Wrasse & Rants

Cornish Pussy - St Keverne, Cornwall

Cornish Pussy is a new catamaran (launched 2006) run by Gary Fox of Dive Action.  It runs around the Lizard, on the south coast of Cornwall, and has been designed from scratch as a dive vessel.

I booked it for a weekend’s diving for myself and a group of friends in August 2006.  At that point it was still bedding in, but it was already showing it was a great dive platform.  The benches are stainless tubing arranged either side of a cetnral spine with room elow for boxes or bags, and have a small gap down the back to ensure that bootless twinsets don’t slide forwards.  there is enough room for 12 twinsetted divers, and spare seats that jut under the canopy for “dry” seating.  At the moment there is only a short hard canopy, which covers some dry storage and camera shelving, and the tea & coffee making facility - hot water always on tap for a brew, lovely!  Gary has plans to add soft cover to increase the dry area, or shade, for the varying climes of Cornwall.

The transom has two door cur into it.  One leads onto the diver lift, which drops to a good depth below the waterline, and the other is free onto a small platform.  This arrangement means buddy pairs can enter the water togehter - one from each door, and stops the unlucky second always having the longer swim for the shot, or risking landing on the first.

As a cat the rear deck space is plentiful, and the boat appeared to be nicely stable.  As we dived in the calm waters in the lee of the Lizard it is difficult to tell how this translates in higher seas.  We also didin’t get the opportunity to see how fast she went, but given that Gary is thinking of taking her on long weekend jaunts next season, I suspect she does have some “oomph”!

Gary is a great skipper.  He dives the waters that he drops you in on and knows exactly what you will expect to see.  Wrecks are his thing, but he will talk squidgy stuff with you if you demand it!  His bluff Yorkshire style could offend the sensitive flowers, but don’t mistake it for rudeness - he is a gentleman….even if he wouldn’t admit it!

Plans for the future include onboard compressors - possibly even nitrox and trimix!

Diveless Dover Disaster

The weather was looking shocking, the ropes-off time had been changed to silly o’clock and the word from Andy the Coastie was the viz would be terrible due to cable-laying in the area…so why did we get up and traipse down to Dover on Saturday?  I wish we hadn’t…

The car is packed the night before and we leave the house at 03:15 for the 2 1/2 hour dirve to Dover.  When we reach the harbour it is still dark, but there is a stiff breeze…so much for Paul’s comment the previous night that forecast 5mph winds could mean it was “Harry Flatters”. 

There are a couple of folk milling about and we meet up with Debs and Gareth.  No sin of Paul, or the skipper.  The sky starts to lighten slightly and Paul appears weaing shorts and flip-flops…there is optimism on a cold September morning!  Our numbers start to increase and Dave turns up and unlocks Neptune so we can start to load.

As we leave the harbour the rising sun behind the lighthouse is a beautiful sight and I almost start to think it was worth getting up for that alone.  we then hit the rough seas that apparently are always worse withing a mile of the harbour.  The boat bounces and spray rushes over the deck.  We all shelter in the wheelhouse or just outsise.  After about 20 minutes of battling against the waves the call is made to abandon out offshore target of the liberty ship Henry B Plant and go for a site closer in, the El de Bayo.

On site the sea is still fairly rough and it takes the crew several attempts to get the grapple to lock in.  the usual practise for this boat is to anchor into the wreck, but today that isn’t practical as the wind and waves keep pulling the vessel off, so a shot buoy is left and Neptune floats clear.  It isn’t quite slack so we don’t kit up immediately, and when we do go I take it slowly, aware of the movement of the boat.

Caroline and I have bench spots on the opposite side to the side door that you leap off from and so once kitted, in twin 12’s, and a 7l ali deco bootle, side slung, we gingerly stand and cautiously make our way to the stern of the boat, holding onto the side rails.  I get to the gap between the bench and the transom first and as I cannot progress further due to a pair entering the water ahead of us, I hold n with one hand on the censtre spine of the benches, and one on the transom rail.

Brian, the crew member tells me they will let these two in and then turn around for another run to get Caroline and I in.  I acknowledge him and adjust my postion slightly, to better bear the weight of the tanks against the movement of the boat.  the buddy pair ahead get in and then….

