The Weymouth Experience.

MKSAC Newsletter August 2000

5pm Friday The cars have been packed and we are off - Weymouth or Bust. Three hours later we arrive and I think fair to say that my little car at least was bust! Then quickly threw our gear into the caravans and off for a couple of pints and a Chinese take-away.

8am Saturday The weather was amazingly good - apparently Chris had had a word with God and sorted it (thanks Chris!). So gear loaded into the RIB off we trundle to The Countess of Erne - our first dive of the day. For many of us it was our first dive in anything other than the Bluey and it was superb. The visibility was excellent and the fish life was abundant (unfortunately, I am still at the stage where I can identify that it is a fish but that's about all). It was also open enough for us to dive through it. All in all it was more like how I imagined diving in the Red Sea to be. Then back to the quay a quick change over and the second group went out to dive the Countess.

The second dive of the day was The Hood. Although appearing to be busier than Clapham Junction - with divers shuffling along the length of it in an orderly fashion this was another superb dive. Viz was good, and although not as much marine life (apart from spider crabs everywhere) was to be found it was fascinating to see this grand old ship lying on the bottom. For many of us though the best bits were diving in a current (albeit very slight) and managing to wrap ourselves in various delayed SMB's.

So, sunburn coming along nicely, we returned to our caravans for a quick shave and shower and into Weymouth for a bite to eat (from a rather dodgy pub who's name I have blocked from my conscious mind) and a live band who were pretty fine. (Thanks to Mike for showing us how to get down on the dance floor!)

8am Sunday The plan - dive The Spaniard. The problem - find the Spaniard. The viz was fair, the sun was shining, spirits were high however the ship had apparently been stolen in the night ! It was therefore decided to have a look anyway and so a thirty minute dive at an average of 18m did enable us to find either an old aerosol can / artillery shell (it was felt prudent not to investigate too closely) and get in some more practice with using SMB's.

The second dive of the day was in fact the Spaniard. Apparently solar flares had combined with the prevailing wind and stopped our GPS working in the morning, this was now sorted! And so we dived the Spaniard, a good dive, with lots of fish and other marine life. The wreck was quite disintegrated and this allowed us to get to look into some good nooks and crannies and see the biggest spider crab eating, well, eating something! Viz was good and this was a fine way to round off the weekends diving.

In conclusion. It was the very best introduction to diving in the sea that any of us could have hoped for. It is very easy to get sunburn and if Doug recommends a pub to eat in, ignore him.

And finally, thank you to Chris for organising the weekend, to Cam and Adrian for handling the boat and to all the experienced divers who took us novices diving.