mins later we were at the yacht club, in glorious sunshine loading the kit onto Cousin Jack.
It was to be a mid-tide dive so a fast-ish drift in the Channel was chosen and Caroline & I dropped in second for a free descent. Usally on this dive you get dropped on the slope on the edge of the channel at about 15m. We hit the bottom at more like 27m with a fairly hefty current sweeping down the slope and trying very hard to push us deeper. We were diving our usual 32% and didn’t want to go deeper, so some sub-aqua ferry-gliding ensued and we ascended up the slope a few metres and finned in to stay at depth until the slope turned and we found ooursleves taken along the countour rather than down.
The seabed in this area is a mix of coarse sand, mud and maerl, with some rocky feature, including a miniature wall that you hit between about 22-27m. There is always lots of life around here, with crab, corkwing wrasse, cocksinny and lots of smaller life occupying the weed and crevices. A large dogfish was curled at the bottom - we have seen one here a few times and I wonder if it is always the same one? Soon the current took us beyond the end and we used the opportunity to lose a few more metres and ascend up the slope to 15m. Here the seabed gathers a coat of weedy patches and the natural light in the 6-7m viz means you can see alot. We drifted over a lovely thornback ray - another regular sighting here - and he doesn’t move unitl we are right upon him. They have such beautiful markings and when I see them I always thing they look slightly incongruous amongst the rest of the UK life. They somehow seem too regal to be sat on a muddy bottom in 13 degree water.
A bit further and an old bowl, now half submerged in the silt, is a love arbour for two mating edible crabs - the male on the bottom was enormous and was lucky that Colin found him in a clinch or he would have been tea, I have no doubt!
The spot of the night was two HUGE sea-lemons sat next to their extravagant egg-spirals. Caroline always manages to see them before the gills retract but I always seem to be too late :grr:
Finally, after 50 minutes on the bottom we ascended. It was still bright blue skies and the channel was filled with sailboats - there are alot of races that go on from Falmouth and Mylor on Friday nights, apparently. Picked up swiftly, up on the lift and a cup of hot tea was in our hands before our fins were off. Flapjack from one of the other divers rounded it off a treat - and not a navy ship in sight 
So…in contrast! Dive two. Still abysmal weather forecast, but last night it actually arrived. I lay in bed hearing wind battering rain agaisnt the window - and an dreaded easterly at that - and thought Mark’s plan of taking the RIB out today wasn’t going to come off. However a 2pm meet at Mylor was the call, and just after 1pm we left home in mizzle. 3 miles down the road at Truro we had our first glimpse of blue sky and by the time we got to Mylor it was bright and warm.
I chatted to a lady from Ilfracombe who had been out in her club rib this morning and she said although there was a swell outside the point it was alright. Passing that info on to Mark and Sharky and after discussion with the other 2 on the boat we decided to try for the Manacles. A lumpy ride over had me sat on the deck of the Rib for comfort, rather than lose an arm holding on at the front . We kept a fruitless eye out for baskers as we crossed the bay and arrived at the Manacles to find the current ripping. A quick call was made to head for the good old Volnay instead.
On the Volnay and a couple of club RIBS - maybe from the midlands? - were there. They had a small diver separation issue to deal with so asked us to keep clear until they were sorted, which we did. One then came over to tell us it was about 1/2m viz down there. We did ask what it had been like before they had got in
The second boat upped the estimate to 1m viz, so with such positive news we couldn’t possibly turn it down, and promptly kitted up and jumped in.
I hit the wreckage with my knees.
In my defence it was a bit like that Father Ted scene “Big cows, close, small cows, far away”. I had seen something in the seconds before hitting the wreck, but I thought I had seen a sandy/weedy seabed a few metres off, and not a rusty plate of metal a few inches off. Oops.
Signalling C to stick close we mimbled off. That was pretty much the stroy of the dive. The viz was in most places about 2m, light, but milky, and so there was alot of looking at things at the end of your nose. Butterfly blennys, dragonets, velvet swimmers, bib, pollack and the ubiquitous ballan wrasse.
Before the dive we were talking about brass shells that can sometimes be found, and as we went for a short detour (on purpose, honest) off the wreck, I found a couple of encrusted lumps that I am sure were shells. I bashed one a bit for a while trying to get the encrustation off to see if I was right, but it was very hard, and nothing happened so I quickly got bored and dropped it. I’m not the best spidger 
Back to prodding squidgy things and I found the most gorgeous, lacy white nudibranch which made Caroline conduct an underwater dance of excitement. We are easliy pleased.