..the boat moved suddenly and unexpectedly.  I don’t know if it was getting into gear or an odd wave, but somehow, in trying to maintain my balance all my weight goes onto my left leg, my foot is rooted to the spot in my jetfins and my knee sort of twists and bends at the same time.  I hear a crack, or a popping sound - although I am unsure whether it really was a “hear” or a “feel” - and my kne gives way in pain.  I fall backwards, me and 50kg of kit landing, I think, on the mask clean bucket which cushions my fall nicely.

As Brian rushes to help I try and tell him that something has gone in my knee and soon there are hands all around getting me out of my kit.  As I stand I think maybe i will be okay and I am keen to rekit and get in - that is what we have come all this way for!  Then my knee gives way again.  Still, maybe, if I fin gently…and the boat does have a lift….

Finally, tales of injuries precipitating DCI brings me to my senses…along with the knee starting to hurt.  I sit down.  Dejected.  the final pair is now in the water and we have 80 minutes to wait until the planned runtimes are up.

I am helped out of my drysuit and sit in the wheelhouse supporting my knee and sulking.  It is starting to hurt alot more now.  As divers start to come up they firstly say what a great dive they have and then start saying it more quietly when they hear we didn’t get in.

The journey back to harbour was horrendous.  There was no way of supporting my knee and each crash off the top of a wave jolted it and sent a shock of pain up my leg.  Getting intot he calm water of the harbour was a real relief.  We then had to work out how to get me up the steps.  It was decided the best method was to avoid the steps and Dave dropped us off at his berth which was next to a ramp.  With the arm of Matt on one side and a handrail on the other I inched up - this was after declining a push in a wire mesh kit trolley!

Everyone then kindly helps Caroline bring our kit off the boat and back to the car - divers are a wonderful bunch!  Massive thanks to all… Having learnt my lesson last year after another diving accident we decided to dirve all the way home to our local A&E so that any ongoing treatment would not require inter-hospital communication - not a strongpoint of the NHS in our previous experience.

I hopped into A&E at Stoke Mandeville and after 4 hours, a nurse practioner, an A&E registrar, and a orthopaedic registrar and consultant there was agreement that I had ruptured my anterior cruciate ligament.  I was sent home on crutches with an appointment in 10 days to reasses once the pain had died down.  This could be bad news.   the anterior cruciate ligament is in the actual knee joint itself, pulling together the tibia and femur, and apparently provides most of the stability for the knee joint.

It is now a few days later, and having had the leg up and resting it is feeling ok, although I can bear weight on it I can’t walk on it properly and it feels a little “odd”, but there is very little pain.  I am very hopeful that the initial diagnosis was wrong and I have just strained something.  That would be excellent as a ruptured ACL sounds like it would kill my hopes of walking the Inca Trail next year on our trip to the Galapagos.  I shall find out for sure, I guess, in a few days when I return, but my fingers are well and truly crossed.

Higher than a kite..well, kestrel!

To top off our trip to Salcombe we spent a few hours on Friday doing a short hike along the coast path.  We parked the car at the hotel at Soar Mill Cove and walked out from there.  The hotel is up a fairly long, grassy hill from the lovely, unspoilt valley-enclosed beach at the cove, and was the formal start of the walk.  Parking costs £3 for the day, payable at the hotel reception.  We must have made a sight standing in the lobby of the 4-star hotel in hiking boots, khakis rolled up to mid shin, baseball caps and sunglasses!

Fee paid we ambled off down the hill.  As soon as you are away from the hotel all you can hear is birdsong.  We counted four or five different types of butterfly, including many silver-studded blues on the path in front of us and to the left a mixed hillside of sheep and cattle amused themselves by running down the slope towards a pair of loud, fighting pheasants, then stood, staring.

Once at the beach the valley sides rise up steeply each side andyou can follow the coast path south towards Bolt head, one of the most southerly points of Britain, or north towards Bolt Tail and Hope Cove.  Out plan was to turn left and go south to Bolt Head, have a spot of lunch and then turn back.  The walk on paper would be only about 5-6 miles but included some steep climb - the most serious of which was just over the first bump.  After a few days of diving, and given the hot sun we didn’t fancy anything more taxing.

Turning left we mounted the first short climb and as we hit the end we saw the steep climb up to the rolling tops of the cliffs that awated us.  The path up was a mix of worn mud, shale, rocky steps and grassy slope.  We were glad of our good boots and marvelled as some of the other footwear we saw whilst on the wander.  I am sure that soft, white, slip-on moccasins do the job fine when all is going well, but I wouldn’t fancy trying to regain a foothold once I had slipped in them, and I am not sure how well they support an ankle on sometimes uneven terrain!

