Foreword – Chris
A group of 10 UBUC’ers headed down to Plymouth for a bank holiday weekend of fun in the sun! With glorious sunshine and flat seas all weekend, it was pretty much as perfect a UK dive trip as you can get. We camped in Brixton Caravan and Camping Park (about £6 a night) and launched out of Bovisand (free!). We also got fills from Bovisand (£5 a fill).
Saturday – Catherine
After a hectic night of putting up tents at 1am, we successfully arrived at Plymouth to be greeted by glorious sunshine!
While Chris took Miranda and Emily off to complete their boat handling training on a beautiful calm sea, the rest of us dived around Bovisand Harbour. Seeing a lovely collection of kelp, starfish and a flounder, the relaxed morning dive was completed by collecting a plastic broom head from the seabed.
Once the new boat handlers were raring to go, we all made our way to the JEL in the afternoon. Another team of divers generously let us use their shot line, meaning descending was easy-peasy. The wreck was incredible and teeming with life (mainly cuckoo wrasse) also with a touch of death – a dead bottlenose dolphin was laying in the wreck, which was sad but cool!
Sunday – Emily
Thankfully the unusually great weather held up and we had an even nicer day than on Saturday. With calm seas and clear blue skies, we set off for our first dive of the day at the HMS Scylla. The dive was fantastic with +6m vis. After quick lunch break and many failed efforts to keep cool in the boiling heat, we loaded up the boats (slowly, in true UBUC fashion) for our second dive to the mustang ledges. This was by far my favourite dive. It had everything you could ask for in a dive: great vis ( 7/8 m ) , a spider crab, a lobster, and catsharks! It was well worth the sun burn I got from it. Of course, we ended the day with burgers (or in Catherine’s case; chips, beans and onion rings) in the pub.
Monday – Kerry
The final day of the trip started off with yet more amazing weather, clear blue skies, calm waters and predicted temperatures of 25 degrees. After a quick briefing we were all very excited to get in the water, if not only to cool down, and get diving. We took both boats out to a nearby by wreck called the Glen Strathallan and after finding and shooting the wreck, we headed down. The vis was great and many divers were lucky enough to see squid, cuttlefish and a fantastic conger eel hidden inside one of the boilers; it was a great end to a great weekend.
After such an amazing dive it was sadly time to go. We packed away the kit, struggled with the boats and headed back to Bristol.
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