Chesil Beach

We still have that slab of high pressure sitting over us now as we did on Sunday, which was a perfect opportunity to get to some of the more 'exposed' sites. 

There was only myself; Dave H, a sports diver; and Oli, one of our new trainee ocean divers. It was my turn to organise the dive so the previous Thursday I brainstormed some ideas with the other instructors Andy and Paul. We ruled out places like Hallsands and Lulworth Cove, and wanted something different than what we normally do. We agreed that Chesil Beach in Dorset would be ideal as a shelving shore dive, and the abundance of rocks and pebbles would ensure at least moderate visibility.

geograph.co.uk

It took an hour and a half to get there from Tiverton, but we arrived at the civilised time of 10am. We planned to dive off the far eastern end of the beach, closest to Portland. The sea was a flat calm and almost deserted despite the end of summer holidays, that is save for a dive trio that were just coming out of the water. They were reporting visibilities of 10m in places! Tropical! Jenny my wife carried out marshalling duties while the Dave, Oli and I kitted up and did our buddy checks. These are always essential even for the experienced diver (especially for the complacent diver) as I had accidentally attached my weightbelt to my BCD! 

We put our fins on in the water and Jen took lots of photos of us all hopping around in the mid-surf!

We got ourselves organised and descended to about 6m initially. Dave was the only diver with a compass (mine is still ratting around Babbacome beach somewhere) so he lead the dive. We navigated straight out in a southwesterly direction. Visibility was good, although I would have said not quite 10m, but enough to impress and ocean diver trainee on his third ever dive! Oli was very enthusiastic and was powering on ahead, so not only was he using his air a lot faster than Dave or myself he was missing all the scenery! He slowed down on the way back after he was the first to reach 140bar. I was having a lot of fun holding different static positions underwater thanks to my loaned semi-drysuit, for instance I really enjoyed hovering upside down and looking under rocks that way! We spotted three wrasse, two lobsters (one of them was truly gargantuan but too embedded in the rock to retrieve) and a lonely cuttlefish, which was Oli's spot.

We exited a few hundred yards to the west of where we set out, and it was a steep climb up the stoney beach back to the drybags and lunchboxes. 

Once again I had worn a semi-dry as my beloved drysuit is still at the menders. But you know what? I think I've been converted!

Babbacombe

Date: Sunday 11th August            Dive Number: 176
Place: Babbacombe, Torquay       Buddy: Jade K, Elliott N 
Time Down: 1130                         Dive Time: 00:32 + 00:10
Time Up: 1215                               Max Depth: 8.8m
Visibility: 0-1m                             Water Speed: 0kn
Weather: F3 BKN015 W18C         Entry: Pier steps

1townhouses.co.uk

Dave and Adrian managed to get away for a club dive relatively early on, and visibility was good to the south of the pier. We ourselves eventually got kitted up after a lot of mucking about with cylinder fills! There was a wedding on at the hotel which also choked up the car park, and Elliott was getting rather hot in his semi-dry. It was Elliott's first ever sea dive and Jade's final Ocean Diver lesson - leading the dive. I constructed a plan that would fulfil both OO1 and OO5 requirements, getting Elliott to do some simple drills at shallow depth before Jade lead the dive to a greater depth.

After letting my wife (dive marshal, keeper of the diveslate) Jen know our air and time in, the fishers on the pier know we would be swimming around the base of the pier before descending, we entered via the steps where I felt the biggest leak in my drysuit I have ever had. Becky on surface support checked my drysuit zip but it appeared fine. I thought my dump valve was letting it in, but it seemed to taper off within a few minutes so I thought no more about it.

We circumnavigated the pier avoiding all the fishers and descended to the base, a depth of around 2m. Elliott did a good fin pivot, it seemed he had the correct weights at the time. Jade then buddied with Elliott and lead the dive with myself behind, with the intention of using the rock wall as a navigation aid, but the silt had been stirred up rather rotten and at times all I could see were the end of Jade and Elliott's fins. I was keeping an eye on our direction with my compass, which Jade did not have or anticipate needing. Jade turned round and signalled to surface so we could get a look at where we were. We were a far way off the wall and about 150m away from the pier. We gained our bearings again and started to go down again but Elliott had problems equalising (popping his ears). We surface swam back to the pier where I suggested we complete Elliott's mask clear drills but he was uncomfortable, so asked if he could get out. This was no problem and probably a good idea, as noone should dive if they are uncertain or uncomfortable, as this could lead to major incidents.

