Lyme Regis Oct 06
‘Diving Dude’, ‘Odin’… names to conjure with….. names that were so very familiar……. Mattbin, Tom, Adrian Kelland and of course the Domestic God Ian, now known as Bendy! It was in this august company that I was going to be spending the weekend at Lyme Regis diving on yet another Yorkshire Divers gig.
I had never met any of the divers on this particularly outing but for a couple of years had watched the antics of these guys on line and read their numerous postings; so I was intrigued to actually be meeting them. I had arrived in Lyme on Friday afternoon and wandered around the harbour and beach. However, it wasn’t until the following morning as we assembled on the Cobb that I was to meet the full compliment for the weekends diving. I was fascinated to see whether the reality matched the image I had created….it didn’t! They were older/younger/taller/shorter all looked totally different to the people I had created in my head.
We were diving off Blue Turtle with Doug one of those incredibly organised types of skippers. There was a place for everything and woe betide anyone who did not stow things away where they should be! Having set up the kit and got sorted we set off for our first site the St Dunstan. About an hours steam and we were in place and over the side. Visibility was not brilliant at around 7m but you could clearly see the massive head of a conger poking out of the wreck near the shot shortly after descending. Whilst we saw plenty of other congers later on in the day this one must have measured at least a foot across its head and was definitely the largest I have ever seen. There was a fair bit to see on the wreck and much to my delight I found a Tompot sitting on some sort of metal strut. Imagine my amazement when it was then joined by another one. A good dive all round and one worth repeating.
During the surface interval Ian, (now known as Bendy), commented that he had a very itchy shoulder and on examination it proved to be a skin bend. He didn’t seem to be suffering from any other DCI symptoms but after being on O2 for a while it was decided to send him to the pot. So in came the helicopter and whizzed him away. Fortunately with only a skin bend Ian was able to enjoy the whole event of being winched up and a free ride, it is always so very impressive to see the helicopter guys in action.
The second dive was the Gibel Hamam, visibility was awful and it was difficult to see anything much which was rather disappointing. By now the weather reports for the following day did not look hopeful. However, undaunted we all met up that evening at the Harbour Inn, had a nice meal and reassembled by the boat the following morning at nine o’clock.
Ian had been collected from the pot in Poole the night before and was there to wave us off the next morning. The weather reports were still not good but the skipper thought it would be possible to do a couple of sites that were more protected and near to shore and only about 10mins out. This meant we kitted up in the harbour and it was great not having to contend with a swaying boat as we had the day before. Doug dropped us off onto the Baygitano locally known as ‘the baggies’ This proved to be an excellent dive with reasonable visibility and loads of stuff to look at including large congers, some lovely worms growing out of the holes on the boilers, more Tompots and huge shoals of Bib and Pollack sitting around the stern.
Back to the harbour for a surface interval and the second site was The Heroine. This turned out to be just a pile of bricks. But what an awesome pile of bricks it was, because living underneath this labyrinth were huge congers! As you swam round the perimeter of the bricks you could see heads poking out with their large puppy dog eyes watching your progress. One of the congers had shrimps crawling over his head with many others camped out around the entrance to his hole. I also counted at least five small leopard spotted gobys sitting around this area as well. Unfortunately I didn’t manage to get any really good shots. Although they don’t look very large in the pictures they were so big I was too scared to get that close and every time they started emerging I backed off….rapidly! but then I’m just an old scaredy cat.
More pics later
