Kingston

Shortly arrived at Shag Rock, and after lunch I went for a snorkel around the Kingston. Wore rash vest and hood to keep sun off - and could have used a few kilo's of lead. Had a good look at the layout, found the spare propeller, boilers, mast and crows nest easily enough.

Then in the afternoon we dived it. Nice relaxed dive. Adrian and me jumped off back of Typhoon and went straight down to the stern (attractive stern counter) and propeller. Then swam alongside and then back through holds. Out from wreck on starboard side to swim along the reef. There is a lone propeller that side - though higher on the reef. Anyway Adrian had stopped to investigate a very large rectangular block, and while he was looking at that, I spotted a turtle swimming in our direction, and Mike further up. I got Adrian and we had a closer look. The turtle seemed oblivious to us as it munched on soft coral. We watched for a while (we thought better of grabbing it and riding it around - like the guy does in 'Silent World') then swam back to the wreck.

Kingston was shallow and picturesque, ideal for Mike's students to practice their new camera skills. Lots of interesting fish and nice coral. Red starfish with white dots.

Durgan, Helford River

Drawna Rock, Porthkerris

Went in from the little beach to the north, near the MOD building. 10kg on wetsuit. Snorkelled round the rock. Vis was very good. Busy Sunday with lots of divers but nice atmos and didn't feel overcrowded.

In the water I saw lots of small >3-4cm, transparent bell-shaped jellyfish, they had a frill of 8-12 thin tentacles around the base and a pink convoluted organ within. Also some 'sea-gooseberries' transparent also, rounded with two thin tentacles either side. Fish included Bass, ballan and corkwing wrasse, and shannies. There were common starfish, spiny starfish, sea urchins, and spiny spider crab hiding beneath the kelp (a lot of kelp 3-7m). Pottered around the rocks nice and easy, did a few dives, and took a few pictures.

Good facilities here: kit/spares shop, showers, kit wash, hot food/drinks + tent. And very reasonable parking and fees to shore dive. It was great and I was looking forward to coming back to dive on Tuesday.

Mandrago

Swanage Pier

Had a day off, so we went to Swanage in Dorset to snorkel under the famous pier. 30-40mph NW winds, and quite cold; but vis was good 5m. Useful facilities, dive school/shop, air, very easy access and entry to water, toilet (open in winter!) and a shower. Chip shops and cafes are a short walk into town. Imagine extremely busy in summer.

Anyway, the pier is fantastic. Went in down steps and over stony and weedy shallows to the left of pier (lots of crab burrows). Then under the pier and worked my way along, (careful to mind anglers lines - they moaned noisily anyway) and tied blob to a girder while under pier. There are a few clumps of fishing line to avoid. Interesting bits of metal, pipe, and rubble etc litter the bottom.

For fish there were Wrasse, gobies, sand smelt, a dragonet. Probably because the tidal range is minimal there is interesting turfy growth very shallow (usually piers just get covered with barnacles or mussels or bladderwrack). All kinds of colourful sponges are embedded in the growth, and tunicates, sea firs, etc and there are lots of hiding places for small life in the crumbling wooden parts of the structure - which itself is quite picturesque. Also found edible crab, and prawns on the 'new' pier. The old pier is similar and also good for a look round, it's stony and weedier. I found some fan worms here. Fine sand beyond.

Was in the water 2 hours. Cold getting in, and felt cooler later, with numb toes but otherwise warm enough in 5-7mm wetsuit (10kg on belt just right). Lost a knife, not a big deal, just glad I hadn't bothered cleaning it.

St Paul' s Bay (Lindos)

Kalithea

Kalithea spa

Anthony Quinn Bay

Faraklos

Pefkos to Lardos

St Paul's Bay (Lindos)

Pefkos to Lardos

I was starting to wake up (about 6:20am) when suddenly the entire room began to shake (fairly violently). It was an earthquake. The tremors of the main shock seemed to last 5-10 seconds, accompanied by a loud rumbling noise; then there were lighter trembles dying away. Was going to go back to sleep and the fire alarm went off and the building was evacuated onto the beach - where we waited until it was ok for us to go back in (wondered what it would have felt like under water).

In the day we went to Petaloudes ('Butterfly Valley' - they're moth's actually, but Valley of the Moth's would sound a bit creepy I suppose), then to Ancient Kameiros. Later found out the earthquake magnitude was 6.3.

Got ready for a night snorkel around the reefs in front of the hotel. Nice warm night, water fine. Lots of wildlife, but fish less noticable (and no wrasse). Sand eels and small silver fish close in over the sand, and over the reef soon found a frilly orange nudibranch, then an octopus. Wedged in rocks, an orange nudibranch and squat lobster(?) Also found a very big fireworm, far bigger than they're supposed to get, a few scorpion fish, blennys, sand gobies, stripy fish (but not a comber), also a very small cuttlefish.