Checking time and the 45 mins bottom time mark had been reached so we started the ascent. This was when C remembered that leaving off your umbilical means adding another weight. Probably better to have recalled this back at home, but hey! I cought her fins and we settled back into the ascent, with her looking slightly more shrink-wrapped than normal.
We surfaced to blue skies - moderate waves and the prospect of a less than elegant entry intot he RIB. Luckily there were big strong men on hand and a hoick under the armpits did the trick. Feeling seasick as I dekitted I sear at Rib diving again. Not that this will stop me, of course, but I love to hate it!
Back to Mylor, flying now with the swell on our backs, and a quick unload, dekit and off for a cone of Roskilly’s from hatch servery down the road.
Yum.
Lovely Lizard
*This is a blog from last summer i didn’t post at the time as it wasn’t finished, but I might as well now*
After a slighly stressful week C & I got the chance to join a bunch of friends for a couple of dives off Celtic Cat. The weather was pretty terrible, with some wind arriving, the temperature dropping and the rain coming in heavy showers. Still, the sea was flat and the reports of good visibility from the earlier dives that we had missed had us excited.
The first questio was did we want to dive a kown wreck, or try and find a wreck off Lizard Point that had sunk on a reef in the late 1800’s and was difficult to find. Having never dived off the south of Lizard Point and expecting the best viz on the flood tide comingup to HW slack I was all too keen to agree with the wreck-nuts..except for me it was the reef that sounded promising!
On station nicely in time the shot was dropped and showed very little current running. We kitted up and dropped in. Immediately it was apparent that we were “on the viz”. The shotline stretched down below and we could see the first divers in a good 15 metres or more below us. Flying down the shot the reef came into view. It was large, rounded rocks, with sheer-sided gullies, floored with white sand between. Lying almost next to the shot, convinced he was invisible was a small turbot. Completely reliant on his camouflage pattern he stayed stock-still whilst I photographed him. Being able to get up close to a fish like this is always a real buzz. You get to examine the way they are put together, and just how amazing the patterns formed by their scales are.
It has been a while!
Okay, so I have been rather slack for the last 9 months over adding to this blog, but I promise to make an effort from now on. To summarise, the bits that have been missed…….
Trip to the Galapagos Islands for 10 days of liveaboard action, inlcuing 5 days up at Wolf & Darwin. More sharks than I could ever have hoped for and a whopping 32 whale shark encounters over 6 dives at Darwin, including plenty of “one on one” time. We then spent another few days kayaking down an Amazonian tributary, just the two of us and two guides. Camping on the river’s edge, right in the depths of the rainforest and ending up at a brding lodge, only accessible by the river, no electric light or power - brilliant….although I now fully appreciate the Rain bit of rainforest.
Friday night dives out of Falmouth ran pretty well up to Christmas, but after that the wind seemed to appear every weekend, right up into April, so the dive rate was somewhat down. This drove us to warmer climes and a week’s diving in Tobago. We stayed up at Speyside, and whilst the diving was good, it wasn’t mindblowing (I think the Gos has spoilt us) and we did sadly have our cash stolen from our locked hotel room, which was a definite downer on the stay. Still, shortie diving in 27 degree water can’t help but make you relaxed 
Since then the weekend and Friday night dives have picked up again and we have got a few reallynice dives in over the last 3 weeks - hence I am reinspired to blog. Watch this space!
Wreck of the Persier
A quick montage of some video clips taken on a dive on the wreck of the Persier in June. We dived from Endeavour, out of Plymouth and the wreck had its usual plethora of poor cod and bib, plus spider crabs, velvet swimmers and wrasse. The viz was very good and it was extrememly light for nearly 30m on a cloudy day.
Sea Hare
Sea hares are marine gastropods. This little beauty was found with two others, who were mating, in the eel grass beds in the Helford Estuary. Sea hares are hermaphrodites and form mating chains, so no doubt this one was on its way to or from the occasion. They are herbivores and allegedly the seaweed they munch on contributes to their colour.
The flaps of skin that wrap over their back cover a flat shell and their tentacles are the items that give them their name, supposedly resembling rabbit or hare ears.
