We were going to go to Stoney but Roy changed things on the Thursday so it was off to our resident OW base in South Devon to cheer on John and Rachael as they battled with the mighty spider-crabs and ten-foot pipefish in their quest to complete their open-water qualification. The day started in usual fashion with the mandatory wait for Roy at Telegraph Hill cafe. After a couple of mugs of tea, the dry-suit was possibly in jeopardy here !! Rachael had no worries on this though.... more about this later......
Despite it being around 09:30, we were the first four cars into the car-park !! (apart from Roy who gets a spot on the quayside these days)
The weather was overcast with a small amount of drizzle, but the bay was calm with about 3m of visibility.
Craig and I left Roy to do OW dive #1 with Rachael and John and headed out on Craig's navigation to one of the more distant buoys in the bay. The only problem was that we overshot the distance threefold and ended up way way out. To give an indication, it was a twenty-minute surface swim back to the beach !! (The navigation was spot on though)
For the next dive, we left Rachael, John and Ali to listen to Dean's anecdotes and drink tea while we headed of to the 'Perone' for a wreck-dive aboard the Grace 2. Roy buddied up with Craig, while I buddied Will who had been abandoned by his buddy who had had to dash off to work at the last minute. We had to switch to the 'Bretagne' at the last minute as there was a fishing-boat over the 'Perone'. The dive was excellent including the sighting of millions of shells all over the sea-bed and the largest lobster that I have ever seen that Will was trying to tempt out from under a steel girder ! One thing I could add from this was that I had neglected to plan the dive on the RDP beforehand and just followed Will. Unfortunately, he was on a Nitrox32 mix. A quick session with the wheel and Dean's expertise back at shore confirmed there would be no further problems.
After a brief bit of lunch, Roy took Rachael and John down for dive #2 while Will and I got ready for a drift-dive over at the Orestone. This was another first and the most amazing thing that got us both were the hundreds of baby scallops that 'pac-manned' vertically off the seabed as we glided over them. I got back to shore and everyone else had disappeared back to the Manor House/Seabury hotels. I was already two beers behind !!!
The photos that follow are of the nightlife. We joined up with the Divers Down crew and Anna (little sis) and Ed (her other half) at the coachman's................... I won't say any more apart from the fact that Roy deleted one of the photos that should have been here !!........................ anyway, we kick off with the gratuitous 'Zero-Viz' diving club's version of 'Abbey Road' (It was raining which is why it looks like 'Scott of the Antarctic'!!!......
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Anyway........ Saturday led into Sunday and slightly better weather. As Craig had left on the Saturday, I hope that I didn't cause too much intrusion to Rachael and John by accompanying them on dives 3 and 4. The visibility was pretty bad at some stages but it was clear enough for Rachael to spot a pipefish (later identified by my atrocious drawing in my log-book!). The other thing that Rachael admitted to was doing what must blokes will readily talk about and that is keeping warm whilst wearing a wet/semi-dry suit........... enough said. I guess that must have been on dive 4 as she suddenly lost weight and shot to the surface or was that due to the 2-pounder that fell out of her pocket and hit me ?!!
More details will follow on Divers Down when they have their new-look website up and running in November. In the meantime, if you would like any info. on their services in Babbacombe, please drop an email to the site