Pefkos to Lardos

First day on Rhodes I woke up early and nipped out to the beach. It was sunny and the water nice and very warm even first thing. I'd seen from the Google Earth pictures that there was some shallow rocks to explore at the edges of several sandy bays and I looked round these. All the familiar fish were here in abundance: salp, red mullet, cardinal fish, damselfish (I shortly discovered that the tiny blue fish are in fact juvenile damselfish - Chromis chromis), parrot fish, bream, decorated wrasse, painted comber, and sand smelt. Other stuff included some red sponge and a few rounded black ones, lots of burrows in sand, fireworms, and yellow anemones. Didn't take camera, used basic kit and wore a rash vest.

Caniçal

Slightly less windy over night (12-15mph perhaps), and not many more days left, so decided to find somewhere sheltered for a swim. Best spot seemed to be a beach near Caniçal, it was sandy, fairly sheltered, and further protected today by a nearby breakwater. First though we stopped in Caniçal itself for a quick look round, to pick up some food to make lunch, but most of all to visit the whaling museum and were pleased to find it open this time of year. We didn't see a life-size model sperm whale or the whaling boat boat said to be on show, but looked at the interesting whaling artefacts, models, and artwork and watched an interesting short film about Madeiran whaling.

On to our beach, parked at the top of the cliff and took all the kit down to the beach. Used my FJ suit and rash vest and hood (didn't bother with gloves) and 4kg of lead. Camera: my Canon IXUS 700. I hadn't bought my slightly rubbishy strobe, but had recently used with the camera's own diffuser with good results. There would be plenty of light and good visibility.

Water felt cold going in but soon warmed up. There was a bit of a surge around the rocks, but not too bad. Swimming out it was very clear and blue. Estimated the visibility to be about 10m, but may have been slightly more. Setting off, the rocks were quite barren but I did notice some barnacles and algae as I was getting my fins on (I hadn't seen any weed, shells, or any creeping thing on any of the beaches we'd stopped at previously). The sandy bottom was also apparently lifeless. Then as I got a bit further out and swam down, things suddenly became interesting with reefy turf, plants and colourful fish.

The fish I can remember were: painted wrasse, saddled bream, parrot fish, shiny blue fish, (all frequent), salp, small grey blue fish (shoals), lizard fish (common), weaver fish (2x), puffer fish (2x), tompot blenny, black headed goby.

Invertebrates included: spiny starfish (these attractive ble and brown), red starfish, brown spotted sea cucumber, yellow, red, green/brown sponges. Sea urchins abundant on the large angular boulders. Some of these had striking blue streaks in the narrows between the spines; the spines of many seemed longer than those I'd seen off Crete, and they were generally spread well apart from one another. I found a few top shells and limpets, but saw no crabs or anenomes.

Plants: reefy turf had short green/turquoise weed with lobed edges, short dark tufts of something, but the largest and most conspicuous plant was the plump pink feathery weed that was dotted around in clumps.

I snorkelled for about an hour going as far as the breakwater then back the way I came slowly, over the beach then over to the rocks on the other side. More exposed the visibility wasn't as good and the effect of the surge far greater. From what I could make out there was less to see, so I came in. I was very pleased with a good swim here and seeing plenty of life.

Beer

After a cup of tea and a sausage and egg bap on the beach from Kenno's (very good and reasonable too) I got my kit together to go snorkelling. I wore my thick wetsuit and tried the 11kg of weight I estimated previously. It was fine, I don't need any more. But with so much weight I think some of it would be better on the ankles. Visibility was alright, 3 to 4 metres perhaps. About 15 to 20 metres from the cliff I was mainly over kelp. Further on and closer in I found some rocks and shallow reefs to look round.

I took a few picture of the sponges and fan worms and found a thin semi-transparent worm I hadn't seen before. As well as a look round, I wanted to test my flash some more and see what might be done to get the flash (a Sealife SL960D) to work when it's supposed to. What seemed to happen today was that in 'close-up' mode, the auto-flash setting triggered the strobe; whereas the forced flash had frequently failed. I need to try this again, if this turns out not actually to be the case then I wonder if ditching the cable and using the flash just to 'fill-in' might be worth a go. Some fish were about: two-spot gobies, ballan wrasse, and a few sprats.

There's a lot of little boats in and out, so a blob is a good idea.

In the afternoon, Yas and I walked over the big hill to Seaton, along the front to Axmouth and back again - which was very agreable, and also I didn't feel so bad about eating 2x pasties for dinner!

Empire Harry / Persier

After seeing off the first wave there was time for a snorkel, and I went over to Beacon Point to look for the boiler of the Empire Harry. Wearing a 3mm longjohn and a thermal rash vest it was bloD cold (and this was the end of August!), but I had gloves, and wore my hood so at least I didn't get 'ice-cream head'.