The Magic Garden
Oh the joy! After a glorious weekend of diving in Plymouth it was back to work on Monday, but that didn’t mean no more diving. Nope. We had a dive planned after work - a little shore dive, either at the spot I had seen mating sea hares the week before, or at a secret location on the north coast that my “local friends” knew about. As it was still weather conducive to the latter we headed north, leaving home just after 6pm.
A leisurely drive had us arrive in the little cove, whose name I am sworn to absolute secrecy over, in a short time, and we took a wander down to the water’s edge to admire the view. The sky was a flat, light grey and the sea was dead flat. There was only an old couple having a picninc by where the cars were parked and it was silent except for the lapping of the waves. Bloomin’ perfect!
The last diver arrived in his little Suzuki jeep shortly after and we kitted up. I had an interesting set of kit, as my tanks were basically empty after the weekend, but I did have a deco bottle that needed to be vented for O2 clean, so it was a single 12 on my back with 50bar in for suit and wing, and a 7l ali bottle of 50% side slung to breath. It actually worked quite nicely for a dive in which we didn’t exceed 10m.
So, 10m maximum. Doesn’t sound that exciting, does it? Well, it might not have been a thrill a minute, rock and roll dive, but it was one of the most beautiful dives I have ever done. A white sandy bottom reflected back the light, and the viz was at leat 10-12 meters. The sea colour seemed to veer between turquoise and blue, and the overall effect was of being somewhere tropical. Only the cool sensation of 15 degree water flushing in my hood gave away the true location.
Rocks that had tumbled from cliffs above formed a border to the sandy cove, and in 5 metres they were covered with a brilliant proliferation of seaweeds in every colour and shade. It was this section that has lead me to refer to the site as The Magic Garden, as that is just the image it left me with. A reef across the mouth of the cove was topped by bullsblood coloured kelp, upon which swarmed what must have been thousands of tiny nudibranchs. In places they gathered en masse to eat the white bryazoean mat that coatsed the kelp fronds, whilst in others they were scattered apart. Everywhere you looked however you saw 10 or more in your field of vision.
Hunkered down in the stems were territorial wrasse and spider crabs. The odd lobster pot had caught nothing more than velvet swimming crabs, despite every other crevice in the larger rocks seeming to offer shelter to increasingly large lobster. The largest of these was found in a gully on the far side of the reef and he had claws that must have been a good 8 inches long.
As we reached the end of the reef I signalled to my friend that I had reached my turn point on my 7l and we tracked back. He took me a slightly different route over the kelp and we made our way back up the other side of the cove. The sand crawled with small critters, shoals of fry darted in the light shallows and almost invisible shrimp hung around, seeing what may turn up for lunch. My computer stopped logging the time at 63 minutes as we were now shallower than 1.5, but that didn’t stop us as there was still so much to look at, and I was so happy just lying around, examing whatever sbmarine flora and fauna presented itself in front of me. I finally broke the surface by kneeling up.
This was a tremendous dive and I can’t wait to go back and take C. She sat this one out as she was tired after a hard week of work and then a weekend of boat diving. She will love it though. But don’t tell the Emmetts…..
The Move
So, alot has happened in the last six months. My ACL was reconstucuted and I have been having physio since the end of December, we moved down to Cornwall where I started a new job, and we are in the process of buying a house. All pretty stressful stuff. However, on the plus side - I now live near the sea!
Weekends are so much more fun, I can tell you.
The High Alpujarras - a dive-free break
For the first time in several years, Caroline and I took a week away that involved no diving. It was designed as a cheap get-away week, and the location was chosen without any more research than the pictures looked nice, and it was near airports that were serviced by budget airlines.
Accommodation in the form of a cortijo (farmhouse) was found on the internet, and after an exchange of e-mails with an amenable Dutchman called bruno, we were booked for a week at Cortijo La Suetre, near Pitres in the High Alpujarras. This is an area in the Andalucia region of Spain, on the southern slopes of the Sierra Nevada and to the east of Granada. Flights were booked to Granada with Ryanair, for the princely sum of £60 each return, and with the cortijo at £500 for the week, and car-hire at approximatetly £150, four of us had a week’s holiday for £250 each.
What we didn’t know was what a good choice we had made in location. the region is simply beautiful, with views over gorges and valleys, rocky riverbeds and high plains. Almonds, walnuts, sweet chestmuts and fig trees punctuate the endless olive groves and tiny white villages cling vertiginously to the side of impossibly steep hillsides.