Becky helped Elliott back to the car park while Jade lead the dive back from the pier to the shore, which gave her more of an opportunity in clearer water to check my air, check I was okay and generally navigate to the shore which was successful  At chest depth we did a low-air buoyancy check which was fine, and finally Jade jettisoned her weightbelt to complete the lesson. 

Date: Sunday 11th August            Dive Number: 177
Place: Babbacombe, Torquay       Buddy: Becky H, David C
Time Down: 1515                         Dive Time: 00:31
Time Up: 1600                               Max Depth: 4.3m
Visibility: 2-3m                             Water Speed: 0kn
Weather: F3 SCT020 W18C         Entry: Shelving shore

The second wave was later getting away than planned but it was mid afternoon and noone seemed too rushed. My wife had to take the boys home so Jade looked after the dive slate. We planned the same lesson, but the tide was a lot lower, almost at low tide, and the best bet at any visibility was in the bay where Jade and I found it to be a lot clearer previously.

geograph,org.uk

Elliott kindly lent me his semi-drysuit (I have never worn one until today!) which I managed to squeeeeeeze into as my drysuit was incapable of being a dry suit. We stumbled over rocks and boulders to get to the water's edge to the amusement of everyone watching from the beach and cafe! We did buddy checks and Becky have a good brief to David as part of her exercise. The plan was to use her brand new compass to navigate in a straight line out of the bay, turn round after 70 bar (one third) of our air had been used and come back on the reciprocal bearing. 

It was difficult putting fins on in such shallow water so we instead put helped each other on with fins slightly further out. The seaweed was a nuisance as well. We didn't get a very inspirational depth but it was sufficient to stay underwater. David was on the light side of neutrally buoyant when doing the fin pivots, but otherwise seemed comfortable in the water. Becky did a good job leading the dive, checking David's air and that he was 'okay', but found the compass a challenge. This didn't impede on the lesson (aside from ending up at the same dead end twice!) as she took assertive corrective action when she realised the error, and directed David accordingly. Becky signalled that David had finished his first third of air and lead us on the reciprocal bearing back to the shore. Visibility was slightly better, but not as good as earlier. Certainly not the most inspiring dive where marine biology was concerned, I saw a few dead crabs but nothing else of interest! Towards the end of the dive the partial-flood mask clear drill was carried out, Becky maintained a mid water hover on low air at 2m depth, and finally when they were chest deep they both jettisoned their weightbelts. I picked up both weightbelts and unfortunately this caused my compass to slip off into the silty seaweedy tidal waters. I hope someone finds it and has many an enjoyable and memorable dive navigating with my compass! 

The best moment of the day however was watching an overloaded motorhome trying and failing to leave the steep sharp bend on the hill out of the carpark!

shoredive.co.uk

Porthkerris

Tiverton Diving Club On Tour! Porthkerris Divers are a well establised diving operation situated on the Cornwall's Lizard peninsula. Andy organised a weekend away to sample the diving scene, an overnight stay at St Keverne Campsite was essential, otherwise it was over a two hour drive back to Tiverton!  

We weren't "lucky" with the weather, but thanks to being east facing and protected from prevailing winds by a sheer cliff, we got away with most of our planned dives!

Date: Saturday 3rd August          Dive Number: 172
Place: Vase (Manacles)               Buddy: Chris B 
Time Down: 1230                         Dive Time: 00:29
Time Up: 1301                               Max Depth: 30.5m
Visibility: 8-10m                            Water Speed: 0kn
Weather: F4 SCT030TCU W14C   Entry: Boat Celtic Kitten

