Jason booked 'Seeker', formerly known as Skin Deep, which is now run by Ritchie Stevenson's outfit Deep Blue out of Plymouth. It was to be a trimix only weekend, and 10 of us were booked on it in total, giving plenty of space for twinsets and stage bottles.

Friday night the weather was hot and sunny in Reading when I left at 6pm. The traffic down the M4/M5 was reasonably heavy, and I didn't arrive until 9:30, fortunately spotting Jason parking his car near the hotel, as I didn't know where exactly it was. Most of the rest of us met up in a nearby pub (the Yard Arm) for a quick beer before bed.

Saturday morning we have a reasonable start, 8:30 for a depart of 9:30. I wasn't exactly hurrying but was caught by a speed camera on the way, much to the amusement of Zak and Ade who were behind me and managed to brake in time. Grr.

Boat loaded, we set off to do the Medoc. (some details here). The weather was rather grey and cloudy, but not cold. Arriving at the dive site the shot was soon in and we found that it was pretty much slack already, so got kitted up and pretty soon were descending down into the greeny grey water. I was heading down pretty fast, and kept adding gas to my wing to slow the descent, but still managed to reach the deck in about 50m in less than 3 mins.The reason being that I'd put on my weightbelt (only needed for the twin 12's) yet was diving the twin 10's... so I was about 3Kg overweighted. The wreck is fairly intact, standing some 5m high in a general depth of 55m. There are several large shell cases to be spotted, and some of the wreck is covered in old trawl nets. Still it was light enough to see on the bottom without a torch, and our planned bottom time of 25mins was up all too soon, so we sent up blobs and ascended, switching from 21/35 back gas to 50% at 21m and 100% at 6m. The Cochran started showing about 1hr 15mins deco as we left the bottom, clearing more rapidly once we'd switched to 50%, but not knowing about the 100% it still was showing over 5 mins stops remaining as we surfaced after some 70mins total. The boat was right next to us in the glassy calm sea, not even a swim to the lift and we were back on board!

On the boat Al started to complain about shoulder pains. Once back at Mountbatten, he went on O2 before noticing a skin rash on his shoulder. Yes, he was bent. Brod his buddy did the decent thing and took him to the DDRC for a spot in the pot. We went back into town and lazed about before going for a nice meal in the Village Restaurant in the Barbican, finally picking Al up from DDRC about 9:30. He'd made a complete recovery and been treated to a couple of videos and an Indian takeaway, although had been told not to dive for a week so tomorrow's dive was off for him.

Sunday dawned a bit grey, but by the time we were at the boat the sky was clear blue and the sea was flat calm. This was going to be a good day. We steamed out to the Australbush, an armed merchant vessel lying some 9 miles out of the sound in 62m according to the sounder. Shot in , it already looked fairly slack, so people kitted up and started getting in. Again it was a relatively fast descent down the shot, despite putting the brakes on we hit 60m in 3 minutes, still fairly light at the bottom. With a planned bottom time of only 20 mins it was time for a quick look round, we headed up to the bows where the large anchors and anchor chains were still visible. There was also a large mast standing maybe 10 high above the decking. After 20mins we set off the blobs and ascended, I could still see the wreck from 50m so the viz was easily 10m. Another relatively lengthy deco ensued with gas switches at 21m and 6m, followed by a 5min ascent from 6m (well we didn't want to visit the pot after Al had been in it did we?). Total runtime was 62 mins, I came out with 110 bar of 18/40 still left in the 12's, pity as they had to go for a visual the next week ;). Got back to Plymouth about 3pm and had a very reasonable drive back (3hrs to Reading)... A great weekend.