This club weekend trip to Lyme Bay was Oh So Very Different! from the previous one.
Can you image a brief, two day Summer in October? There were blue skies, millpond seas, warm sunshine, no winds, people sunbathing on the beach, playing in the shallows, going sailing, walking along the promenade eating ice cream. And we were right there, in the middle of it, on a dive boat with a helpful, enthusiastic skipper, with all our kit and we were going diving. Fantastic! Even the start times were half way to being human at 8.30am both mornings. I had left work early on Friday afternoon. Always a good move! Les picked me up in his van at 5 o’clock, we then collected Pip and we were off! To join the traffic jams on the M25 and then the M3. Eventually this cleared and we made good progress. Later in the evening we stopped at a Little Chef and there were joined by Lisa and Jason. We arrived at our weekend accommodation and settled in for a good night’s sleep. After breakfasting we make our way to the picturesque quay known as the Cobb. Here we met Reuben and Nick who had driven to Lyme Regis that morning and Becky and Andy from SASAC, who were staying with relations nearby.Loading our dive kit on to Blue Turtle,  I was diving with Les and Reuben. We experienced 5 metres viz, at a depth of 23 metres for 47 minutes. Temperature on the surface was 22 degrees and at depth 15 degrees. A good dive. Our surface time was spent on the boat, enjoying lunch and the fantastic day. Our second dive of the day was on the Baygitano, at 21 metres. I dived with Reuben and enjoyed seeing the wreck with all the marine life on it. We found the tail end of a Conger in pipe: and pulled it! The boilers on this ship are the highest and most prominent feature of it, being large and located adjacent to the still upright engine. All too soon it was time to surface. There never seems to be enough time to see everything that is available. With all divers safely aboard, even though Lisa experienced a boot malfunction! it was back to harbour to unload all our kit and visit the seafront for ice cream and tea. After this, it was back to the accommodation to clean up before returning to town for our evening meal all together. The sea air worked its magic because most of us retired early to sleep away the day’s exertions. I would like to say that we were all up early the next morning, bright eyed and bushy tailed, but then again you wouldn’t want me to lie to you. It is sufficient that we all made it back to the harbour in good time to board Blue Turtle for that day’s adventures. And the weather was still fantastic, it was the true summer that we never had. Our first dive on Sunday was on the Heroine, a wooden ship sunk in the early 1850’s with a cargo of fire bricks for the smelting kilns on the Australian gold fields. Well, they are still in Lyme Bay and it’s a surreal sight to see a long mound of bricks at 23 metres. Under the bricks there was a colony of congers: in some places three together. Most faced us as we swam past but one presented a side view of 2 metres long and a diameter of about 6 inches. On the way back along the wreck, one had come out of its hole, even though it manoeuvred back into it, I veered away. There were lots of the long pins that held wooden ships together. The ones here were protruding over two foot from the seabed with flattened ends where they had been driven into the ship. This dive was also over all too soon after just 35 minutes. Les and I found a few Scallops which were later returned to the sea but some of our colleagues managed to fill their goodie bags with them.
We seemed to have a long surface interval but it was spent enjoyably. We returned to harbour for medical treatment to the skippers eye. His boat was safe with us, he had left his beautiful dog on board to guard both it and us. The second dive of the day and last of the weekend was back to the Baygitano (see wreck tour here). This time I dived with Nick and Les. Nick spotted a conger located under a plate, this one was bigger than the others of earlier in the day. I stayed clear of it. The visibility was 5 to 8 metres so enabled us to see a lot of the ship. Once again, we failed to find any Scallops but some who shall remain nameless, Philippa and Jason collected a bumper harvest. All divers surfaced safely and once unloaded at the harbour was completed, the only thing left to do was drive home and end an exciting and enjoyable weekend with a great group of friends. |
Scapa Flow 2007 of Lisa Shafe 
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Branch Diving > Trip Reports >
Lyme Bay 11th and 12th October 2008posted 4 Nov 2008 02:45 by David Allen [ updated 4 Nov 2008 03:03 ] |
