Cornwall - 2006
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I proposed to Cate and she has accepted.
silly, silly, SILLY girl!
New Faces
Over the course of the next few days many new friends were made, our group consisting of the following reprobates:
Cate and I; Keith and Sue; Paul and his son Jon; John and Pamela; Matt, Toni and Simon; Dobby and Ian; Dave and last but not least Mark.
Also a big THANK YOU to:
14/04/06 - Basket Rock, Navigation Error 1
A quick bimble around Basket Rock, nice and easy dive to break us all in gently...
You would have thought so any way; I won't pass any comment myself - instead I will allow you to decide what happened based upon the passage below extracted from a recent e-mail from Paul.
Anyway I'm relieved I now know whats causing the drenching which has obviously contributed to the descrepency in my compass readings by 180 degrees. Clearly I will be dry and won't get lost anymore....mm.
14/04/06 - Talland Bay, Navigation Error 2
Talland Bay West, as interesting as always - after noting to Paul at low tide which channel NOT to follow you can guess which one I ended up going into which led to some ungainly clambering over rocks in order to get to our destination, the wreck of The Marguerite. Not only that but when it came to heading back to shore (a very easy bearing - north) I led our small party (because of the numbers diving we'd split into smaller groups) away from the boiler; taken my bearing and started about following it... back to the boiler!
OK, maybe my sense of direction had been a little off and I'd misread my compass (that would have been typical after I gave Paul such a ribbing about following 090 instead of 270 degrees [ooops - I wasn't going to say anything about that was I?])
So... off we go again; past some familiar rocks, through a worryingly familiar gully straight back to the extremely familiar boiler of The Marguerite.
At this point I gave up and stuck my head above water; seeing as we were only in 5m I wasn't too concerned about a bounce dive. Yep there was the coast, yes the bearing was correct so what the bloody hell was going on?
I descended next to the boiler: Light dawned and then I led the way back.
Basic training in the use of a compass - DO NOT USE near large iron objects! In this case the boiler was acting as magnetic north.
15/04/06 - James Egan Layne
Without needing to worry about a compass on this dive navigation proved a lot simpler! This was Cate's first dive on the JEL after a few aborted attempts previously. It was also the first UK boat dive for a few other members of our party - you know who you are so pat yourselves on the back - there were no dramas everybody made it back to the shotline and we all had an enjoyable dive.
I still love this site.
15/04/06 - HMS Scylla
Given that this reef is only two years old we were nearly all surprised at the amount of life now found in, on and around the Scylla; of course it is nowhere near as established as the JEL but given the rate at which marine life is taking to the Scylla I don't think it will be many years before this site becomes one of the top dives in the UK. Even those signs which have caused some lengthy discussion about insulting a divers intelligence (or lack of) in chat rooms (the ones which tell us to check our air or that we shouldn't enter without proper training) have nearly been completely hidden from view. Maybe the authorities will put up some new ones just in case we hurt ourselves!
The only downside was hearing Keith and Sue describe an encounter they had whilst on their safety stop: Two other divers (not from our boat) who were obviously bored (they must be from the Playstation generation, after all 3 minutes is NOT a long time) and don't care for their own or other divers safety were chasing fish around Keith and Sue and attempting to stab them (them being the fish - not Keith and Sue I hasten to add) with their dive knives.
16/04/06 - Heineken Export
This unnamed reef is also the home of a downed World War II bomber; most suspect it to be a Heinkel others have suggested it is a Lancaster. For some reason I was getting tongue tied with a simple two syllable word so instead I've opted to call it by a three syllable word synonymous with Danish Lager... Much easier to say and remember! This site (between Udder Rock and The Kantoeng) is largely kelp free and covered with a variety of sponges and corals; hiding within the rocks were large edible crabs and scallops were littering the seabed; seacucumbers and starfish were constantly in sight an interesting dive leading us nicely to Fowey for lunch and then onto the main event in the afternoon.
16/04/06 - The Kantoeng
This site is quite literally teeming with life; huge pollack, wrasse and dogfish; crabs, starfish, corals, kelp and to top it all some damn big chunks of metal to swim in and around - if you like UK diving then this site has nearly everything you could wish for. Although covering a smaller area of the seabed I prefer the diving here than on the JEL... That's done it now I know that will upset some of you, but don't knock it until you've dived it.
16/04/06 - Search and Recovery
Now I mention this not because it was a particularly interesting dive... it wasn't - but because our so-called buddies on board couldn't wait a few minutes to start on our onboard supplies (namely several cans of beer) before Ian and I came back from a short dive to locate a harvest of spider crabs whose marker buoy had been sheared by a passing trawler. As we kitted up they gleefully swallowed Amber Nectar in front of us knowing full well that we couldn't join them.