Plymouth, 25/26/27 June 2004

As the weekend approached people were getting excited.  The e-mail traffic was increasing and the trip was becoming a reality.  All we had to do was get our bums in vehicles and bomb it down to Plymouth and 'bring a towel as there are none at the B&B.'

Most of us were prepared, the usual suspects anyway.  One of us still had to obtain some kit, namely mask, fins, snorkel, cylinder, BCD...the usual full array of gear.  That'll be the dive chick then.

Tom and Harper drove down to the Devon coast accompanied by the oh so pleasant commentary of the England versus Portugal quarter final on Thursday evening, in a record two and a bit hours.  Ron decided it would be a better idea to greet the following day with a staggering four am departure and passed a mere twenty cars throughout the entire journey.  With gear stowed in the reliable rover, my intentions were to leave work at three pm and get my lardyarse down to the Hoe for just after seven.

Day 1  To the sea or not to the sea...?

Things became slightly confused when an e-mail populated into my inbox early afternoon: 'going to get South Westerly winds reaching force 7-8, so it's a no go.'  Eh?

Hmmm.  Damn.  @#*&^$.  Numerous expletives erupted from my gob in disappointment.  With the trip cancelled and a boot full of gear I posted to the board of no response...and got no response.  Hmmm.

A short while later I received a communication from the guys already at the harbour, 'looking forward to a cracking weekend of diving, get your arse down here.'  But it's been cancelled...?

Following a brief conversation with some surprised divers I was easily convinced to follow through with my plans and get my lardyarse down to the Sound.  Who would swap the prospect of a fantastic weekend in Plymouth for a dull weekend in Reading, even if we're blown out on Saturday, there's plenty of beer at the Barbican to keep us entertained until Sunday when the weather was forecast to turn pretty again?!  Decision made, I motored down to the South West in the beautiful sunshine while the guys enjoyed a second superb dive and caught the sun on their noggins.

The chaps had been patiently waiting for me and within ten minutes of my arrival we were on our way to misadventureland.  Beer was the required prerequisite to anything substantial.  No surprise there then.  Fish and chips was in order for supper, you can't go all the way to the coast and not have fish and chips, well, you can if your name's Ron.  Just to be different (awkward), Ron has to have scampi which, by the time it's been battered (in many ways) and deep fried thirty times to make them truly golden (charred) and crispy, Tom and I were evicted from the chippy and had to join Harper amongst the minging gulls at the quayside.  'Mine, mine, mine, mine...'  Fat bastards.  'How cruel's that, creating a one legged sea gull?!'  Minutes of amusement were to be enjoyed wedging food out of the gulls' reach and watching them suffer at their incapacity to extract the wastage from the bins.  Ron just fed them chips.  Fewer minutes were spent watching the youth pons around on their two stroke lawnmowers like proper men.

As proficient and careful divers, we all know the dangers of mixing alcohol with scuba and so with no hesitation we plunged straight into Smokey Joe's before we swallowed our last mouthful of grease.  Expensive place that.  Especially when you're straight onto doubles and you have 'Tom bitch' wedged next to the bar.  There was plenty of paper going over the bar, very little silver in return: 'It's £16.40, is that okay?'  Huh?!  With a hundred quid stashed behind the bar, Matt and (golfing) George finally arrived and were subjected to our drunken stupor until closing.  Booted out of Smokey Joe's the lads congregated outside while I gracefully stumbled into the wall.

As if by chance the Quay (where's the key?) club was just across the cobbles.  In we strolled, in we stayed, keeping up the pace with the freeflowing doubles.  A number of hours passed, a number of bottles were consumed, and Harper ended up arm wrestling on the bar with a well built lady!  George and Matt did the sensible thing and left about one am, while the remnants emerged an hour later, with me stumbling gracefully into people before stumbling into the railings at the quayside.  Tom bitch had beelined for the burger van, chatted up the birds, and stormed back laden with nasty burgers and litres of water.  He was quite insistent on getting a cab back to the B&B a hundred metres up the road but we put pay to that and made our ascent from the quayside to the Citadel whereby carrying more than one bottle of water proved to be just way too tricky for Harper on this eve, constantly dropping one after the other like a failed circus act.

We collapsed onto our beds just after two thirty and instantly slipped into unconsciousness.

Day II  Breakwater Fort

Four hours later it was daytime again.  We forced down a breakfast at seven am and pegged it down to the harbour for eight thirty.  The cloud had engulfed the bay and it was drizzling as we kitted up but our spirits were high.  With gear stowed we leaped onto Searcher ready for the off.  The plan was to dive the Scylla and the Lane.  I think it's fair to say that we all expected to be feeding the fish on this occasion.  We pootled out of the harbour and approached the edge of the breakwater before opening her up a tad.  Searcher wasn't faring particularly well this morning, power was down, she didn't want to play.  George had taken the aft windward seat on the starboard side and got an absolute thrashing by the rain, wind and spray.  After a brave effort out to the headland we were beaten back by two metre swells, right about the time I was ceasing to enjoy the ride.  'No-one's fed the fish yet,' I shouted at Harper, 'there's still time!'  He continued to stare past me, clearly feeling quite uneasy...

It took an hour and a half to reach our dive site, the Breakwater Fort, and almost as long for Dom to tear around the Sound bailing out the gallons of seawater that George had forced in by sitting on the motor!  We really were flooding.

