Leaving work early on Friday. Always a good move! Les and I drove to Weymouth and on to Portland where we met up with Lisa and Jason for supper in a pub near to our weekend accommodation.  We were to return to the same pub the following evening as the food was good, plenty of it and good value for money. Afterwards we settled into the rather small bedrooms of The Bunker, our accommodation for the weekend and met late arriving participants. These were Alan, Jackie and Dave, all from SASAC and Nick and Rob from BATSAC.
Communal tea was enjoyed in the upstairs lounge before all left to gain as much beauty sleep as possible.

The following morning’s breakfast in the lounge was a subdued affair with comments on the thinness of the bedroom walls and of other divers audible sleep patterns amongst the topics of conversation.

Gear was prepared and all travelled to the harbour. We set up on the boat and soon began our short journey to the Outer Harbour where our first dive was on the Countess of Erne. It was a shallow dive at 13 m with poor visibility of 2 m. I think it would be more interesting on another occasion. The second dive of the day was nearby on the Bombardment Unit.  This was another shallow dive at 16 m and with the same visibility. It was sufficiently poor for me not to locate the connecting line to the adjacent landing craft. Rob and I wandered off the wreck and were unable to find it again so a short dive for us! On the way back to the inner harbour moorings we were buzzed by the Coastguard helicopter. Great Fun!

With the day’s diving completed we washed and prettied ourselves for a visit to the local cinema to see the latest Rambo film. It passed a pleasant couple of hours before dinner and drinks in the pub near to our accommodation. Once again we retired for tea in the lounge before bed.

I awoke early the following (Sunday) morning; organised my possessions for our later departure and went for a walk on Chesil Beach which was literally just across the road. The items the sea washes up are many and invariably broken. Breakfast with colleagues was again an interesting affair before setting off for the boat.

This time we travelled along the coast for about half an hour until we arrived at Worborrow Bay. The view from the boat showed the lovely countryside and coast that Dorset possesses. The wreck, the Blackhawk, was not easily located by the skipper and when dived, Rob and I found nothing on the seabed to get excited about. I don’t think the other teams found much, if anything, more than us. 

A slow journey back into the Outer Harbour of Weymouth gave us our last dive of the weekend. This was on the Bottlebank at 17 m. Rob and I did not find any bottles, although others did, but we did find plenty of scallops of which Rob generously donated his share to me. This proved to be a satisfying end to our weekends diving. A return to the accommodation to collect of our possessions: a parting from friends and a tired drive home saw the completion of the weekend.