Our first dive was a hardboat dive. There are two hardboats that run out of Porthkerris, Celtic Cat and Celtic Kitten, the latter was the boat we were booked on. The boat has a front door like a RORO ferry and fronts onto the stony beach, so divers can simply walk on like it's a landing craft - the benifit of this is so that we don't need to kit up on the boat as the deck itself was quite small. Chris and I were uncharacteristically slow at kitting up, so ended up carrying some kit onto the boat and trying to untangle our hoses in front of a group of bemused looking divers from another club! We soon sat down with everyone else and enjoyed the moderately choppy ride out to the site. Dave, the skipper, was a really chilled out guy - most chilled out skipper I've ever seen! He made everything seem so smooth and easy, which put all the divers at ease. Even when Chris' cylinder slipped through the strap prior to entry, he just laughed, pulled him back, set it straight, slapped him on the back and all was well again. Some that I've encountered in the past would have held a grudge against something like that for the whole weekend! 

porthkerris.com

"The Vase is a very pretty, colourful reef dive. It is part of the Manacles and is a rock that is wedding cake shaped with three tiers at varying depths. The rocks are covered in kelp, sea fans and sponges and beautiful jewel anemones of all colours imaginable, coating the granite on the north-east corner of Vase Rock. There are sandy gullies and coves within the rocks that provide shelter from the current and are home to numerous sea urchins, starfish, crabs, pollack and wrasse. The current here can be exceptionally strong, especially on springs when it is only possible to dive on slack". Porthkerris.com

Once on the shotline we descended to a depth of around 20m on the Vase and headed north towards deeper water. Chris and I had previously agreed not to exceed a maximum depth of 35m, so we planned decompression stops from the BSAC '88 Tables, 1 minute at 9m and 3 minutes at 6m. At a depth of 30m we still had some depth ahead of us but we decided to ascend up the profile again for the sake of our air consumption. It was quite light at 30m, rather misleading as it usually gets dark at that depth in the UK. The Vase of course was very colourful, with sponges, fan coral and several fish, including one big pollack and a huge lobster which Chris saw, but didn't tell me! We found a pinnacle which plateau'd at 6m so our final deco stop and DSMB deployment were made easy for us.

One of the best things about Celtic Kitten is the lift. It's so easy to just stand on it underwater after a dive and then Dave winds it up so we can simply walk back onto the deck. Too easy!

Date: Saturday 3rd August          Dive Number: 173
Place: Porthkerris Bay                 Buddy: Chris B, Keith S 
Time Down: 1500                         Dive Time: 00:25
Time Up: 1530                               Max Depth: 14.9m
Visibility: 4-5m                             Water Speed: 0kn
Weather: F4 BKN015 W13C        Entry: Shelving Shore

After a decent surface interval back on shore we prepared for our second dive of the day - Chris' final Dive Leader open water training lesson. The drill consisted of

• Controlled Buoyant Lift (CBL) of a non breathing casualty from 15m
• Tow casualty on the surface for 50m
• Exploratory dive

We summoned Keith to join us on the dive so he could act as the casualty, which would work better from my perspective of monitoring the skill. We needed a depth of 15m, and much of the bay was only 8-10m. We needed to go around the other side of these rocks.

porthkerris.com

This required a moderate surface swim which gave me cramp more than once and further flooding in my drysuit which I have found to occur more when I'm on my back. We reached the far side of the rocks and descended to find a clear patch of sand at a depth of 15m, ideal for the initial casualty set up. The first CBL was too fast and it took a while for me to catch them up on the surface. Everyone was okay though, apparently there was also confusion as to the last 6m whether they held on or separated, and who was and wasn't inflated. While we were on the surface I made Chris do the 50m tow which really did seem to tire him out. We dropped down again to catch our breath before retrying the CBL, this time arresting the asecnt at 6m and then immediately descending without surfacing. There was no way we were going to do a third run as multiple ascents can be detrimental to our biology. Fortunately Chris did really well on the second ascent and made haste without speed, hitting 6m before immediately descending again. Finally, Chris navigated and explored our way back to the beach, reaching it spot on to where we wanted. At three meters depth as we were swimming up the final shelf, Chris bent down, took his fins off and attempted to 'walk' up the beach. He really had to lean forward to maintain any sort of propulsion and made it look rather difficult. Impressive, funny, but not really appropriate if he was leading the dive, or even looking after his buddy should anything happen to them. All we need to do now is to get him to do simulated rescue breaths and compressions on a dummy. Maybe Keith will be available again... 

Back at the campsite, Andy and Sue sorted everyone out with a slap-up barbeque dinner. It was a little cold considering it was August, but it's truly the only way to relax after a hard day's diving!

