Both weekends were calm, warm and settled, but there were only 3 divers interested on each occasion. We accepted it the first time as some were away and others had parties on the preceding night, but the second weekend was surprising. Melanie, the Dive Manager, wanted to know where were all the divers in this Club!, but I couldn’t help her there. However, she refused to be beaten and asked about possible shore dives. By a lengthy process of elimination we settled on Trefor no Pier at 11am. I couldn’t get enthused and having 4 dogs to look after decided on providing shore cover, although Carol would have done it, leaving the no pier to Melanie and Andrew. They suffered in the heat as they kitted up with Andrew looking like he might pass out on the buddy check, but it was all worth it. The tide was nearly in and the viz. was to die for (see attached video if you don’t believe it – Trefor with or without pier as never before seen! They recorded 72 minutes but as it was so shallow at the start and end they actually did about 80, reporting a beautiful reef to the south and sightings of many fish and crustaceans, people in kayaks, fishermen on the pier and kids after crabs, all spotted from under water. So I missed out, but so did everyone else, which is poor consolation. Unless people start phoning in we’re going to miss out on a lot of this season’s boat diving, with some getting quite familiar with Trefor Pier.
David
VideoWith the warm weather continuing there was a good turnout for the days diving with both boats heading onto the water to dive the south coast. Brett, Nia, Jake, David, Laura, John, Mike and Andrew were diving. The boats were launched from the outer harbour of Pwllheli. The first dive was open to options as the second dive was the main dive which was the challenger wreck. Therefore, a shallow dive off the Llanbedrog reef was selected as the first dive. The conditions on the reef were great with 8m visibility and teaming with life. Particularly, there were allot of juvenile bull huss hiding amongst the algae with a few lobsters being spotted amongst the crevices. Jake saw the fins of a large bull huss under the rock however did not try and get it to move out in order to observe it better. The ascent consisted of avoiding the large groups (smack) of jelly fish.
Lunch was eaten on the quarry beach with shortbread being provided by Nia (thank you).
With Andrew coxing Sea wasp and mike on his own boat the journey to the second dive commenced. The pressure was on for Andrew to lay the shot perfectly onto the wreck, and after a few runs off the wreck with the sonar the shot was placed within feet of the wreck. Mike and Dewi took the first dive to enjoy the good visibility before leaving the water murky for the following divers. As usual the wreck was covered in shoals of bib as well as plenty of tompot blennies amongst the crevices. Overall, the visibility was good on the wreck and plenty to see.
Due to the early start the days diving was all over by just before 3pm with all diving going smoothly. Once on land the days smoothness disappeared as there was huge confusions in calculating the days costs. However, it was another eventful Sunday dive with both conditions above and below surface being great.
Jake
Llanbedrog Reef Video Challenger Wreck VideoWe had good numbers with 9 divers, the pairings were as follows: Melanie with Laura, David with Ronald, Jake with Gwenno and Andrew with Julie with Mike and Dewi who forgot his “Regs” on shore cover.
It was Julie’s first sea dive so more lead was required to get her under. I decided to play it safe and stick to the left of the bay. On entry the visibility was about 4 meters, we saw lots of Corkwing Wrasse, Ballan Wrasse, Dragonets and one big Pollock. We also found a large Lobster in the open which wasn’t bothered about seeing two divers and when he got bored with us decided to turn round and walk past Julie, we then saw a smaller Lobster in the open which was much more skittish and swam off when we got to close.
Julie did very well on the dive only one partial loss of buoyancy on our return to the beach after a very respectable 30 minutes dive.
And then it was back to the Lion for some refreshments.
Andrew
It was Brett’s week organising ,so it was going to be a shore dive on the door step…..We all met in the Plas yn Rhiw car park for 7ish, for Brett to ferry us down to the Rhuol, that is those with no 4×4. There was a good crowd of us and the buddy pairings were Jake and Laura, Melanie and Ron, David and Julie, and Andrew and myself with Brett and Mickey doing shore cover. Julie and Ron were having their sheltered water training, followed by a dive, and as for the rest of us well we just had a lovely dive ,the vis was quite incredible 8 – 10 meters, the colour on the seaweed is quite amazing, with so much different variety as well. We saw plenty of spider crab and some very large ones too, pipe fish, small butterfish, dog fish, wrass, plenty of life to be seen. Andrew managed to get us back to shore , his navigation was very good, well done Andrew not an easy one….I managed to find Brett lost weight, which came to good use!!!!. Everyone reported to have a good dive, with Melanie and Roy going for the 60min dive, even Malcome came down looking for her!!
With the weather being so good it was daft not to make the most of it, so it was back to ours to light the bbq, and I left Mickey in charge, and what a brilliant job he did too,till Brett came and interfered!!!!!!There was plenty to eat and drink, we sat out till gone ten then into the gun room for more stories from Malcom.
A good evening was had by all, well I think!!!!!…….
Nia.
