Plymouth 2025 by Cathy de Lara
Thursday 3rd July
“The crew assemble”, otherwise known as doing battle with the M4/M5. The de Lara’s left early and spent the afternoon watching the Otters at the Buckfast otter sanctuary.
By 9pm the crew were enjoying some rebreather lubrication at the Three Crowns and Phil was discussing where he would like a 3rd eye…
Friday 4th July
A relatively relaxed breakfast at the hotel, followed by a migration of the ten of us from the hotel to the Mountbatten Centre. Cars were unloaded, and our boat “Searcher” was loaded efficiently. Searcher is the new boat with In Deep and had all the facilities we would need for our diving (except they ran out of battery so most of us has cold pasties for lunch).
The first site of the day was a pinnacle below the famous Eddystone lighthouse. Swimming through forests of kelp we found wrasse, starfish, urchins and some lucky buddy pairs found an octopus hiding in a gully.
Following a steady trip back towards Plymouth we headed for whitesands bay and the famous James Egan layne. She was the last ship sank in WW2 which made this her 80th year underwater. Over the years she has become very broken with the plates falling away and slowly but elegantly collapsing making a pleasant dive. We found loads of Crawfish – 18 in one spot! Which for an endangered species is brilliant. Everyone had a fun hour underwater and a nice cup of hot liquid when we got back on the boat!
Dinner was at Arrias Mexican restaurant where Ian and Ben had the most enormous plate of ribs
Muppet of the day: Phil for leaving his dive computer and torch in the hotel bar….
Saturday 5th July
Muppets of the day: Ben M for attaching his wing back to front, and Martin for forgetting to untie himself
We saw sleeping octopus and cuttlefish. The second dive was a slack water dive on Barn pool wall dive with many over hangs to explore. At 15 meters the ambient light disappeared and became a night dive. The wall was covered in soft orange sponges (possibly sea fans) and the rather aptly named shredded carrot sponge, with a sprinkling of dead mans fingers. At around 35 mins into the dive, we ascended to 15m. At this point, the scenery became very silty with fewer animals, however, there were some of the biggest scallops we had seen in a while!
Johno and Cathy also saw the biggest, baddest lobster ever! (The two Bens saw another one, they breed them big here!) The de Lara’s also saw a rather creepy parasitic isopod stuck to an unfortunate wrasse. Alan saw his first UK octopus so is no longer an octopus virgin!
A great meal was had at the Cosy Club, and for the second night in a row they got Ben W’s order wrong, not sure what he says to the waiting staff!
Sunday 6th July
Muppet of the day: Andy P for leaving a critical part of his undersuit in the hotel and having to go back for it!
It was a lumpy ride out to the Persier, but it was definitely worth it, the wreck was fairly well broken but there was a very big, very ugly Angler fish sat right in the middle pretending he wasn’t there! There were crawfish everywhere, just off the stern is a gun mount, if you poked your head in it looked like something out of a horror movie, the whole structure was just crammed full of crawfish all waving their antennae at us.
It was a damp ride to the Mewstone where we stopped for hot pasties and jumped in for the second dive “Fairyland reef” a beautiful wall dive teeming with life, octopus, Crawfish, Wrasse and big shoals of small silvery sand eels.
In the evening Johno and Cathy met ex club member Ross at the pub, then went for a tasty Greek meal while the rest of the crew went to Rock fish restaurant, where they actually got Ben W’s order correct!
Monday 7th July
Muppet of the day: Alan for getting up in the night, not turning on the light and walking into the wall!
Dive 1 was the Rosehill where we had the best visibility Johno and Cathy had seen on that wreck! This wreck has everything, a prop, rudder, boilers, engine and a big gun. It also had lots of fishy and crustacean life, the boilers appeared to have a resident in every hole (Tompot blennies, Crawfish and Congers)
Following the yummy hot pasties dive 2 was on the Scylla. Not one Cathy was enthusiastic about doing as she remembered it being a bit devoid of life…. Wrong! This was definitely the prettiest wreck we did, the Scylla is now covered in Jewel anenomies and Dead Mans fingers soft corals, there was lots of fish too, Bib, large Pollock and Bass too, oh and Johno saw a free-swimming octopus which we all had to hear about!
And then it was all over, we unloaded the boat, packed up the kit (I am sure there was more than we started with!) said our goodbyes and headed our separate ways, but not before Ian booked for next year, we have already signed up as we had such a great time.
Good diving, Good food and Good company.