On the way over there were several compass jellyfish, some of these had small transparent fish swimming about them; also wrasse, shanny, sand eels, the usual sort of thing. There was quite a variety of weed, the red rags and ferny looking ones particularly striking. Mostly though I was swimming over kelp and I could see that it was starting to look a bit manky and chewed up. Arriving at the Point I soon found the boiler. I shouldn't have been surprised at how big it was, but it is quite big and stands upright 4m or so on the sea-bed. I took a few pictures round and about and headed back, keen to warm up a bit, and on the way found some spiny starfish.

The second wave (Mir) returned to the Persier, we were Paul L and Debbie, Brian and Simon. Chris boathandled.

Brian and I went down (I took a while to get under– I had same weight as usual– so very likely a bit of excess air in my suit), and arrived near the steering quadrant to begin our swim round. We found one of the gun mounts and Brian spotted a very large conger in one of boxy holes beneath it. The pictures I took revealed it to have swallowed a very large fishing hook, injuring it internally (its eye appears spotted with blood). We swam over the forest of pink sea fans that cover the collapsed hull plates and swam through the propshaft from the stern end. After our zig-zag along the wreck we arrived at the boilers, and had a look round them before sending up the blob.

We had bit of a get together around Chris and Debbie’s abode, which was quite jolly, and Sunday night was nice and quiet and I actually got a good nights sleep; a few drinks, ramming the ear-plugs in as far as possible - just in case - and being fagged out all helped too.

Havania

Returned to Lito after a last walk into Ag Nik. and crashed out. Woke up later in the afternoon feeling a bit dodgy but after 1/2 an hour felt well enough to go for a final snorkel. Yas stayed to loll around and enjoy the air-conditioning. I went down to Havania beach and put in along the beach and swam to the cliffs past a pontoon and several beaches. Not much to see on the bottom 50-100m out. Very little reefy stuff, saw a few anchors and bits of pipe.

A little further out speedboats towed inflatables up and down. One of them threw everyone off. I was very glad to have blob (it's essential on swims that involve a crossing or anywhere near watersport areas), and was pleased there were a few pedal boats too in my vicinity before the speed boats. Without the blob I would have had to hug the coast a bit more. Where I snorkelled, the swell from boats was a bit annoying, but not too bad.

I arrived at the cliffs and rocks, and begun to see some the wildlife. I took some pictures and found a good place to feed the fish. I saw the usual wrasse, bream, blennies, gobies, and parrotfish. Releasing a little bread around a rock with a nice hole (like I did the other day), I got some fair pictures.

On the way back, the return took me about 30-40 minutes, there was a bit of floating litter and I picked up a few plastic bags. I found my clothes on the beach, my lime green goody bag helped, and walked up the hill for the last time; my arm was extremely sore from yesterdays stinging and my ankles ached, but it didn't spoil my enjoyment of the warmth and the lovely views.

Mochlos Island / Plaka

Thought we'd visit Mochlos today and took the main road east around Mirabello bay and turned off to follow the windy road down to the sleepy seaside village. There are some tavernas at the water's edge by the tiny harbour, and near the parking there were archaeological excavations going on that you're not allowed to wee on (there was a sign to say so).

Mochlos Island was directly opposite, and the excavated Minoan houses visible from the mainland. It didn't look good for snorkelling at first, but later the wind dropped a bit and conditions improved.

We walked back to get my kit and I returned to the slipway and went in here. I had a quick look at the fish tank (it was easy to find and had been visible from the road down to the village) then swam across to the island. I'd read that there are strong currents here to be wary of, but there was none. I could see no sign current looking at the boats, moorings, or the surface of the water; underwater there were no streaming particles or trailing weed. I used the blob, a good idea for a crossing, and there were speedboats and jet skis moored and on the slipway and a few fishing boats pootling about. Swimming over, the bottom was uninteresting and all I saw where anchors and ropes and chains.

A few people swam to the island, and a group on sit-on kayaks clattering about, stopped for a while. I landed and had a look round, walked up the hill and took a few pictures. It was very hot, and I was glad to get back in the water. I swam around the island a bit; perhaps I should have tried to go round, but didn't want to be too long. I crossed back over the shallower water to the west slightly and went over some slabby reefy bits, perhaps it was the sunken causeway? Found Yas and sorted kit and decided on a taverna. We had a fantastic (and cheap) meal, in the sun, at the waters edge.

We were both glad we stayed at Mochlos. On the way back, along the north facing coast, it was much choppier; so some of the other places that looked promising weren't suitable. Another sheltered bay at Istron we fancied turned out to be private and off limits, and didn't at that want to stop at the busier municipal beaches. We drove through Elounda (getting lost a bit then following our noses down to the road and out to Plaka). There was a lot of holiday traffic and bikes etc,.. and we were pleased to arrive, though rather displeased with the naughty French boy lobbing stones about next to where we parked, into someone's back yard, and whacking our car.