On entry, Michelin girl was bobbing around on the surface, BCD fully deflated, not descending.  'Do you want to open your drybag valve?' was the useful suggestion from my buddy, whose sterling advice helped no end.

All said it was a good dive.  Harper and I didn't actually dive the fort, but bimbled along the breakwater ledge, with me kindly digging holes in the seabed to make the dive more interesting for my buddy.  There were a few spider crabs lurking on the reef.  A couple of the Sheffield divers who were sharing our rib chose not to dive the Fort, which made our re-entry to the rib somewhat easier.  It didn't take us long to realise there would be a benefit in surfacing last again...

The weather wasn't tailing off so we made the decision not to do another dive inside the breakwater today, broke down our gear and repaired to the B&B, feeling the delayed effects of our over indulgence of the previous eve, but satisfied that none of us had fed the fish after all!

With little to do but lay about, watch 'dumb foreigners' and rest, Harper chose to entertain himself by trawling through my log book.

There was no decisive action taken with regards to food.  Chinese, Indian, 'I don't mind Italian but I don't want pizza' was the best Tom could offer.  We traipsed from eatery to eatery in the lashing rain, ending up in a Curry House.  '...and a pashwari naan, I'll have some of someone else's rice...' declares Tom as he places his order.  The food was served, the rice portions were the skimpiest you've ever seen and Tom didn't get a single grain from anyone.  Instead, he dumped his curry over his naan and chomped away on his 'curry pizza'.

With Tom in tow, impersonating a car park security guy in the torrential rain, we headed to Wetherspoons, a somewhat cheaper bar than Smokey Joe's, where we failed to receive any of the drinks we asked for.  ‘What do you have?’  ‘Nothing you’ll want.’  The shots were delivered in tumblers to avoid a forty five minute wait.  Everyone was clearly knackered and Harper, George, Matt and I retired before midnight, leaving Ron and Tom to experience Union Street until the early hours.

Day III  Scylla & Reef

The cloud had lifted and the ground was dry.  We reached the harbour by eight am and were delighted to find that Richie was taking us out on Kara-C.  The sun was shining on us as we lumped our gear down to the pontoon and all was looking rosy.  A rib ride on Kara-C is like no other, and with Richie skippering you can't go wrong.  The rib has severe power.  Our intention this morning was to get out to the Lane or the Scylla.  'We have two Scylla virgins with us today' offered Harper.  'I'm a virgin!' I excitedly declared.

And with that we ripped across the Sound at an energetic pace, launching high above the water and skimming across the crests of the waves.  It was fantastic!

There was no-one on the Scylla when we arrrived giving Ron a chance to demonstrate his excellent rope skills, completely failing to connect the rib to the shot line, just as Richie cut the engine and Kara-C drifted away.

We were into the water by ten am and although I had dumped a kilo from being too weighted yesterday I was surprised and irritated when I couldn't break the surface.  I finned down, dumping air, to no avail.  I surfaced, and tried again, and again.  Eventually Harper got bored and came to my aid.  I had miraculously wrapped the shot line around myself three times!  Descending after that was no longer an issue...

The Scylla made for an interesting dive.  The visibility was limited to five metres but it was nice to be able to dive the Scylla with only a handful of other divers.  There was only one other boat in the vicinity that chanced the journey out to the wreck.  The Scylla is a big boat, quite surreal with it being so bare and still so white.  It's still too young to encourage much life but there is certainly some interest developing.  It will be nice to return next year to see the progression.

Matt and George went all over the wreck but they never did find the bridge.

We surfaced, last again, and Matt, George and Tom ripped my kit off me.  As I finned my way into the rib I was assisted and immediately thrown to the floor head first, as gracefully as ever.

All happy campers on board, we hooned it back to the harbour for cylinder fills and a brew.

The Sheffield crew decided not to dive with us again so we had Kara-C to ourselves, with much more space.  We headed out past the breakwater towards the Ledges but the wind was picking up again and the sea was getting lumpy.  We spinned round and headed back to the breakwater, with Kara-C picking up to thirty eight knots in her efforts.  Terrific fun!

News came in that it was a bit more lumpy round the headland and we took the decision to dive the reef we had reached.  Kitting up was a little more testing with less weight on the rib and under lumpier conditions but soon enough we were all wet again and bidding farewell to Richie.  The dive was tidal but interesting, with plenty to look at if you can maintain your position long enough!  There was a huge population of starfish and the odd big fish expressing some inquisitiveness.  Small shoals of glassfish flittered about on the seabed and the odd spider crab was spotted.  Harper decided I needed to carry the SMB as I had been demonstrating a willingness to fin into the current.  Apparently the same was true of Ron and Tom.

Sure enough, by the time we surfaced the rest of our guys were already packed onto the rib.  Once again my drybag was pumped up to maximum capacity and I bobbed around on the surface while Tom and Matt lifted my gear.  And, yet again, I was assisted into Kara-C head first onto the floor, as gracefully as you can imagine.

Back at the pontoon we packed away our kit just as the weather began to sour and headed back home.

Round Up

The weekend in Plymouth was thoroughly worth the effort and a terrific time was had by all.  Deep Blue provided quality service and the digs could be a solution for future trips, if we're welcome back!

I would like to extend my thanks to Mandi and Tom for arranging the trip, Harper for (bravely) volunteering to buddy with me.  Matt, George, Ron, Tom and Harper, thanks for being such great company.  My stomach still hurts from laughing so much all weekend!  Absolutely fantastic!

Lardygal
28 June 2004