The plan today was amended to allow us to have a dive with some of our graduated "UK Virgins" The RIB dives done earlier in the season had proved to be so successful that our virgins wanted to graduate to a proper hard boat dive.
The plan was therefore amended to allow us to dive a more shallow wreck - The Penryck. The depth is around 18m and is therefore ideal for us. The water temperature at the moment is still 19 deg at the bottom making it quite pleasant.
Once again the weather was fantastic making the boat trip out very relaxing, and everyone was able to get a bit of sunbathing in.
Unfortunately the visibility wasn't brilliant but it was still an excellent dive. The wreck is covered in a wide range of fish, crabs and lobsters. There were some very large shoals of pout and whiting that made it very interesting.
During the early part of the dive we spotted a lobster in a whole but he was too quick for us. We came back a few times to see if we could coax him out. They really are spectacular to see swimming in the open water. They are very fast movers.
As there were about 4/5 buddy pairs on the wreck it was inevitable that we would bump into each other. Unfortunately due to the poor visibility there was some confusion and a number of people finished the dive with the wrong partners!!!
The second dive was on Looe Gate Reef. This is a very popular dive as it is fairly close to the shore. It is also shallow at 1round 12m. As is often the case the visibility was much better but there was a very strong current. Some people fought it more than others and as a result we were scattered all over the place making pick up quite time consuming. I was with Andrew Woolford and Neil Whatley again. We fought the current quite well for about half of the dive, but then gave up and went with the flow. We then had a very fast ride away from the boat. When we surfaced we had a very long wait while they picked others up before us.
Below are a few assorted pictures from the trip. Unfortunately none were of the wreck or the marine life as the vis just wasn't good enough
This also turned out to be the last dive of the season. And I also got a speeding ticket in Brighton!!!!! |