Sweating and puffing we reached the top and from a rocky point we had the first wonderful view.  Flat, blue sea with starlight twinkles from a high sun, sailing boats below, and a coastline that signalled the dramatic end of England as green heaths and field stopped abruptly and fell straight down into the ocean below.

From hear the path meanders close to the cliff edge, up and donw over the undulating cliff-tops.  The predominant environment is gorse heath, but occasionally this gives way to grassy meadow, where man has exerted his power as far as he can.  Aafter a while a final drop heralds the last climb if Bolt head is your target and end up on a ridge, jutting out to sea, with a WW2 battlement at the very end, and some perfect little rock stacks as nature’s picnic table, giving views to the mouth of the estuary and a small bay on one side, and the coastline to the north, whence you have come, on the other.

We sat in the sun and brought out the water bottles and small snack that we had packed.  Lazing there, smiling and admiring the view my gaze was caught by something that came past Caroline’s head, on the other side to me, as it wheeled in front of us, and slightly below it was immediately clear that it was a kestrel.  It swung along the grassy edge of the cliff below us and then turned to come back again before passing over our heads to return to hovering, in classic kestrel style, over the long grass behind us.

The silence was shortly broken by the faint hum of some folk playing around in a powerful RIB below.  I may have had more time for them if they were diving, of course, but the boat was just having a hoolie.  It sped right across the entrance of the estuary, past sail boats before doing “doughnuts” in the bay below us.  We could hear shrieks from the women aboard so I suspect that it was all done to impress!

Legs rested we set out on the return leg.  The sun was hot and high and a judicious reapplication of the SPF 25 was needed, as were frequent gulps of water - now less than cool!  The views were still stunning however and we walked along with that constant half-smile that comes with just being relaxed and happy.  As we reached the beach at Soar Mill Cove I was very tempted to abandon boots and socks and go for a paddle, but the thought of making the last walk up the hill to the hotel with sandy feet deterred me and headed straight up.

I must admit that I was shattered byt he time we reached the car.  Lots of practise and training is needed if we are to fulfill our aims to walk the Inca trail to Machu Pichu late next year, but it will be worth it, and if the training for it can be as enjoyable as that small hike along some of Britain’s most beautiful coastline it will not be too great a hardship.

Sunny Salcombe

When Mark Powell posted trip down to Salcombe for 3 days diving wrecks in the 35-45m range I have to admit that my eye was taken by the write-up of the wrecks in the area, rather than a visit to Salcombe, which, to my shame, I only vaguely knew of or where it was.  Given the prices of B&B’s for two, Caroline and I decided to make a week of it in a self-catering apartment for not much more than 3 or 4 nights of B&B would have cost, and it turned out our choice of apartment location was most fortuitous, being at the mid-point in elevation over which salcombe lies!
 
Lesson #1 Salcombe is hilly.  Really hilly.  the hills are also steep, and some of the chaps (mostly those of a certain age, to be fair) named the hike to their B&B “cardiac hill”.
 

The view from just down the road from our apartment
 
Saturday afternoon we arrived in time to get a good seat at The Fortescue pub to watch the England footie match and try out the local ale.  We then had a nice enough meal to celebrate C’s brithday at “Ripples”.  Sunday was spent pottering around in rockpools on North Sands beach, and once Fiona arrived we made our way down town to watch live music and gig racing as this weekend was the Salcombe Festival. 
 
Lesson #2 No-one actually seems to live in Salcombe.  this means that there are no “normal” shops to actually buy anything useful in, but you can buy lots of fudge, pasties and sweaters that go beautifully with polo shirt if you turn the collars up..
 
Sunday evening and a pint in the Victoria Arms (only sellls Cornish ale - how odd!) and a meet up with Nick B, Nic Tootricky, Howie and Mark. 
 
Monday morning and it is time for a frantic effort to heft all the gear onto the boat and then scatter to try and park the cars.  Fiona and Caroline dump ours back at the apartment where we have off road parking (hooray!) and the guys try for the nearest on-road parking.  Pinkandfluffy, who has only arrived that mornig for one day with is, finally gets somewhere right at the top of the hill, about a mile away.  It was touch and go as to whether she would ever return!

