Four of us ventured down south to dive off the coast of the Isle of Wight, Once we had recovered a lost diver (he had no road name for his sat nav), we loaded the boat Buccaneer and chugged off towards Sandown Bay. Plenty of room as only 6 divers on board.

First dive was the Wreck of the Camswan  a fairly large upright wreck, 4m in places, quite a good dive with reasonable viz.  There was plenty of life with the usual south coast stuff (pollock, bib, small crabs, blennies, gobies).  Apparently there are congers on this wreck but didn’t see any. Managed to find the boilers (big round circular thing with grids of holes) and what could have been the front or back of the wreck (sorry aft/stern).

Second dive was on the er ledges er didn’t actually find a ledge so swam around in ½ m viz at 8m for 40 mins probably going rounds in circles. Not much life about, a few small fish and small crabs, some kelp and weed and some mooring lines – although it might have been the same one.  Not a great second dive, well it was actually quite boring, both me & Mark F both said afterwards how on earth do you make this dive interesting for novice divers.  However it was still a good day out (of the office) as it was sunny and warm.

More lessons to be learned from the days diving:

• Try to remember to untie your cylinder from the rack before diving especially after you have told everyone else to remember this.

• Navigation – if the skipper says head South East this means for all of the dive not just part of it North West is nowhere near South East on the compass

Other news – Litter picking at the Havering show on the bank holiday weekend – great fun – no really!
Paintball  -  No details but I understand it was a case of shoot the crap out of the Treasurer and he hurt his back …aaaarrrrrr.

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After last year’s ‘black out’ I wasn’t really expecting a lot but my faith in Dover diving has been restored.  It turned out to be a really good day’s diving and we finally got to use the clubs unofficial dream machine to get there (nice one Craigy).

As many people know the dive boat is not the best looking dive boat in the world but it is fairly fast and there is tons of room on deck as long as the weather is ok, which it was.  The sea was fairly flat but this didn’t stop a number of the supposedly hardy divers ‘chumming‘ for sharks. Apparently a dodgy bacon sandwich was to blame.

First dive was the Wreck of the Castor, a fairly large upright wreck a reasonable dive with good viz, but as with much of Dover’s diving you are limited to going out one way reeling off and back the same way so you don’t get to explore as much. There was a bit of a current on the wreck but there was plenty of life with the usual south coast stuff (pollock, bib, crabs, lobsters, the odd cod, blennies, gobies and some white flowery things – anemones).

One good thing about Dover is you can come back to land for the surface interval for cups of tea and a picnic (nicely prepared by Alan).  And on this particular weekend there was an open day on the front with all sorts going on including – a flotilla (convoy to me and you) of boats, firemen for the ladies.

Second dive was the Wreck of the Pomerania, (not to be confused with the Pomeranian which is off Dorset).  This turned out to be a late afternoon dive. Last year I saw a bit of metal, one fish and someone’s torchlight in what felt like a night dive during the day!  What a difference, this time there was some really good viz and it was a really good dive (again reeling out and back to the shot line), plenty of wreck and sea life (mainly the same as above).

As a now regular feature there were some lessons to be learned from the days diving:

• Try to remember to take your weight belt

• Try to keep your torches (and all your other equipment attached to your bcd), although on a positive note Smoothy and Windy Walker have both passed their Search and Recovery Speciality.

• Try to keep your kit as streamline as possible and eliminate dangly bits.  Crab hooks have a tendency to snag on things and whilst you put a lot of finning action in – you never get any where! (Maybe the club should run a speciality course in kit streamlining as this could gain an extra 20 seconds of bottom time – but hey you never know what you might need down there).