Report pending
With reports of the Sea Wasp’s engine playing up on the previous weekend, a tentative plan of launching at Castellmarch and heading out to the Islands was penned. Mike brought Sparrowhawk ‘just in case’. There were nine divers up for an outing, namely Mike, John, David, Melanie, Andrew, Dewi, Peter, Jake and Irfon.
After launching, it seemed that Sea Wasp was over her niggles with the engine and all seemed fine, so we headed around the headland to Porth Ceiriad. There were a few disgruntled faces so it was decided to hop over to Enlli. As the tide was rising, diving the north face of the Island was on, a dive that we hadn’t done in a few seasons. The vis improved with depth and the current picked up for a few pairings towards the end of their dive, Dewi and Irfon in particular who had a tumble in a washing machine. By now the engine had started playing up again. It was decided to play safe and head back towards Abersoch.
Mike’s crew dived a mark given by Brett and Sea Wasp’s crew headed towards Cilan where David, Andrew and Melanie had a decent dive albeit in poorer vis. The engine by now was quite sick and refusing to kick in. Irfon and Dewi decided to forego their dive and get back to the safety of The Warren.
Irfon
The forecast was much better for the Sunday than BH Monday but after receiving the e-mails Peter, the dive manager for the weekend, informed me that he couldn’t make it, and asked me to take over. He forwarded on the e-mails which were very qualified from all but Andrew, with Brett maybe having a boat trip on and Melanie recovering from an infection while Wil could only do the Monday. So I made plans to take Andrew for a shore dive from St Mary’s Well, as it had to be something very different for once, which it could well have been! Then, when all hope was seemingly lost, yet again for the August BH dives, Brett advised that his booking wasn’t until mid afternoon and that Adrian had offered to cox if we went out in the morning on Sea Cat. By the morning Melanie had also got over her infection, which was a septic tooth, and so eventually there were five of us, all set for a single dive, when Brett announced that he had postponed his group to Tuesday! I had a partly filled 10 litre which was on it’s way to Chris’ and Adrian had two cylinders but only wanted to do the second dive. So all was well,as Melanie had her twin set, and off we set to a mark which Brett had had his eye on for some time. It turned out to be a boulder and cobble reef off Cilan which Brett had set us up for slack. Brett and Andrew were first in, followed by Melanie and me. It turned out to be a nautical oasis raised up above the surrounding expanses of sand, with excellent viz and with numerous fish and crustaceans, albeit with many of them already in pots. The highlight was perhaps the biggest bullhuss any of us have ever encountered, big enough for both pairs to stumble on it, and Andrew claimed to have been brave enough to play with it! The second dive was on the ridge, where the viz. was nowhere near that out on the reef. I managed to stay with Melanie and Adrian for half an hour before my air ran out, but that allowed Brett and Andrew to get in early. Although I found the dive to be lacking the life of recent times it allegedly picked up noticeably after I left them, as indeed was confirmed by the last pair. So yet another excellent day’s diving all thanks to Brett and Adrian, especially when it seemed that all hope had gone. We weren’t able to do the Monday as only Wil and me were up for it and the forecast indicated that we may have been limited to a single dive again.
David