Plaka's a relatively peaceful place, with a good sheltered pebble and sand beach, and some tavernas (we'd been there earlier and caught a boat to Spinalonga). I swam to rocks at the northern side of the bay and it was far better than I was expecting. There was good amount of fish and lots yellow anenomes, like at Kato Zakros.

I found some good places to feed the fish, and saw various animals I hadn't seen before. There were bulky warty crabs lodged in a crevice, and another sort amongst the stones, with long thin tarantuala-like legs (with yellow bits). In another hole I found a big blobby creature (10"-12" long) with a soft wrinkly body, light brown with black rings which turned a very large sea slug. I enjoyed all this and a nice long swim, and everything was grand, except however for the extremely painful anenome stings and accompanying blistery swellings on my arm. Perhaps I should have worn the rash vest.

Havania

I'd been thinking about doing a night snorkel for some time and was usually way too tired, but managed it one early morning. I had woken up at about 3am, and couldn't get back to sleep because the toothbrush recharger was flashing (I 'suppose' I could have unplugged it). Anyway it occurred to me that it would be a good time for a swim, so I put on my boots and rash vest and the camera, torch, and knife went in the goody bag. I quietly left the hotel and headed down to the beach. At the top of the driveway I could see another night snorkeller or diver further out in the bay.

It felt a bit strange at first, and I was glad that I'd swum around here before and knew what to expect. There were lights on the shore and navigation wasn't going to be a problem. Visibility was good and my backup dive torch perfect for this sort of thing. The first fish I saw were small silver fish hanging, here and there, just below the surface. Then, very near me I noticed a needlefish. I swam on around the headland and, and on the rocks there were occasional sea cucumbers (cotton spinners). These ones were a bit different, brown and spiny (they were a bit like our nearly black ones) and had fairly evenly spaced white spots about some of the spines. I carried on, and very soon I found a moray (or 'the' moray, as it could have been the same one I saw last week).

Swimming around there were more of the small silver fish, then as it started to get light I saw others. A school of grey mullet in bit of feeding frenzy over some rocks in the shallows, saddled bream, decorated wrasse, more needlefish, and lots of blennies; perhaps some of these had been there all along.

I took a few pictures and on the way back and had a look in some of the hollows, where I found a nice red fan worm, and there were some nice plants. After a while I felt a bit cool. It wasn't cold but I was glad to have the rash vest, which during the day kept the sun off my back and saved me getting burnt. There was of course a wonderful sunrise, and a few early people arriving at the beach - the best time of day. I spoke to a few people as I cleaned off, and a friendly local suggested bread to attract lots of fish. It was a great swim and I was very pleased.

Vai / Kato Zakros

A really early start for the trip to the east. We made it to Sitia and decided to go to Vai first (then down to Kato Zakros) and followed a long windy road via Palekastro. Vai was empty when we arrived and we had a quick look round before deciding to stay. Parking was a reasonable €4 for the day.

Kitted up by the rocks and snorkelled round to the south. There was a strong northerly breeze across water but happily it wasn't too choppy. Again, very sparse plant life, but found Vai very good for the fish, and saw a small grouper under rock ledge. I took a few pictures, mainly snaps of fish because there were plenty in the shallows and it was nice and light. I was back on the beach as a trio of spearfishers arrived and were making preparations to go in; Yas and I then went up to the top of the headland for view.

It was starting to get busy. There were some greek families on the beach and other sun-bathers arriving; and an incredibly loud Italian show off, yelling, posing, and bossing Nicole about. Itanos wasn't far away and I'd read some good things about the place. Nice scenery along the coast and some quieter bays nearby, we walked about looking at the ruins. Was a great place to swim - regretfully I didn't go in here (I'd only just swum at Vai and it was a bit windy).

Inland it is extremely arid and the creaky information board and shelter, and spindly and spiny plants gave it a deserty wild-west feel. Leaving Itanos we travelled south though wild scenery and along fairly bendy roads south to Zakros and on to Kato Zakros.

Decided first to see the Minoan palace (it was extremely hot, 40°C+) then to cool off. Yas liked the terrapins in the pools there. I had a short swim, then decided to get the rest of my kit and camera and see what the cliffs were like. It was much more varied than I expected and the plant life was quite colourful and there were lots of yellow snakelock anenomes, as well as the usual fish etc. I could have swum here for a lot longer. When I got out I realised I'd been stung and had on my shin a patch of dense wavy red lines. Anenomes possibly - though I was pretty sure I didn't go over anenomes - or a bunch of jellyfish tentacles.