Date: Sunday 4th August             Dive Number: 174
Place: Volnay (wreck)                 Buddy: Steve G, Keith S 
Time Down: 1200                         Dive Time: 00:43
Time Up: 1243                               Max Depth: 19.5m
Visibility: 4-5m                            Water Speed: 0kn
Weather: F4 OVC002 W14C       Entry: Boat Celtic Kitten

We didn't know if we would even be diving at all today as we had such bad weather overnight and it was so windy at the campsite. We underestimated the degree of shelter the site had though, and when I asked Jo at the front desk if the hardboats were still going out she looked in comic disbelief and exclaimed, "hell, yeah!" 

"Homeward from Canada with luxury goods and ammunition, [Volnay] detonated a contact mine on 14th December 1917 off the Manacles, and was bought into Porthallow bay and anchored a quarter of a mile off Porthkerris beach, where she sank in 21 metres onto a sandy bottom. It is a non-tidal, nice and easy wreck to dive. Although the wreck is well broken up, there are still some very large pieces, but the whole site is covered in a fine layer of silty sand and you must be careful not to stir things up.  You may find some shell cases, lead balls or cordite if you’re lucky". Porthkerris.com

We were back on the Celtic Kitten for this dive and also joined by the same club as yesterday. Dave explained all about the wreck and suggested, as the Celtic Cat had already dropped divers off, that we go north rather than south, where the other divers had probably gone to stir up the silt! Didn't find any treasure though. Found a shoe, but it looked new, so left it to grow some barnacles for next time.

Date: Sunday 4th August            Dive Number: 175
Place: Porthkerris Bay               Buddy: Toby & Kate 
Time Down: 1430                         Dive Time: 00:31
Time Up: 1501                               Max Depth: 8.2m
Visibility: 2-4m                            Water Speed: 0kn
Weather: F4 OVC002 W14C      Entry: Shelving Shore

Final dive of the trip, and after a chicken baguette, a cup of tea, fig roll and two hours surface interval we were ready once more. I took Toby on his final Ocean Diver open water lesson. Drills included

• SEEDS Brief 
• Lead the dive between 12-20m
• Mid water hover on low air
• Weightbelt jettison

Kate, Toby's partner also came along on the dive as Toby's dive buddy, and I would swim along behind and monitor his dive leading. Toby gave a good brief and I was very impressed that he reviewed and reconsidered his original decision to enter via the smaller entrance where swell was being amplified up the shore and took the safer entrance, even though it meant a longer surface swim to where he wanted to go. He was also keen to practise compass navigation, which wasn't necessary but very useful for the exercise.

Toby's conduct in leading the dive was outstanding. He regularly checked Kate's (and my) air - even if it was every ten bar at least he was mindful of it. Assessing the length of time to leave between asking again comes with experience. He was also good at checking the 'ok' sign with Kate and myself as well. Toby successfully used the compass to navigate north through the gully to the left of the bay, and after the first 'third' of air supply then took a reciprocal bearing as he planned in his brief for the second third, leaving a third left in the cylinder as reserve. We reached the final shelf leading up to the beach where Toby demonstrated he could execute a mid water hover whilst low on air, and then I got him to sit down on the stones at 1.5m depth, where he jettisoned his weightbelt and safely bobbed up on the surface. 

We then walked up to the kit washing station and debriefed while spraying each other with cool fresh water, after a salty weekend it felt so good! I was able to sign off OS5 in Toby's book, he has a few more to get signatures for but otherwise I look forward to seeing him and Kate in Sports diver lessons very soon!

porthkerris.com

Total accumulated time underwater: 3 Days, 14 hours, 39 minutes

Instructor Foundation Course

For all those divers who are thinking about instructing, and even non divers who may possibly consider diving in the future I present to you an entry from another blog I had back in 2007, after I took the plunge and took the IFC, the first step towards becoming a scuba diving instructor. I fully recommend it!

April 1st 2007

Moving Up by Going Down

I have passed my IFC instructor course with BSAC scuba diving and am now an instructor!
Matt and I drove to a grotty public school in Pimlico in the middle of London at 7am Saturday (it had stalactites  and sat through a series of lectures before throwing ourselves in the drink and being taught to teach by national instructors.

