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).