Plymouth Trip March 23, 2006
Posted by wannabemermaid in : Life, The Universe And Everything , 2commentsI spent the weekend of the 11-12th June diving from the ‘Furious’ off Plymouth and staying in Pete’s B&B (highly recommended).
First things first, I had a great time. Despite dire predictions about the weather and more sensible people deciding to stay at home the club headed down to Plymouth regardless and for me at least, it was well worth it.
The weather on Saturday was actually pretty reasonable, a bit choppy and with a rather annoying swell but not too bad. A number of our group suffered pretty badly with seasickness but fortunately I was fine (although I suspect that thse people who suffered will be rather hoping that the slightly smug people who didn’t, will get some rough weather later in the year!).
We got out to Eddystone reef in the morning. I was doing my first dive with new kit and a couple of people in our group needed to notch up some leading dives so I got to be ‘lead’ around the reef. We dropped down the shot to around 12m then pootled a little bit further down the edge of the reef. We essentially just followed the reef around for a while staying just above 20m and having a look at the wildlife. All very pretty with lots of crabs hiding among the seaweed (sorry, I need to get a better grasp of UK wildlife before I can be anymore specific!). The swell and surge was pushing us around a bit which made me a little uncomfortable because I don’t feel so in control in those conditions but it didn’t do any real harm. We spotted another of our group lose their DSMB and reel (somehow unclipped itself) but I had to let my buddy retrieve it as I was trying be be a good Ocean diver and stay above 20m so he got all the credit! We came back to the shotline which I would have been very impressed by if my ‘leader’ had not looked as suprised to see it as I was! I managed to maintain my 5m safety stop despite the swell which I was pleased with as I often have trouble getting my suit to dump air fast enough as I ascend (I think it’s an issue with the weezle undersuit as well as me being a bit useless!) but my mind was taken off worrying about buoyancy by spending 3 minutes playing scissor-paper-stone underwater - I think overall I lost. All in all a good dive in less than perfect conditions and thanks to Bob for taking me in despite being horribly seasick.
The second dive of the day was the James Egan Lane, a lot of our group decided against this due to seasickness, leaky drysuits etc but I wasn’t going to miss it after seeing the articles about it that people had brought along. We descended down a shotline again and onto the bow (I think) and headed a little way down the side of the main structure before following it along it’s length until it opened up. I loved the fact that for most of the length all of the decking has been lost so we could swim along ‘inside’ but with a clear exit upwards. I was just enjoying swimming through it with my buddy, taking in the scale of it and poking around for wildlife when I got caught by a particulary forceful surge and helped between two of the uprights a little faster than I was planning! It was actually good fun, if a little suprising, but didn’t happen again. To end the dive we ascended up a DSMB, my buddy ended up deploying it single handedly as I had a minor panic that my feet were floating (I’m not actually sure they were but it worried me) and I ended up holding on to a bit of the wreck until I was sure I had sorted myself out and calmed down. We did a nice steady ascent to 5m but this time my stop was a bit less sucessful, I ended up ascending very slowly and steadily through it. Not a problem as I was well inside my no-deco time and my buddy could watch my fins from his safety stop but frustrating as I am really not ready for deco diving if I can’t hold a stop and I really should be able to do it by now!!
On the Sunday the weather conditions were worse and we decided that rather than try to get out too far in it, we would dive the fort off the breakwater. About half the group elected to stay somewhere dry and warm but willingly helped us get our kit on the boat in the drizzle first (thanks to all of them) and the rest of us headed out to the breakwater. Again for the first dive I was being lead so I descended with my buddy to about 10m at the edge of the fort, the vis was a lot worse than the previous day and not helped by the 3 pairs of divers descending towards the silt at the bottom! We swam clockwise around the fort poking into all the crevices and investing the various pieces of metal down there but didn’t do too well on the wildlife (especially when compared to another buddy pair who found a couple of squat lobsters and a conger!). We moved away from the fort and out onto the sand to and put up the DSMB to ascend. We had been joking on the surface about whether this would qualify as my low vis dive (for my Sport diver) so my buddy then decided to help out a bit by stirring up some of the silt! The vis went to nil and we ended up swimming out of the cloud holding hands, it was interesting to see how suddenly the vis changed on the edge of the cloud. At that point I realised that I had lost my torch, told my buddy and we headed back into the cloud of silt in an attempt to retrieve it but there was no chance so we ascended (this time managing my stop fine). My buddy was apologetic about the torch but I wasn’t cross with him, it was largely my own fault for not having the lanyard tight enough round my wrist, being silly with the silt was good fun (I think we were far enough from the fort not to cause a problem for anyone else trying to dive around it) and an interesting experience to see just what ‘low vis’ really means.
Four of us went in again later for an attempt to retrieve my torch, we had a search pattern sorted out and had made the torch the aim of the dive but by then the vis was so poor generally that we had trouble figuring out where we were let alone spotting the torch. My buddy and I managed to lose the fort (yes really!) when looking for the torch out over the sand, although we did spot a couple of dogfish. Pete had told us to swim in a certain direct away from the fort to surface as he didn’t want to come in too close to certain areas, so we duely did so (first test of my navigation skills!). We went in the right direction, only thing was, we went a bit further than was strictly necessary, if we’d carried on much longer we’d have passed the breakwater! We ascended up a DSMB again and my stop was fine although my buddy was struggling a bit, he realised when dekitting on the surface that he’d been cold on the first dive and left a fleece on under his drysuit which had trapped more air making him a bit light.
So, all in all a good weekend. The second two dives were not nearly as scenic as the first but I did manage to get 4 of my 5 experience dives for Sport diver done (apparently kicking up my own silt didn’t count as low vis but the second dive when the whole place was like soup did!).
Thanks to everyone who buddied me, helped me with kit, wrestled the DIN inserts out of cylinders for me, planned things and carried kit backwards and forwards even when they weren’t diving and of course to Pete and his wife for a great time on the boat, a lovely B&B (with especially lovely resisdent dog!) and hot tea after dives!
I thought I’d finish up with a couple of pics that I was sent.
Me getting back on the boat
Me underwater on the first dive on Sunday - yes that’s the missing torch, bright yellow thing in the bottom left of the photo - if anyone finds it I’ll buy them a pint for it’s safe return!!