In my group were Steve, Dan and Simon; or as I thought, Future John Gane, Eric Clapton and Victor Meldrew. We had a few laughs, planned a load of lessons and then were each assigned a topic to complete for the next day. I was to give a theory lesson on BCD's and a practical session on mask clearing.

Got home at about 9pm and spent an hour making a powerpoint presentation and 10 lesson plan for a 10 minute theory lesson, and wrote up a dive slate for the practical.

On the second day we all did our theory lessons. I got the group involved in trying on the BC, cylinder and regs along with demonstrating how it was used, which Pete (our instructor) was impressed by. My mask clear demo was good as well, along with teaching novices to kits up, enter and exit the pool safely. Eric Clapton had to teach buoyancy control, but overnight his cylinder emptied to 90bar, and he wore a wet suit without a weightbelt. So it was ironic that he was floating like a cork and unable to teach!

I'm now a qualified A.D.I. instructor!

And now I'm so tired!

We're Going To Need A Bigger Boat...

Date: Sunday 21st July 2013          Dive Number: 170
Place: Mewstone, Plymouth           Buddy: Steve G 
Time Down: 1130                           Dive Time: 01:03
Time Up: 1235                               Max Depth: 13.4m
Visibility: 4-5m                             Water Speed: 0kn
Weather: F5-F6. Water 19C.       Entry: Boat (Tivvy Rebel)

I learnt something this weekend. Our boat is not called 'Humber' - that is the naem of the model which is glued to the bow The club name for the boat is Tivvy Rebel. We quickly sorted loaded the boat with twelve cylinders, six sets of kit and six divers... and despite the title of this post (a favourite quote of mine from Jaws, so it's staying) there was plenty of manoeuvrability on the boat. Steve

L to R, Steve, Andy and Dave. Photo by D.Dooley.

 took the helm and aimed towards the Persia. As soon as we got past the Breakwater it started to get rather choppy, with salty spray whipping our faces and making my contact lenses feel slightly crispy in my eyes. It started to become rather rough past Mewstone, so we made an about turn and powered back to the lee of the Mewstone where conditions were a little more settled. A handful of other dive boats had exactly the same idea. 

Andy and Dave; David and Elizabeth went on the first wave while Steve gave me control of the boat. After a few figures of eight in the slacker water I decided to try and save some petrol and cut the power for a little while, without consulting Steve. The moment I turned the key I regretted my decision, as we always have to start the engine with a spare battery. Steve looked rather concerned as we repeatedly tried the ignition, followed by a deafening lack of sound coming from the engine. We left it for a minute or so and tried again, and she just spluttered into life. That was a close one! Needless to say I left her ticking over when I decided to drift upstream of the divers. 

Mewstone (bbc.co.uk)

Both pairs ascended almost simultaneously, so we swiftly retrieved David and Elizabeth before catching up with Andy and Dave. David had took some clear pictures of sea fan, leopard spot fish and Mixycola. Andy was triumphantly clutching a speargun which he found on his dive, he plans to clean it up and get it working (hopefully not planning to aggravate George the Plymouth dolphin or any seals with it). Our turn came, we kitted up and spent over an hour navigating our way towards Mewstone. To be honest there was very little to see except for kelp and a couple of fish. I wanted to find some decent kit, or interesting bit of wreckage from something, but nothing turned up. The most interesting thing in my opinion was Mewstone, which we  reached at a depth of 1.3m. We had to turn around and swim back into deeper water so we could deploy my Delayed Surface Marker Buoy so the boat could find us and pick us up. At least we got wet.

Sea Fan. Photo by D. Dooley. 

Date: Sunday 21st July 2013            Dive Number: 171
Place: Plymouth Breakwater Fort Buddy: Steve G 
Time Down: 1600                           Dive Time: 00:23
Time Up: 1630                               Max Depth: 13.4m
Visibility: 1-2m                             Water Speed: 1kn
Weather: F3-F4. Water 18C.       Entry: Boat (Tivvy Rebel)

After a two hour surface interval at Fort Bovisand involving a toilet break, a bottle of water, a packet of ready salted crisps and a Snickers bar, we suddenly realised that it was half three in the afternoon. Each of us called our respective wives to warn them that we would be much later getting back than previously anticipated. Some of us got more stick than others, but thankfully I consider myself to have gotten off lightly! 

