A Weekend out of Falmouth - May 06
Having literally poured the water out of my dry suit boots…yet again! I still wanted to do the second dive. I was prepared to dive soaking wet inside my dry suit and see how long I could last out, such was the lure of the underwater scenery for me and my camera. I had been hugging the radiator in Redeemers wheelhouse during the surface interval so at least I was going to start the second dive soaking wet but warm.
Having discovered how great the diving is in Cornwall I eagerly returned for the bank holiday weekend. I had been paying out huge amounts of money to keep hiring a dry suit that would fit my portly figure and thought it would be more economical to buy a second hand one just to tide me over. Ebay is a bit of a lottery when making purchases and while I would never buy anything that my life depended on, I thought I could probably pick up something at a reasonable price. I did and it arrived but less than a week before I was diving again. Naturally I wanted to use it but the seals were not a tight fit. I had no time to get new seals fitted and quickly ordered some bio seals in the hope that they might do the trick………..they didn’t! The first dive on the Friday evening and within seconds of descending I could feel the water trickling in. I tried very hard to ignore it desperately hoping it might only be a small amount…..unfortunately it wasn’t! Within about ten minutes I could feel the cold really beginning to bite and water trickling down the legs inside the suit to my feet. Knowing it would take a few minutes to get back to the shot and up I decided to finish the dive. Back on the boat I could feel the water sloshing around inside my boots and I had to literally pour it out of the boots……no wonder I had felt overweighted!
First job the next day was a visit to Seaways in Penryn. Colin who runs Seaways had been on the boat the evening before and said if I bought the suit in he would put seals on it, hopefully I would then be able to dive on Sunday. True to his word I picked the suit up later that day complete with new seals to be dried out carefully overnight.
First dive on Sunday was a drift over The Bizzies. Now drift dives are not my favourite, as I get very frustrated at not being able to stop and take photos. Often I don’t even bother to take my camera. However on this occasion I took the it hoping that I might be able to find gullys to shelter in out of the main current. I managed a few shots at the beginning of the dive before the current really started pushing me along with no chance of finding any places to duck into.
Although I had been aware of a trickle of cold water coming in through the valve on my chest it was bearable and I managed a reasonable dive before the amount of air left meant I had to start ascending. However, peeling off my dry suit I was again soaking, this time only from mid chest down………but the boots still needed emptying! I knew that the best dive was still to come and one I had really been looking forward to on The Hera. Although a relatively shallow dive at 13m the growth makes it a photography heaven. Shaun the skipper had taken the valve off my suit cleaned it up and done magical things to it and it seemed to generally be working better. Although all my undersuit was soaking wet and literally dripping I had decided I was just going to go down and see how long I could stay………as it turned out I managed a 44 minute dive. The only reason I had to come up was because I was so cold I couldn’t hold the camera still! I don’t think I moved much more than 5m from the shot which was right on the A frame; this was absolutely smothered with growth. The delicate cream, peach and apricot shades of plumose anemones could be seen as you descended, these were interspersed with jewel anemones tiny common and spiny sea stars and a variety of encrusting sponges and algae. I was in heaven and determined to stay as long as I could.
Large wrasse and pollock were patrolling the waters around the Aframe and someone (much to my later envy) found a beautiful tompot blenny to photograph! With so much to look at in this area I had missed this delightful little fish. Once again I didn’t manage to get a decent picture of any jewel anemones but Mark did point some out to me before whizzing off to do his video. Like cup corals these are tiny and with so much light and colour absent underwater are difficult to spot until you know what you are looking for. So despite the leaking suit a very successful day with some super diving.
Sunday was a much deeper dive on The Versitas, which was sunk in 1907 whilst carrying a cargo of pit props. Although I took no decent photos on this dive, (think I was too concerned about keeping an eye on air and the amount of no deco time left!) it was an interesting dive and lovely to swim along the length and see the propeller emerge through the gloom. Most importantly of all this was the first ‘dry’ dive I had done this weekend………shame I was going home!
more piccys
Various Dive Sites in Cornwall