Normandy Pontoon at Salcombe

Maine
51 mins 33.8m viz 3-4m
Fairly large swells on the surface had me feeling somewhat sick before entry, along with several others on the boat, so getting down the shot was a relief.  Finding that it was dark, with limited viz and a still apparent surge at 30+ meteres was not!  Still, after some swift orientation we made out the shape of an intact ship and swam along the outsdie of the hull, off the seabed, until a convenient break in the plating let us into the slightly jumbles, but more sheltered interior.  There were lots of bib, a few nudies and pollack hanging around.  Some patchy coverings of plumoses added colour. 
The lack of viz made it more of a “detail” dive and I didn’t get quite the grand impression I was expecting, but it is definately a wreck I want to visit again.  Mark was doing it with his club on Thursday - and judging by the view down to the area from the cliffs above on Friday, he may have had better luck!

View from cliffs near Soar Mill Cove, close to the site of the Maine

Herzogin Cecilie
33 min 5.2m viz 2-3m
This was supposed to be an area famed for good viz and hence was a drop in, swim shoreward and you will see the great lump of hull that nearly breaks the surface.  What actually happened was drop in, hit seabed, see eff all - barely each toehr because the swell is kicking up the fine sand.  Lose Fiona, swim shorewards until it becomes clear that soon you might be beached and that would be embarrassing.  Agree with Caroline that we will swim back out and surface.. Get picked up.  Get dropped in again and make out Howards yellow box through the sand….swim to it and find wreck…and the Herzogin Cecilie too!
 
It was a nice little wreck, but I had to keep my head buried under bits of wreckage to prevent seasickness from the surge.  Caroline, ont he other hadn, had foolishly binned her hood and gloves as we got dropped in quickly for the second time and mostly felt cold.  There is a large lump of hull, what looks like a good length of mast and some other scattered wreckage.  A bit of life on it, but I would bet that this improves markedly in better conditions.  I didn’t see the thornback ray though….rats!
 
Tuesday and there is no Pinkandfluffy, but we do have Mr Paul Oliver now joining us…suddenly there seems far less room on the boat…
 
Riversdale
73 min 41.3m 5-6m dark viz
The shot dropped us onto one side of the large hull, and folowing the edge of this we came to a sudden end and a 90 degree turn.  This confused me slightly for a while and following it I started wondering whether I was crossing the deck or running along it.  As we came to the next 90 degree turn my initial assumptions were confrimed as we hit what was far mor clearly a rail.  Someone had, at some point, run some orange line down into the holds from here, but we didn’t follow this - there was always the chance that the Dude might be on the end, having more knitting classes with Mark, so we continued along the rail.  There was more life on here than on the Maine and after reaching the bow we turned back along the rail before going to deply blobs.  At this point i realised I hadn’t sorted out the minor tangle on my reel from the Maine dive and so aborted my attemopt to deploy and left it to Fiona.
 
The ascent had us lose Fiona at 6m for a while, but gain a friend in a stunning blue jellyfish and his attendant fry.  After watching this for a bit Nick and Nic came across C and I and were apparently a little confused at seeing the pair of us drfting along with out new mate, and no blob.  they were even more confised when we finned off purposefully with the current - they hadn’t realised that we were off to find Fiona, which we did a couple of minute later
 
Soudan
24min 20.0m  6-7m
For a second dive this is a real cracker.  scattered wreckage, including 2 large boilers, a mast, a hull section with swimthroughs, a resident emperor of the universe, daddy of all daddy lobsters and lots and lots of nudibranchs!  The coner resident in the boilers looked as though he ate errant divers and I didn’t see Howie attempt his famous ell-tickling exercise there.  The sandy bottom was alos a haven for flatties of differing types.
 
The long first dive left us low on gas for a really lengthy explore of the wreck first time so we requested areturn on day 3.
 
Kit repairs today included…..Nick B lubing up Fiona and Caroline - (zip and valve respectively) and untangling of both mine and Caroline’s reels.  A festival of fluorescent line!

Nick checks that everything is nice and slidey…
 
Newholme
66mins 36.0m 6-7m
 
I have to say that this was my favourite of the three wrecks.  There is less of it, but what there is is absolutely covered in life.  it seems to sit as though fairly intact, but sunk into soft, white sand.  The starboard rail is just visible and the port one sits higher, allowing some swim throughs, and some wriggle throughs, in clean, sandy-bottomed holds, whre the blukheads have rotted throug in places.
 
