Lincoln / Bucks

Hellopes / Conqueror

HMS Scylla

Fine weather (after a dull start) with light NW winds and very slight sea - all good for our day's diving out of Plymouth. Bryan and Terry, Adrian and Jake, Dave B and me were on the first wave. Chris and Debbie boathandled. Vis was ok (just a bit snotty) 4 metres or so. Minimal current. Lots of other divers on it though, two hardboats arrived about the same time as us.

Dave and I went in and had a good dive; stopped at the bow briefly, then around the decks, along to the hanger and back, looking in some of the holes and hatches, poking around generally. There were lots of anemones and starfish, bass, pollack, wrasse, and a tompot blenny.

In the afternoon Adrian and I boathandled taking Chris and Debbie, and Geoff M and Sara out to the Scylla; and they all had good dives I think. Most of the other boats were now on the James Eagan Layne, the sun had come out and it was quite nice. I didn't ram any other vessels or maim anyone, so that was nice as well.

Louis Shied

We got to Thurlstone and the car park at Milton Sands for ~9 and caught up with Geoff and Derek. Weather fine and sunny, ENE and ~10mph. Sea flat calm and vis looked great.

Geoff and Abigail dived together, and I went in with Derek. We set off from the corner of the beach snorkelling over to the front of the rocks. Eventually I located some frames and then one of the boilers. We went down and had a look around these. Nice lobster (perhaps the 'OAP' the parking attendant told me about later), and a great little clump of fan worms. I managed to scare the worms, but they came back out so I think Derek did eventually get his picture. One of the boiler pipes had 4-5 leopard spot gobies inside. Wrasse were everywhere, and bib beneath the metal work [Abigail saw a John Dory].

There's an interesting criss-cross structure; not sure what this is. And we looked around a few more big pieces and along the propshaft and then, after about an hour, decided to head back to the shore and look around the reefy bits on the way. Nice and light, plenty of colour and bright clean sandy patches. Lots of tiny prawns. Halfway, I found another lobster and lost Derek. I had a look round for him and sent a blob up. And that was about it. Short surface swim back in.

There's a little bit of a walk down from the car park and and across the beach but well worth it for lovely relaxed dive. Enjoying the lovely views and fresh air and so on, we walked over to Rocky's hut for chippies (there were 'nae pasties'!) and a cup of tea.

Brixham Breakwater

Derek and I dived Brixham on Sunday. Vis wasn't great - 3m - milky and snotty, and a bit gloomy. But it was worth it! Especially if you like crabs.

We went off the beach and had a look round the eel-grass. Not a lot here that we could see, then carried on eastwards along the edge of the reefy stuff where it turns into rock strewn silt, and I spotted a couple of cuttlefish. Saw the usual gobies (lots of 2-spots in the weedier places) and dragonets around, but little else I can remember- till we got to the 'nice' reefs with the trumpet anemones. We had a look around here then looped west back across the bay.

Before very long- about half way through the dive- we stumbled on a great horde of spiny spider crabs. We'd just seen one or two, then realised the crusty monsters were everywhere. Neither of us had seen so many in one place, and some were absolute giants. After a few snaps we let them think they'd seen us off and we carried on- over silt and spider crab remains. Around the derelicts, twiggy, long legged spider crabs scavenged.

Continuing our crab-fest, we enjoyed velvet swimmer crabs, harbour/swimmer crabs (I like how they swim!), and little angular crabs - scampering away, pincers out-stretched, saying 'I'm BIG'. There were a few edibles, and lots of hermit crabs - many of the larger ones weighed down with outsize parasitic anenomes.

Some other things live there too, like burrowing anemones, worms and brittlestars.

We surfaced at the beach, near the wall, after 86 minutes. Good plan of Derek's and navigation,.. and was pleased with him for zipping up my difficult drysuit.