Fort Bovisand (panoramio.com)

We decided to stick to the lee of the breakwater where things were calmer and dive a single circuit around Plymouth Breakwater Fort to keep the dive nice and short. To shorten the length of time on the water further Andy and Dave volunteered to crew the boat and miss out on the second dive. Myself and Steve descended on an unassuming area of silt, I propped up a piece of scrap metal against the fort base to mark our arrival. We made our way anticlockwise around the fort, visibility was rather poor due to the silt. It was more interesting to explore though, looking at all the mangled iron and steel which had dropped off the old fort over time. We swam against a slight current on the first half of the circuit, and were rewarded for our efforts with a pleasant drift around the other side. I spied my piece of metal and a rusty ladder which was lying close by, and I signalled to Steve to ascend. We clambered aboard once more and a further 15 minutes went by before David and Elizabeth popped up and we motored back to port. 

Plymouth Breakwater Fort (worldseafishing.com)

Ansteys Cove, Torquay

Date: Sunday 7th July 2013            Dive Number: 169
Place: Ansteys Cove, Torquay       Buddy: Keith S 
Time Down: 0930                           Dive Time: 00:57
Time Up: 1030                               Max Depth: 5.3m
Visibility: 6-8m                             Water Speed: 0kn
Weather: Warm and sunny           Entry: Shore

The weather is stunning. The jet stream has gone for a holiday over Iceland and has left us with hot sunny weather for the beginning of July at least. What better way to enjoy this warm sunshine than from under the water! Today my wife and sons also decided to come along to watch us, and take photos of us all through the morning.

The plan was for a shore dive from Ansteys Cove in Torquay, a mere hop along from Babbacombe Bay on the other side of the cliffs. It's quite a steep drive from the top gate and after dropping diving equipment off at the quayside we returned our vehicles to the car park at the top. At least parking was free which was a welcome bonus and made the trek seem worth it!

I paired with Keith who was doing his first dive of the season. It was such a hot morning especially under all our layers that all we wanted to do was get into the cold water! I decided to take my surface marker buoy in on this dive. Although it was six years old I had never used it until today, I had always used delayed SMBs, the variety you inflate deploy from depth. We descended down to the shore and waded in, the cool water providing a blissful relief as we donned our fins and masks. We decided to swim out to the right of the bay, along the cliffs for one third of our air supply (assuming no currents) and then turn around. It was an exploratory dive as neither of us had shore dived from Anstey before.

We surface swam from the shore out to a reasonable sinking depth, whereupon we descended to three meters. We skimmed across the seaweed and kept our eyes open for life, which had reportedly been scarce on the last dive. The plankton bloom had since moved on and visibility was fair to good, I estimated around 6-8m, possibly up to 10m in places when looking towards the cliff. The first lifeform I spotted was a dazzling bioluminescent comb jellyfish, which was zapping all sorts of colourful lights down itself. I pointed it out to Keith, but he didn't seem too impressed. Judging by the fact we saw dozens more of them on the dive, I guess he'd seen plenty before!

There were plenty of wrasse, including one very big pregnant one which was lazing amongst the seaweed. There were also some other jellyfish, and fish identification being a weakness of mine I will resign myself to refer to them as 'classic' jellyfish. The ones with a hollow dome shaped body and tentacles coming down out from the middle. It was difficult to get any depth below three meters, so I directed us slightly away from the cliff wall, hoping to find a drop-off which would give the dive a bit of variety. It did eventually drop off to about five meters, but the visibility was very poor, reminiscent of the last dive we did in Babbacombe where visibility was only 1-2m. We retreated back to the clear waters of the shelf and continued to weave our way between the outcrops of rock and seaweed.

Nursehound. Photo by David Dooley.

After half an hour we turned back, I also had to briefly ascend (stand up) to get my bearings just in case we had drifted further than anticipated and thankfully we had gone where I though we had gone, which is a moderate achievement without a compass as it can be very disorientating underwater. We didn't see much else in the way of flora and fauna, but Keith did spot a sizeable dogfish or nursehound which swam towards us to investigate before turning tail and scarpering! I was able to identify points that we had passed on the way, a rock outcrop which had a trianglur peak sticking out of the water, three clear patches in a line and a long transverse ridge of seaweed which required circumnavigation. We hit the bay dead on return, with a dive time of 57 minutes and a maximum depth of 5.3m.

