Well on most dives you rarely get 3 out of 3 - calm seas, fine weather and good viz. In fact much of this year I've had 0 out of 3, but the UKRS dive was exceptional in getting a 2 most of the time.
I managed to miss the Friday due to work, travelled down Friday afternoon to meet up with the folks in the B&B. The B&B itself was not bad, only it would have been nice if my window had not been 10cm from the main train station. After the first night everyone knew what time the first train went by (except Keith Lawrence, and we all know about his sleeping habits don't we? ;)
Saturday morning everyone headed down to Mountbatten to the Maid Maggie. Glen the skipper does a bit of fishing when he's not taking divers out, which explains the large wooden box on deck - it covers the winch. Nice to sit on though, and Jason found it the right height to put his twinset on for kitting up, although it seemed a bit high for me. People who'd dived the day before already had their kit on board, apart from cylinders filled the previous evening at Sound diving.
Off to Hand deeps we went, with flat calm seas. After a while we noticed that the sea was a sort of milky colour. Glen made a remark about its origin that can't be printed here... Hand Deeps is a rocky pinnacle with the top at about 15-20m, going all the way down to the seabed at 60m, not that you have to go to the bottom though :)
Down the shot line we went (I buddied with Alasdair) and the lights rapidly went out past 20m. Fortunately, below this the viz improved somewhat to maybe 3-4m. We spent an enjoyable time drifting round the rocks until it was time to come up, looking at the sea urchins, starfish, anenomies, sea cucumbers.
Saturday afternoon we did the James Egan Layne, the first time I have done this wreck. Little did I know we were going to do it 3 times... Glen expertly dropped the shot near the bows, we descended into water the colour of thin pea soup and rooted in through various holes and holds, down round the bottom of the bows in 21m to see the wonderful collection of anenomies and dead man's fingers on the hull. Back to port and out for an excellent meal at the Village restaurant in the Barbican, which everyone agreed was well worth it.
Sunday we decided not to do the Rosehill as we wanted to come back to Bovi for lunch, so we did HMS Elk instead, which was a trawler converted to a minesweeper. Unfortunately it missed a mine and sank in about 31m several miles out of the Sound. The viz seemed better here, maybe 4-5m, except when we were peering around inside the holds, and with it being a small wreck you could get around the whole of it and have plenty of time to spare. There was an enormous shoal of pollack (?) amidships which seemed relatively unconcerned about us divers bubbling around them. After 30 mins Alisdair and I put up the blob, unfortunately he was on air so he had to deco for ages (I still had 5 mins left 'cos I was on nitrox). Fortunately being on twins we had masses of air. After 55 mins his Aladin still hadn't cleared and we came up with a bent Aladin... subsequent simulation of the profile showed it would have cleared in another minute so perhaps we should have waited :( Not surprisingly Alasdair showed a lot of interest in getting his tanks O2 cleaned after that...
In the afternoon we did the Mewstone ledges, which was a bit disappointing due to the viz being about a metre. Keith L saw a cuttlefish but before he could point it out to the rest of us Jason had trod on it apparently... 40 mins later it was a case of who's doing the blob. Jason looks at Keith L. Keith L looks at me. I look at Jason. Jason has some pathetic excuse about being the dive leader so finally Keith L does the blob, well done that man. Sunday night we went to the China House to eat, and they only took 2 hours to serve us.
Monday morning I awoke to the usual sound of screeching metal as the morning train rumbled towards Penzance, but this time there was something different. That's it, wind. Not mine, mind you, but the stuff you normally get in Plymouth, in large doses. It was indeed a bit breezy with a forecast of NE 4-5, gusting 6. We decided to head for the Rosehill, figuring that it might be a bit sheltered by the bay. But it was decidedly lumpy going past Rame Head, with a 2m swell. So it was the JEL again, this time I buddied with Tony Littler a SAA diver from Swindon who had come just for the day. Again the viz was not up to much, maybe 3m, but we did spot a John Dory which was the first one I'd ever seen! We did the JEL again in the afternoon, since there wasn't much chance of getting anything else diveable (and even then getting up the ladder with a twinset was, err, interesting) and the John Dory was waiting there again for us. I also spotted some brass but it was rather firmly attached although well polished by divers rubbing it... We tried to find the rope to the stern bit, but I'm not renowned for my navigation skills, so I missed it somehow.
On the boat on Monday were Dave Crockford and a lady who'd won an Inspiration in the Dive magazine competition. Gavin Newman was there to take piccies for the mag, I wonder if any of the u/w ones will come out given the viz though...
Finally it was back to port to unload and start the long drive home. It had been a good long weekend and thanks to Jason for all the organisation this time. Now where shall we go for UKRS #3?
(c) Keith S. - July 1999