Highlight of this dive for me was spotting a type of large nudibranch that I have yet to identify, but which I have never seen before.  I was, in a word, most over-excited
 
Soudan - again
42mins 20.8m viz 6-7m
 
There was one aim to this dive - for Caroline to find nudibranchs and faff around trying to get a picture of them.  She had to cut the first shot on the Soudan shorter than I did and so had missed the daddy lboster, but I failed to find him again for her.  Oops.  Still.  we saw about 100 nudies, and I got to watch Caroline trying to capture them on whatever digipics are captured on.
 

A nudi on the Soudan
 
Most folk went home after this dive, so lots of kitting lugging ensued.  Clive Woodward walked past us from his yacht tender for about the 5th time that week and once again failed to offer a hand to carry anything ;).  Goodbyes were said and a convoy of dive-kit laden vehicles exited the car-park.  Only the dude’s had an extra drag factor of approximately 12 from the huge array of England “tat” adorning (and possibly holding together) his landie.
 
Caroline, Fiona and myself went back to the apartment for home-cooked Mexican and a lovely champage drink for C’s birthday from Fiona.  Fiona left on Thursday and Caroline and I went to the beach at Soar Mill Cove for a bit of a relaxing day.  Friday saw us back there to walk the coast path from soar Mill to Bolt Head and back again.
 
It doesn’t look far on paper, but there are a couple of fierce climbs that after a few days diving were the killing of me!  Still managed to pose for some pics though…
 

Me at Bolt head - halfway and time for lunch in the sun
 
This morning it was with no small sadness that we packed up the car and left the lovely South Hams for home……..we do now have  very nice yachtie sweater to remind us of the week though…

Windy Weymouth

A week of torrential rain and force 6-8 winds meant that we were not hopeful of salvaging a Bank Holiday weekend at Weymouth.  We were due to be diving Saturday and Sunday, with Sunday being the main event and a return to the wreck of the Salsette - 10 miles west of Portland Bill.

The boat we were booked on was X-Dream, a 38′ Evolution skippered by Paul Pike.  This is the same boat that we are using for a weekday safari down to Salcombe in a few weeks, so I was interested to get some dive in off her, and with Paul, first. 

After many e-mails and phone calls, finally on friday morning we get the go-ahead that paul will try and get out of the harbour for us, and was hopeful.

In the end we didn’t get to do the salsette again, but managed some reasonable dives on Lulworth Banks, Bally Bay, the Aoelian Sky (which was dark, dark, dark but covered in nudibranchs!) and the bow of the Black Hawk.

 More importantly we discovered that X-dream was a great boat, with lots of room and a good lift, plus the best head in Christendom - complete with air-freshener and clean as you like!  Paul is a very friendly and extrememly competent skipper with a nice line in home-made soups for lunch,  We were blessed with Mulligatawny, and given the weather it was extremely welcome.

Roll on Salcombe.

Snaffling Snails

After a promisingly sunny start to the day it rained.  Big, fat, thundery drops came down for about an hour, leaving behind air not fresh, but thick and muggy. 

This encouraged the large snails that inhabit every nook, cranny and crevice of our “natural looking” garden to come out and play.  This is all fine (apart from the distressing crunches from underfoot it often brings) but our three cats have good reason not to share our relaxed approach to snails. 

They are pampered pussies who only wander the garden supervised, and when they can’t be supervised they go into their outdoor area which consists of a run with multi-level shaleving for sun-bathing and birdspotting, a tented area for the ginger one to avoid the sun, and an insulated and linoleumed shed, equipped with cushions, pillows and a duvet for avoiding the thought they are outdoors at all!

As one of them is diabetic food is provided all the time to even out his eating.  This comes in the form of special slow energy release diabetic cat biscuits.  Snails like these too.  When I popped out a moment ago to escort the three lovelies indoors I found their bowl being raided by three fat snails with one of the cats sat watching in disgust!  I grabbed the camera and managed to get a snap of one of the perpetrators before they sped away……if you see this snail do not approach him.  He is a desperado on the run from the law and may be dangerous..

Less U-Who than U-No - the Revenge of the U90 jinx

Once upon a time, a long time ago (well, March actually) there was an intrepid band of YD-ers who wanted to dive U90. U90 is a First World War U-boat that sank under tow at the end of the war, just off the southern tip of the Isle of Wight.Sadly, nature conspired against us and the intrepid band were, what is technically known as, “blown-out”. Undeterred a hard core rebooked to try again and were joined by a rag-tag group of assorted hangers-on . Today was the day.

Only one thing could stand in their way…and that thing was a certain Mr Matt Binnie. Continue reading this entry »