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!

Maiden Dive

Okay, so this entry is backdated a few months, but this was my first dive with TivSAC and my only dive in 2012. However, it does deserve an entry for two reasons: number one, it was a good dive; number two, it bulks out the blog a bit.

Date: Sunday 9th September 2012          Dive Number: 166
Place: Babbacombe Bay near Torquay     Buddy: Steve Gooding
Time Down: 1030                                  Dive Time: 60:00
Time Up: 1130                                      Max Depth: 8.5m
Visibility: 5m                                       Water Speed: 1.2kn
Weather: 5000M BR SCT001                  Entry: Shore

The last place I dived was Lundy Island in 2010 with some university alumni and after all the problems I was having with leaking drysuits and an aching back, I was in two minds whether to carry on or not. So I had been out of the game for a little over two years, and I decided to launch myself into club life once more with my local club. After all, I was experienced, qualified and had spent a fortune on kit in the past. It would be a shame to waste it all!

I spend several hours checking my equipment over, re-reading some of the diving books I had and going over all the notes I had made in the many theory lessons that I had. I was a little nervous about it, so I asked Steve for a nice gentle dive. No wrecks at 45m for instance. Steve, the dive manager for this particular trip, agreed that a nice sheltered shore dive would ease me back in, which I was more than happy with.

We drove down at a civilised time in the morning, 9am (divers usually find themselves getting up before sunrise to get a good spot, at least they are my frequent memories) and the carpark was only just starting to fill with day-trippers. We casually kitted up, my undersuit and drysuit must have shrunk in the past two years as I struggled to fit in them! I suuspect my cylinder and weightbelt must have also gained weight as well... I managed to remember the B.A.R (Buoyancy, Air, Releases) Buddy check routine, one of the subjects I had revised the evening before! We yomped over the rocks to the entry point, which required scramble over due to the tide level and general orography of the site. By the time I managed to heave myself into the water is was sweating buckets and gasping for breath. Steve watching me all the while,  silently chuckling to himself. Once the chilly water was supporting me and took the weight off my equipment I had cooled down sufficiently to be able to gather myself and look like a competent diver ready to sink.

We signalled a thumbs down for descent. The sea bed appeared three meters down like an old familiar friend, rocks riddled with anemone, coral, seaweed and dead crabs. Paradise rediscovered.  Steve obviously knew the area well, as seemingly without a visual reference point or compass he signalled 'That Way' and off we finned. We observed several cuttlefish on the way past the submerged South Devon flora. We think there were six, but it could have been the same pair of cuttlefish swimming around us. We swam for about half an hour in Steve's direction before deciding time was getting on and our air supply was getting to the end of the first 'third'.

We saw much of the same on the way back, seaweed, rocks, limpets and cuttlefish. Towards the end of the dive we found a mass graveyard of spidercrabs at the base of the breakwater/pier. It was just after this that Steve signalled 'thumbs up' to surface, and finding ourselves in the middle of the bay. I thought Steve had planned this all along as we could easily return up the shelving shore, but Steve had got a little lost on the way back to the original entry point!

We hauled ourselves back up the beach and up into the carpark to debrief. I had had a great dive and was happy to have gotten wet once more. Not long after the debrief Steve went to get us a lovely cup of tea from the nearby cafe while I was distracted by Babbacombe's resident seal, which was in the bay snuffling towards a dog called Johnson barking at it from the pier edge.

On balance, I would say it was the best day's dive I had had all year.

Personal Accumulated Time Underwater: 3 Days, 7 Hours, 49 Minutes.