Stoney Cove 24/12/07

[ratcliffe]

After seeing a thread, I decided to exercise the "Cheeky Christmas Eve Dive" option, so this morning saw me arriving at Stoney Cove at about 9.30 ready for a pre- Christmas bimble dive.
I won't mention who turned up at Stoney at 5.30 this morning, only to find that by 8.30 the only cars in the car park were theirs and their buddies....

Anyway, I arrived and started to kit up, and was shortly joined by Endoman and Arfie who I had managed to blag a dive with last night.
After introductions, we kitted up and made our way down to the slipway to get in. I was trying out some drygloves for the first time, and Endoman was using his new <drool> Frog Indigo wing, so a little pratting about was to be expected. I donned my gloves and got into the water, only to find them filling up as they are too large for me. Damn. Out of the water and back to the car to get my regular 5mm neoprene gloves. At the same time, Endoman was having trouble with a leak from the connector on his new wing. It turned out that there was a problem with the O ring, and also he managed to lose his pony when he got in, I think it got caught on a rock and became uncatched. So having retrieved the pony and checked out the inflator connection he decided not to do the dive and decided to get to the bar first
So this left Arfie and myself to do the dive. We went down, and headed out to the Stanegarth, which we had to ourselves, and we went all over it in really good visibility, you could clearly see the buoy on the surface 20 metres above, which is really good for the Cove. The downside of the good vis is that the temperature is currently down at 8'C. From the Stanegarth we headed over to the coach and then to the cairn, adding a rock as I went, before coming back along the ledge by the dropoff to the pit, and up via the road. Before heading up the road, we went for a look around the metal/scaffold structure which is there at 21 metres, and it was covered with sleeping fish, quite a strange image, I wished I had taken my camera in at that point. From there, we were both getting quite cold, so we headed back up the road, and after looking at more fish hanging around in the cockpit, we exited back at the slipway. This was a really good dive, as we only saw one other pair of divers during the 40 minutes we were in the water (well, we saw the same pair twice) and the vis really was stunning.
Exited and dekitted, and after a quick pint in the pub, we were on the way home.
Good to see a few regulars there, in Freeflow and Sexydivebuddy, and their buddies, also it was really nice to dive an empty Stoney Cove, thats how I remember it from 10 years ago when I used to be able to dive it in midweek.

Dive Data: Max Depth 21 metres, total dive time 41 minutes.

Thanks to Arfie for the dive, and Endoman for making the effort, even if he didn't actually get below the surface

Merry Christmas everyone...

[sexydivebuddy]

Originally Posted by ratcliffe

After seeing a thread, I decided to exercise the "Cheeky Christmas Eve Dive" option, so this morning saw me arriving at Stoney Cove at about 9.30 ready for a pre- Christmas bimble dive.
I won't mention who turned up at Stoney at 5.30 this morning, only to find that by 8.30 the only cars in the car park were theirs and their buddies....

Merry Christmas everyone...

glad you didn't ...

but we did have the pit to ourselves twice! and yes, the vis was a good 10M too!

happy xmas everyone and safe diving always!

[endoman]

well kids are playing with presents, I'm dreading going to sister in laws so on here for a little light relief.

Nice to meet you all down there, and a big thanks to Derek for turning up and buddying Arfie after my cock ups. All user error of course, but at least I know not to trap a bit of bungee under the pony clamp stopping it locking in fully :-(

got home, replaced O ring on inflator and all is well after a gentle tighten with a spanner,

down side was while I was being kit bitch, I nipped into the shop and bought a nice shiny 7 ft Milflex hose to go with the frog, put that on yesterday afternoon and look forward to getting head underwater next time.

[Arfie]

Didn't see this, thanks for the dive Ratcliffe, it saved me having to kick Endoman all the way back up to Chesterfield for making me get up on my first day off for no dive

Nice to finally meet and speak to a couple of other YDers, I wear my YD hat and t-shirt everytime I go and nobody ever even says hello

Arfie