Along the valley from Pitres is the highest town in Spain - Trevelez (1476m) - famous for its air-cured hams, or jamones. It seems almost every shop in the centre has leg upon leg of ham hanging from walls and ceilings, each with a little drip-cup attached to the bottom. The smell is subtle, but pretty unpleasant, however I am assured that the finished product was delicious - as a veggie I didn’t get to try it personally!
Each town and village in the area has a market one day a week, and you could fill a week going from market to market. we settled with visiting those in Orgive, a lower town, and the one in Pitres. Orgiva’s was a mix of the expected vegetables, spices, pulses and fruit, with the more modern clothing, shoes and bags. Orgiva itself has a large, international “hippy” presence, and some of the best stalls were run by such smallholders, promising fresh and organic produce.
A drive up to the edge of the Sierra Nevada National Park gave us a drop in temperature of about 5 degrees and panaramic views of the region. From here you can hike to the summit of Mulhacen - Spains highest mountain. That is something that will be saved for another day, but now the idea is in my head…
My favourite memories will be sat on the terrace, watching the hills change depth and colour as the sun set along the gorge beneath us. Listening to the crickets, large and small, and waiting for the thick blanket of stars to fill the dark, dark sky - no light pollution here.
Then there was watching the large blue-winged bees, buzzing their clumsy way about, or chasing crickets in the orchard witht he two stray kittens who needed to learn how to hunt. Or just lazing, relaxing, reading and thinking of nothing….
Not bad for a non-diving holiday!
Dive Eclipse - Castletown, Portland, Dorset
When Dive Eclipse moved from Selsey to Weymouth the boat changed too. Out went Eclipse, a fast RIB with ladders, benches and a hard wheelhouse, and in came what was Top Gun, of Breakwater Dive Centre. Given the competition amongst hardboats, and the generally high quality of boat in the Weymouth area, this was probably a good move.
What didn’t change was the skipper. Dave Applin runs Eclipse and as a diver himself knows what divers want. You always get a good safety briefing and a thorough dive site briefing when Dave is at the helm. You can also be sure that the shot is in the wreck and is staying there. One of his tenents is that you have paid to get on the wreck and he will put you on it. That means that the shot is always hard into wreckage, and if there is a current and you need to haul on the shot there is no fear that you will get to the bottom to find a bouncing shot and seabed.
Top Gun itself is fast, with benches for 12 and a diver lift. The benches themselves are noce and deep, but the layout is a little odd, although this doesn’t detract from the usage. Coffee or instant soup are provided post dive.
As with all of the boats out of Breakwater a logging sysem is used, with a max expected duration given and you are expected to stick to this. You also give a description of you gear so that you can be identified and you are logged into and out of the water. This little extra safety feature enhances the confidence you feel in the operation.
I don’t know what next year (2007) will bring in terms of boats or location for Eclipse, but I will be there to try it out, whatever it is!
X-Dream - Weymouth, Dorset
X-Dream, skippered by Paul Pike, is a typical south coast dive boat. It is a 38′ Evolution, with a diver lift to the rear, and benches each side. the benches are a cut above the rest, with a rear gap to stop unbooted twins sliding - but do be aware that if you dive an inverted rig a little block of wood may be needed to stop your valve cage catching.
Paul is a very quite, reserved, but extremely competent and helpful skipper. He also serves the best soups in Britain - perfect for the cold, windy SI’s. I would thoroughly recommend the mulligatawny.
The Evolutions do rock a bit, but they seem to make up for it with speed and X-Dream is no exception. A fast, if bumpy ride out to site is better than wallowing out for ages, for those of us with a dispotion to the mal-de-mer.
Loading is a bit of a pain - you need to park on the road by the Old Harbour, dump your kit and then move the car to the car park by the council offices. then transport your gear down the ramp and onto the pontoon on which X-Dream is berthed. It can take a bit of juggling to unlaod at the end of a weekend as 6 cars try ot get one of the few loading spots. It does mean that X-Dream is secure behind the locked harbour gates at night, however. Paul can also drop you right by Old Harbour Divers for a gas fill, if he needs fuel from the pontoon there. If he does stop off, be ready to get your cylinders off prpnto as he can only pause long enough to fill up. Buy an ice-cream from the dive shop whilst you are there too - they are great.