A good weekends diving

[dry suit diver]

well after a 2.5 hour train trip to Exeter on Friday I was met by Odin and whisked off to Exeter BSAC. Met some new faces , and some old ones too and had a good laugh.
The plan was to take a RIB to plymouth on Saturday and dive the Scylla but the weather gods put the kybosh on that one, so an alternative plan was quickly hatched and it was decided that Odin and I would go to Brixham breakwater beach for some shore dives and on Sunday we would go to the River Teign for some boathandling practice.

Saturday.

Up at 8am for a nice leisurly breakfast at the St George and Dragon at Clyst St George and then out to the car for a transfer of kit to Odins Divemobile.
A nice trip to Brixham avoiding the last remains of the grockles! and we arrive at 10am to a nearly empty carpark, a quick coffee and we kit up Odin doing all his predive checks on the YBOD and me lashing my OC stuff together, the plan is to get in and have a bimble around.
I get in and we descend and i have a large problem with my mask and the panic sets in , never mind surface adjust it and redescend.The plan runs nice and smoothly after this, lots of wild life , snakelock anemones, tiny little crabs, sand skippers(you know the ones that look like those creatures of the Guinness advert) and scallops which are unfortunately too small to take up. We do however see a huge female crab in a discarded tyre but leave it be to breed and produce more crabs for my next visit. As we head back to shore I get the feeling I am a bit positive and stuff some rocks in my BC pocket which helps considerably, hmmmmm looks like I need to get rid of the large layer of bioprene I have accumulated over the summer as I never needed that much weight before. A good 40 minutes under water I get out with a good chunk of air left in the tank and we have a shortish surface interval with me emptying the rocks out and putting a few more kilos in the harness before heading back in. This time instead of a north south swim we do a east west swim this time with me leading, not too bad a navigation out,lots of kelp and some nice shallow gullies to go through. the return journey is a lot different and I dont quite get us back to the beach, not far but far enough out, Odin tells me to use surface navigation skills underwater but my brain seems to be unable to cope with this for some strange reason

we get out and have a wander round Brixham for some food and then its back to Odins to sort the gear out and dry my undersuit after a bit of a leaky neckseal.

Sunday

Woke up to dark pendulous clouds and the heavens open followed by a gale so the boat stuff gets canned and SWMBO and I leave early to come home.


Still I got another few minutes underwater and had a very enjoyable weekend. heres to moving to the SW soon.

[Odin]

We made the most of the crap forecast!
two dives in the briny!
Sunday - we took both RIB's to Teignmouth anyway...
need more than a force 8 and Thunder/lightening/torrential rain to stop 'em..
So i towed a RIB launched it - and recovered it1/2 hour later... engine wouldn't start...
The otheres had an er.. interesting time practicing boathandling...

[Adrian Kelland]

Brixham carpark empty at 10! That's good to hear

[frosty the snowman]

It was good to see you on Friday. Sorry you experienced the one weekend of bad Devon weather we have per year...