(by Claire Dilleen)
The journey down to Brighton on Friday evening was not a terribly good start to the weekend. I think it took John and me about 5 hours. However, all that was forgotten when we met up with the others and started chatting about diving over a pint. The others being Anne, Andy, Inger, Tim, Graham (Huckersby), Graham (Richards), Malcolm, Beate, Chris, and of course Pascale and Pim who did a great job organising the trip.
We
were early to bed that night as we had a 6am start the next day. We awoke on
Saturday morning to beautiful sunny sea views from our room at the Windhaven
B&B. There was just one problem, a force 4 wind had developed overnight and
we could see white horses out to sea. We were diving off Spartacat from Brighton
marina and our skipper for the weekend was Tim Bennetto. The boat was very
conveniently docked near the entrance to the marina, so with the help of a
couple of Asda trolleys, we loaded all the gear onto the boat and set sail on
time.
The
first dive was the Pentrych, a British steamer with a cargo of coal 7 miles out
at 19m. Travelling out to the dive site was a little choppy to say the least
(memories of Weymouth last October came flooding back – and we’re going to
dive in this?!). In fact the sea was so rough that five of our number spent most
of the trip hanging over the side redecorating the boat! The rest of us were
looking pretty green too.
For
me the first dive was a complete disaster – just 3m down I lost a fin and
unable to recover it, we had to abort the dive. Getting back to the boat
wasn’t easy though, with the (seemingly) massive waves, only one fin and being
overweighted at the surface I must admit I did have a bit of a panic attack
(clinging onto the shot-line buoy for a bit of buoyancy). But Pascale looked
after me and got me safely back on board.
And
that was it for me for the rest of the day – the idea of jumping back into the
waves just filled me with dread.
We
arrived back at the marina by 12.30pm, which we were all quite relieved about.
That gave us a good couple of hours R&R and shopping before settling down to
dinner at the marina’s Beefeater pub.
Next
morning the conditions couldn’t have been more different – the sea was like
the proverbial mill-pond.
The
first dive was the City of Brisbane, a 451ft beam Steamship at 20m. Visibility
wasn’t great (2m at best, zero at worst) but it was good to get back into the
water and to get down this time. The plankton bloom made it very gloomy at 19m
so we couldn’t make out that much of the wreck, but we were able to spot a
bib, bleney and large (30cm diam)
starfish.
The
second dive was a drift along a reef down to about 12m. The visibility was
better and we were able to see edible crabs, small starfish, and what looked
like a goldsinney. We also managed to pick up various scallop, welk and snail
shells for our children as souvenirs of our trip.
Claire
Dilleen