Plymouth
The annual Plymouth trip is always an enjoyable long weekend.
It runs to a formula thanks to the team at InDeep giving us a structure for the day. It also means that it allows for a change in the day without too much fuss.
We arrived at the hotel to find most people had gone for an early night so manged a quick beer after the journey. Next morning we drove the 20 minutes to the Mountbatten centre and begun loading up the boat ready for the predive briefing.
After a quick discussion of proposed dive sites our skipper for the weekend, Sam, headed out round Rame head to do a check dive on the Scylla in the morning and an afternoon dive on the James Egan Layne.
Both dives proved to be fascinating. The Scylla continues to improve as a dive site with marine life taking over every surface. It is a non penetration wreck so we worked around the outside of the ship gradually working inwards towards the bridge and the helicopter bay. The deka, cables, anchor chins and railings are now covered in a layer of muscles forming a carpet over the decks. The wreck is becoming a fantastic reef and is now full of marine life.
The second days dive was a club favourite Hand Deeps and Eddystone Lighthouse. Possibly the best days weather, which allowed us to head out to pinnacle without too much swell. We entered at the start of slack and headed west over the edge of the pinnacle descending slowly to about 30 meters. For me, the only way to descend is to zig zag downwards exploring all the nooks and crannies for marine life and admiring the sheets of jewel anemones covering the walls. We followed that with a slightly disappointing dive off the Eddystone Lighthouse. The setting is amazing but, possibly due to a fishing trawler, the marine life was limited and meant the dive was not up to its usual standard.
Day three sent us out to the Persier, at 28 meters it gives a limited time on the dive, but seeing the two large boilers gradually coming into focus is an incredible sight. From the boilers there is enough time to the stern, turn round and reach the bow before heading back to the boilers for the shot line. The visibility and marine life is incredible on this wreck, lobsters, crabs, conger eels and schools of large bib and pollack. We followed this with our final dive of the weekend on Fairy Lands, a stone ridge reef that runs from 10 to 20 meters in depth and is jammed full of crayfish, a great way to finish the weekends diving.
Thanks to the team at InDeep for the weekends diving.
