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!