After debriefing, dekitting and rehydrating I gathered the family up and went for a slap up meal in a restaurant in Newton Abbott, then returned home to wash off the kit, which I delegated to someone else...

Accumulated time underwater: 3 days, 11 hours and 5 minutes.

Babbacombe, Torquay

Date: Sunday 30th June 2013          Dive Number: 168
Place: Babbacombe, Torquay         Buddy: Andy P 
Time Down: 1100                           Dive Time: 01:00
Time Up: 1200                                 Max Depth: 8.0m
Visibility: 2-3m                               Water Speed: 1kn
Weather: SCT004 9999 F2             Entry: Pier Steps

You can see the remains of a crumbling house from Babbacombe Beach. It was bought for £150,000 as a holiday home. The buyers thought that was brilliant, so rushed the sale through without thinking about getting a survey or even going down to the bottom of the garden. After the price, it may have been the view that really sold it to them. How ironic. 

geograph.co.uk

It was a glorious morning. The sea was flat and the strong sunshine was breaking through the thinning stratus. Dogs were running after tennis balls on the beach, cars were shuffling into parking spaces and the first cups of tea were being purchased from the cafe in between strategic organisation of plastic furniture on the promenade, ready for a roaring day's trade. One diver came up to me and asked for his drysuit to be zipped up, which I duly did without questioning. He will appear again later, so keep reading!

The rest of our contingent arrived soon after myself, Linda gave a short brief and assigned buddy pairs. It took no time to kit up, no piece of kit had been left at the house and everything seemed to work, so we were ready in minutes. I took the decision not to wear an undersuit on this occasion, but settled for a rash vest instead. 

After buddy checks we made our way to the pier steps, stopping on the way to let the fishermen know our plan. Apparently they were more concerned about a solo diver who had gone in moments before, and not told them what he was doing, where he was going and had no surface marker buoy. Naughty. We slipped off the bottom of the steps and surface swam round pier under the fishers until we were clear of lines. I found if I swim on  my back a jet of water shoots down the back of my neck, and possibly through the armpits of my drysuit. I seems drier on my front with my arms tucked in. I reckon I could get away with a few more dives before thinking about having it repaired.

Visibility was about two or three meters initially, we saw a few wrasse and spider crabs to kick us off. At a depth of three meters and soon after I spied an edible crab, a dark shape loomed out of the silt and plankton carrying a high powered torch, illuminating all the interesting rocks and  seaweed below him. He signalled okay to us and disappeared, no buddy in sight. Andy and I exchanged glances - it was the diver who I met in car park, the one the fishers were annoyed about. Some people have no sense, even if it is only a shallow dive. We pushed on against the weak current and up to the swim-through where visibility dropped to near zero, as plankton had accumulated there over the past few weeks. The wall was like a ghostly dark shape and was the only datum that I had, I even had difficulty keeping Andy in my sights. Soon after clearing the swim-through visibility improved again and I spotted a (or 'the') cuttlefish, which help two tentacles up to me, so I reciprocated by giving him two fingers. It's probably a sort of cuttlefish gesture. 

Not much was spotted after that, I did note that the spider crabs were a lot bigger than I remember, some of them seemingly had bulging biceps! We turned round at about 130bar and swam back towards home. It was a lot nicer on the ankles as we were now swimming with the current. We saw more crabs and wrasse, and plenty more plankton. Then, out of the murk we came upon the other buddy team at an oblique angle, which lead to a brief moment of confusion and hilarity as buddy pairings got mixed. We left them to it and I followed Andy's direction to try find the end of the pier. At one point Andy stopped and searched among the seaweed, but found nothing (he later said he though he saw an octopus dashing for cover). We overshot the end of the pier and swam through the stringy seaweed for about fifteen minutes before surfacing right in the middle of the bay, almost in exactly the same place (and for the same reasons as) the dive with Steve G's last year!

Here's the log entry for this dive. No sketches I'm afraid, I got carried away with writing!