Sunday 4 th of June
Sunday’s dive was met with sunshine, plankton, and a couple of mishaps. There were six divers in total plus Mike. Everyone met at Pendre for 8am, with the plan to dive Maen Mellt. After a quick detour to get Dewi’s kit from the shore, we set off and conducted the first dive at approximately 10:20 with three buddy pairs: Guy and Andrew, Gwenno and Brett and Dewi and Lowri, with Mike coxing. Despite the plankton we saw spider crabs, cuckoo wrasse and a giant dog shark (apparently a huss). Divers max depth varied between 16-20meters and was approximately a 40min dive. We anchored the Seawasp and had lunch on land, which also gave us a chance to swap cylinders for the second dive. However, during de-kitting, Lowri’s neck seal split, ending her diving for the day. Back on the boat, Brett realised he hadn’t replaced his empty cylinder, so the second dive had buddy pairs Guy and Andrew followed by Dewi and Gwenno, with Lowri and Brett keeping Mike company on the surface. As Andrew and Guy ended their second dive and got back onto the boat, Mike noticed a diver bounce to the surface. Upon arriving at the other DSMB we found Dewi but no Gwenno. Dewi had lost a weight pod and had consequently had a fast ascent from 20meters, also tangling him in his DSMB line. We helped untangle him, got him onto the boat, and Andrew administered oxygen, while the rest of us kept an eye out for Gwenno who surfaced through the air bubbles nearby. Gwenno was fine other than her concern for having lost Dewi.
We ended the day by keeping the boat at Pendre, and as part of the Sports Diver qualification, Lowri got to roleplay Mike by being the “money man”.
To clarify, Dewi is fine and will likely be back diving this week.
Safe diving 🙂
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Wednesday 7 th of June
The site was The Rhuol.
Every one met up at seven as requested. Seven turned out to dive with Mary, Mike, Vi and David doing shore cover. As seven had phoned in I decided to sit it out and 😴 only to be told by our training officer two trainee sports divers could not dive on their own without a instructor. Well it was a nice idea.
The pairings were Andrew/Anna, Laura/Cai and Guy/Kieran/myself. The tide was low water so we had a bit of a treck to the water. The dives varied between 45-54 minutes and a max depth of 4.5 metres. The reports on life varied from dog fish, wrasse ,pollock, comb jellies, spiders, lobster ,silver eel and the cuttlefish. Everyone’s navigation was pretty good.
After we finished the dive we changed and navigated our way to Tyn Y Mynydd and had an evening of Barbecue in and around the gun room. Very pleasant evening listening to some of Mikes dive related exploits. Very amusing. A good night was had by all. Nice to sit down and chill.
Brett.
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Sunday 11th of June
Another Sunday dive in the glorious sunshine and mirror flat sea. There were only 4 divers, the buddy pairs were Andrew and Guy, Dewi and Lowri. Mike was the dedicated coxswain for the day.
We met at Pendre for 8.30am to collect Sea Wasp and make our way to Porth Colmon, with the intention of diving the Gwynfaen Wreck at slack water around 10.50am. Sea Wasp was kitted out and launched, which all went very smoothly and no one forgot any kit!! Lowri was given a brief introduction into the GPS and set us out on a course for the Gwynfaen.
On arrival, the shot line was readied and deployed. It was at this point it we felt we had missed the wreck and it would be best to recover the shot line and reset. The second attempt was far more successful ( later we found out we were merely a foot away from the wreck).
After eventually contacting Holyhead and waiting for the tide to stop running, the dive teams entered the water and made their way down the shot. The Gwynfaen did not disappoint. With approximately 5 meters of vis, there were large shoals of fish & massive conger eels lurking inside the remains of the hull. Andrew found a very impressive Crayfish and a few large lobsters were also spotted.
Divers reach a depth of around 20 meters and dived for approximately 40 minutes duration.
Porth Ysgaden was chosen as the site for lunch and our 2 hour surface interval. Half way through lunch a thick blanket of sea fog rolled in and looked like it was going to scupper our plans for the afternoon drift dive. Luckily the sun managed to burn through and we made our way out to the Porth Colmon Reef. At the reef there was a considerable current running. The intention was to try and get into the gullies of the reef and hide from the current & if this was not possible, to put up the DSMB and go with it.
It was during this second dive that we had the first equipment malfunction of the day; Dewi’s fin strap broke…. He managed to temporarily fix it with a piece of bungee cord, but when he tried to cut the excess cord he also learnt he’d lost his knife.
It was not possible to find the gullies at the reef and so a rather fast drift dive began, passing over beds of DeadMans fingers, scallops & shoals of dog fish. Divers surfaced having an average depth of 15 meters and a maximum of approximately 20 meters & a dive duration of 40 minutes.
Some had better luck than others in foraging for their dinner !
The four happy divers were collected by Mike in sea wasp and returned to Porth Colmon, where we recovered the boat just before another blanket of sea fog came in.
Guy
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Thursday 15th of June
Sea Wasp was primed for an evening outing on the South Coast to accommodate the Trainee Ocean Divers on their first boat dive plus Mike. Instructors and buddy pairs for the day were Melanie / Ana and Andrew / Shem under the watchful eye of Mike with Dewi providing the dedicated cox duties.
We all met at Pwllheli for 6pm on what was a glorious evening. Kit packed and the boat was launched swiftly. Flat calm seas we were soon on Llanbedrog to find that a kind fisherman had put a Pot on the reef, so the plan was to use the Pot as a shot line.
First in was going to be Andrew / Shem / Mike as planned , all kit checked and double checked, buddy checks completed they entered onto the Pot and navigated down to the reef.
Next in was Melanie / Ana again kit checked and double checked with buddy checks complete, divers were ready for action and they were successfully deposited onto the Lobster Pot.
After all the hustle and bustle on the boat it was time for a coffee to await them to surface. Eventually two DSMBs emerged pretty much the same time, one somewhat more erect!!than the other. First wave emerged first by a matter of seconds recording a dive time of 51 minutes and max depth of 12.5m, with them successfully onboard the peace and tranquillity of the evening was busy with chatter of Conger eels, Lobsters, Pipe fish and hypnotic jelly fish.
With the first wave busy keeping their kit the boat meandered to the location of the second wave to collect Melanie & Ana who had dived for 44 minutes at a max depth of 13m. Both divers successfully aboard it became clear than Ana had suffered a quite severe mask squeeze which left the regions of the eyes swollen and tender. She had felt it early in the dive but with everything to content with she carried on and still managed to completed the dive successfully.
We were back in Pwllheli in no time with the boat put away ready for the weekend.
Despite the mask squeeze I am pleased to say that both divers successfully completed their first boat dive and well done to Shem & Ana.
Dewi
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Wednesday the 28th of June.
Diving at Porth Ysgaden with 6 divers the pairings were. Andrew with Jared & Lowri, and Melanie with Lindsey & Enlli. Jared starting his third open water lesson which meant a CBL so Lowri helped by being the body. The exercise went very well, so we went for a dive looking to find 12m but only got 8.3m and a dive time of 51min . There was plenty of life to be seen i.e many species of Wrasse, Pollock, Dogfish and some Bass, with good visibility of 8m, and thanks to Mike for doing Shore cover.
Andrew.